Rifaat al-Assad

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Rifaat Ali Suleiman al-Assad (Arabic: رِفْعَتُ عَلِيِّ ٱلْأَسَدِ, romanized: Rifʿat al-ʾAsad; 22 August 1937 – 20 January 2026) was a Syrian military officer and politician. He was the younger brother of Hafez al-Assad and the uncle of Bashar al-Assad, who served successively as President of Syria. He is most famous for being the commanding officer of the ground operations of the 1982 Hama massacre. After launching a failed coup attempt against Hafez al-Assad in 1984, Rifaat lived in exile in Europe for 36 years and returned to Syria in October 2021 after being found guilty in France of acquiring millions of euros diverted from the Syrian state. In September 2022, France's highest court, the Cour de Cassation, confirmed the ruling. In August 2023, Switzerland issued an international warrant for Rifaat's arrest after its Federal Criminal Court demanded his extradition to prosecute him for his role in supervising ground operations of the 1982 Hama massacre. The warrant was issued as part...

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