Rifaat al-Assad

Rifaat al -Assad (Arabic رفعت الأسد, DMG Rif ʿ at al - Asad, born 1937 in Qardaha ) is the younger brother of longtime Syrian President Hafez al -Assad ( 1930-2000 ).

Rifaat has long been the "right hand", built up a militia and was for a time Minister of Defense, later Vice President of Syria. After the suppression of an uprising of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1982 he fell out with his brother. After an unsuccessful coup attempt, he went into exile, where he was a wealthy businessman. After Hafiz ' death in 2000, he criticized the succession of his son Bashar al -Assad as unconstitutional, since he himself hoped to be president.

Official reports of various human rights organizations occupy his personal responsibility for the massacre at the notorious prison camp of Tadmor " Palmyra " where he in the summer of 1980, after a failed assassination attempt on the president in Damascus, his special forces for the destruction of about 1,000 political prisoners Muslim background, in the detention center sent. A related criminal proceedings for crimes against humanity was delayed in Belgium long. His responsibility for the massacre of Hama from spring 1982, 150 km north of Damascus, where thousands of residents were killed or injured by indiscriminate shelling is also in use, was never known for rigid censorship in whole breadth of the world public. Under time - and eye witnesses, he is known as the " Butcher of Hama ".