The Assads: How a Family Terrorized Syria | WDR Documentary

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Asma al-Assad, the former First Lady of Syria. In the West, she was seen as the ideal Arab ruler: beautiful, educated, modern. Today, she is considered an accomplice to a dictator who committed atrocities against his own people. Her story is a story of deception, and it began with us – in the West.

Asma al-Assad – raised in London, educated at elite schools, a successful career woman – becomes a beacon of hope for Syria as the wife of Bashar al-Assad. Even today, Frank Hesske, the former European Union Ambassador to Syria, still lights up when he speaks of Asma al-Assad, the beautiful First Lady of Syria. He describes her as a 'darling' and comparable to Lady Diana from Britain due not just to her British heritage, he gushes: 'And we diplomats,' the former ambassador says surprisingly candidly today, 'we allowed ourselves to be seduced.'

Many diplomats, politicians, and journalists from the West who encountered this presidential couple during the 11 years after Bashar al-Assad took office and before the start of the war in Syria were deceived. Because even under the charming young president, torture, arrests, and threats persisted for anyone who dared to oppose the regime in any way, just as they had under his father. Like the famous dissident Riad Seif, whose daughter tells the story of their family: the constant fear of being taken away at night by the secret police's henchmen. The constant fear that her father could be killed at any moment. The constant humiliations inflicted by the regime.

The film shows the diplomatic role Asma al-Assad played: the beautiful face, the woman from London who time and again made the Assads socially acceptable. With the Syrian civil war, the dead, the mistreated, and the displaced, the fairy tale of a new beginning came to a cruel end.

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🎥 A film for The Story by Annette Zinkant.
This film was produced in 2017. All statements and facts are based on the information available at that time and have not been updated since.
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📺 More documentaries in the ARD Mediathek: https://1.ard.de/yt_doku?yt=d

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