The tomb of the father of the deposed Syrian dictator Bashar Al Assad, Hafezwas set on fire in her hometown of Qardaha, according to images taken by the AFP on Wednesday, as rebel fighters in fatigues and young men watched it burn.
He Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said to the AFP that the rebels had set fire to the mausoleum, located in the heart of Latakia of Assad’s Alawite community.
images of AFP They showed parts of the mausoleum on fire and damaged.
Hafez Al Assad was a Syrian politician and military man who held the presidency of Syria from February 22, 1971 until his death on June 10, 2000. He was born on October 6, 1930 in Qardaha, a town located in the mountainous region of Latakia, into a family from the Alawite minority.
During his political managementconsolidated a authoritarian regime in Syria based on absolute control of the political power, military and of security. His rise to power after the “Corrective Movement” of 1970 marked the beginning of a government centralized around his figure and supported by the Arab Socialist Baath Partyof which he was leader.
Assad structured the state apparatus to guarantee his permanence in power, strengthening the intelligence services and placing members of the Alawite minority, to which he belonged, in key positions within the army and public administration. Under his rule, political freedoms were severely restricted, opposition parties were banned, and any dissent was harshly repressed, often through imprisonment, torture, and extrajudicial executions.
One of the most representative episodes of his government was the Hama massacre in 1982, where the military forcesunder his orders, crushed an uprising led by the Muslim Brotherhood. The operation resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians and destroyed much of the city, cementing his reputation for ruling with an iron fist.
At the regional level, Al Assad adopted a policy of confrontation with Israel and promoted a hegemonic influence of Syria in the Lebanonintervening directly in that country’s civil war to ensure strategic control in the region. Despite his anti-Western stance, he knew how to maintain the support of allies such as the Soviet Unionwhich allowed him to sustain a regime that remained in power for almost three decades.
(With information from AFP)
