Bizarre and personal photos of ousted Syrian President Bashar Assad have appeared in his abandoned residences, causing ridicule among Syrians who until recently were persecuted for criticizing his leadership.
The images, allegedly discovered in photo albums of Assad’s mansions in the hills of Damascus and Aleppo, painted an unflattering portrait of Bashar and his father, Hafez Assad, who had ruled Syria with an iron fist for decades. They tore away the carefully constructed image that the Assad family had cultivated for decades.
One photo showed Hafez Assad in his underwear, striking a bodybuilder’s pose. Other images showed Bashar Assad in a Speedo flexing his biceps; riding a yellow motorcycle in his underwear; sitting on a handcycle, also in his underwear; and staring into a kitchen, wearing only white underwear and a tank top.
FILE – A man displays old photographs of late Syrian President Hafez Assad as civilians loot the private residence of ousted President Bashar Assad in the Malkeh district of Damascus, Syria, Sunday, Dec. 8, 2024.
AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed, File
Social media images showed Syrians touring the Assads’ opulent properties, revealing extravagant decor, jacuzzis and other lavish possessions out of reach of ordinary people living amid civil war since 2011. Fueled by decades of persecution and Out of a desire for revenge, people stripped mansions of valuables and exposed Assad’s private world, including some of his photo collections.
Improper images of Assad in various states of undress and in bizarre settings quickly went viral and became the subject of ridicule. For many Syrians, who had endured forced imprisonment, displacement and oppression under the Assad dynasty, these photographs served as a spectacle and a moment of catharsis.
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“What’s up with the Assad family and being photographed in their underwear? I am very interested in knowing the fantasy behind it,” wrote journalist Hussam Hammoud in X.
One particularly peculiar shot showed Bashar in a Speedo aboard a boat, surrounded by other people. Another depicted him on a balcony overlooking the sea, mocking a girl sitting on his shoulders.
In one photograph, taken in a mountainous setting, Bashar Assad appears with a group of people, including his supposedly maternal cousin, Ihab Makhlouf, who is wearing a T-shirt adorned with an image of Hitler.
A video on social media showed a man flipping through hundreds of photographs in an album, which included images of family occasions. One photo showed a young Bashar in a suit and his wife Asmaa in a white dress, supposedly from their engagement ceremony, as he placed a ring on her finger. Another image captured a topless Bashar posing with a camera, as if he was taking a photograph.
© 2024 The Canadian Press
