Deception, despair and escape.. Details of Bashar al-Assad's last hours in Syria

Bashar al-Assad told almost no one about his plans to flee Syria as his rule was crumbling, with aides, government officials and even relatives either deceived or not informed at all, more than a dozen people familiar with the events told Reuters.

Hours before fleeing to Moscow, Assad assured about 30 military and security leaders at the Defense Ministry at a meeting on Saturday that Russian military support was on the way and urged ground forces to stand firm, according to a commander who attended the meeting and asked not to be identified.

Civil servants were also not aware of anything.

An aide to his inner circle said Assad told his chief of staff on Saturday when he finished work that he would return home but instead headed to the airport.

The aide added that Assad also called his media advisor, Buthaina Shaaban, and asked her to come to his house to write a speech for him, but when she arrived, no one was there.

“Assad has not put up any resistance. He has not mobilized his forces. He has left his supporters to fend for themselves,” said Nadim Houry, executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative, a regional think tank.

Reuters was unable to contact Assad in Moscow, which granted him political asylum.

Interviews with 14 people familiar with Assad's final days and hours in power paint a picture of a leader seeking outside help to extend his 24-year rule before relying on deception and secrecy to engineer his exit from Syria in the early hours of Sunday.

Most of the sources, who include aides to the former president's inner circle, regional diplomats, security sources and senior Iranian officials, asked not to be identified to discuss sensitive matters freely.

Three aides said Assad did not even inform his younger brother Maher, commander of the 4th Armored Division, of his exit plan. One said Maher left by helicopter for Iraq and then on to Russia.

Similarly, Assad left behind his cousins Ihab and Iyad Makhlouf when Damascus fell to rebel forces, a Syrian aide and a Lebanese security official said. The two tried to flee by car to Lebanon but were ambushed on the road by rebel fighters who shot and killed Ihab and wounded Iyad, they said.

There has been no official confirmation of Ihab's death and Reuters was unable to independently verify the incident.

Two regional diplomats said Assad fled Damascus on Sunday, December 8, in a plane that disappeared from radar after turning off its transponders, escaping opposition fighters who had stormed the capital.

The dramatic exit ended his 24-year rule and half a century of his family's rule, and brought an abrupt end to a 13-year civil war.

Assad flew to the Russian Hmeimim air base in the city of Latakia on the Syrian coast, and from there to Moscow.

Assad's family, including his wife Asma and their three children, were already waiting for him in the Russian capital, according to three close aides and a senior regional official.

Videos of Assad's home, taken by opposition fighters and citizens who gathered at the presidential compound after his departure and posted on social media, suggest he left in a hurry, showing cooked food left on the stove and many personal belongings he left behind, such as family photo albums.

Source: Reuters