Kremlin rejects claims exiled Syrian dictator Assad’s spouse is in search of a divorce in Moscow | EUROtoday

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The Kremlin has sought to dismiss reviews that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s spouse is in search of a divorce, after the couple had been pressured to flee to Russia.

As his brutal regime in Damascus fell this month with a shock takeover by insurgent forces, placing an finish to the Assad dynasty’s half-century grip on energy, the dictator escaped to Russia, which had been a key ally in serving to to uphold his rule throughout 13 years of bloody civil warfare.

Several media reviews have recommended that his British-born spouse Asma al-Assad has been in search of a divorce and desires to go away Moscow.

She is severely ailing with leukaemia, report The Telegraph, with the most cancers reappearing after a interval of remission.

The Assads haven’t commented on the reviews. But the Kremlin denied this week that Ms Assad was in search of to separate from her husband.

Asked in regards to the claims – which additionally recommended that Assad had been confined to Moscow and had his property belongings frozen – Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov insisted they didn’t “correspond to reality”.

Born within the UK in 1975 to folks initially from Syria, Ms Assad grew up in Acton and stop her job as an funding banker in 2000 to marry Assad, who himself skilled as an eye fixed physician within the London earlier than returning to Syria following the loss of life of his elder brother.

She had beforehand been handled for breast most cancers, and in 2019 introduced she was freed from the illness after a yr of therapy.

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Asked about reviews that Ms Assad could possibly be in search of to return to London, Downing Street indicated that she wouldn’t be welcome within the UK.

Pointing to remarks by overseas secretary David Lammy this month that Ms Assad “is a sanctioned individual and is not welcome here in the UK”, a No 10 spokesperson stated: “I think we have always said that we don’t comment on individuals in relation to this.

“But more broadly you will have seen that we have very tough sanctions in place against the Assad family and the former regime, which remain in place.”

The British sanctions already imposed on the Assads embody a journey ban and asset freeze.

The hypothesis comes as Syria reels in its newfound freedoms and from the horrors rising from the Assad regime’s brutal prisons, the place a whole bunch of 1000’s of individuals are feared to have been killed on account of torture and mistreatment.

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While the toppling of the Assad regime has been welcomed by Western nations as an finish to years of repression, considerations stay that sectarian violence may but once more turn out to be a problem within the nation.

Syria’s victorious Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), previously affiliated with al-Qaeda, has vowed that the nation can be for all folks, not simply Sunni Muslims, and that it’ll shield minorities, together with the Christian neighborhood.

Thousands of protesters took to the streets throughout Syria this week after overseas fighters burned down a Christmas tree within the centre of the nation, sparking considerations about sectarian violence.