Who is Asma Assad, the London-born wife of Syria's deposed dictator?

Bashar al-Assad has been overthrown after 13 years of brutal civil conflict in Syria, bringing to an end more than 50 years of Assad family rule.

The exact whereabouts of the deposed dictator's wife – London-born Asma al-Assad – is currently unknown, but Bashar al-Assad did confirm that he had fled to Russia, and his family are believed to be with him.

In his first statement since he fled the country, Bashar al-Assad said he "never sought positions for personal gain" and thought of himself as "a custodian of a national project, supported by the faith of the Syrian people". He made no mention of his wife or family.

Asma has been repeatedly accused of attempting to sanitise the regime's violence and has found herself caught up in multiple controversies, both inside and outside of the violence in Syria.

This led to calls from the Liberal Democrats in 2017 for her to be stripped of her British citizenship, although prime minister Keir Starmer has said that it is too early in a fast-moving situation to revisit that issue.

Asma, known as Emma

Asma was born in the UK and raised in Acton, west London. She is the daughter of Sahar Akhras, a retired diplomat who served as first secretary at the Syrian Embassy in London, and Fawaz Akhras, a cardiologist.

While her parents were considered to be culturally conservative, they were eager for Asma to integrate and she was known as Emma at her local Church of England primary school.

Many recall her having very little interest in the Middle East growing up. "She was very English and seemed to want to have nothing to do with Syria," a family friend told the Economist in 2021.

After graduating from King's College London with a first-class honours degree in computer science, she joined banking firm JP Morgan.

Her mother was said to be very keen that she establish a relationship with Bashar, who was then second in line to succeed his father, Hafez. The pair met a few times in the 1990s when Bashar was studying to be an ophthalmologist in London.

Shortly after Bashar was appointed president in a sham election in 2000 following Hafez's death, Asma disappeared for three weeks without notice. When she returned to work, she said she had met a dashing Syrian, resigned and gave up her place at Harvard Business School.

When pressed on whether she was making the right decision, she reportedly responded: "Who would choose Harvard over love?"

'A rose in the desert'

Asma spent her early years of marriage seemingly trying to soften the family's image, according to the Economist.

This PR drive continued despite the outbreak of pro-democracy protests in January 2011 – which sparked a brutal crackdown by the Assad regime on demonstrators – and came to a head when US PR company Brown Lloyd James arranged a cover story in Vogue in March that year.

A cover story titled "A rose in the desert” described her determination to make Syria into a "brand". The glowing article also praised the Assads as "wildly democratic", dubbing Syria "the safest country in the Middle East".

The piece sparked widespread condemnation, with the edition carrying the story eventually removed from circulation and deleted from Vogue's website.

The 'Imelda Marcos' of Syria

As the situation in Syria deteriorated, Asma released a rare public statement in 2012, telling the Times newspaper of her "very busy agenda" that was "focused on supporting the various charities she has long been involved".

It went on to state that she was "equally involved in bridging gaps and encouraging dialogue".

However, a cache of 3,000 emails released by activists in Syria in March 2012 detailed a very different picture. According to The Guardian, the secret emails revealed that Asma continued to shop online for luxury goods from Chelsea boutiques and jewellery shops in Paris even after the uprising was in full swing. At this point, at least 8,000 people had died in the conflict.

Her apparent voracious shopping habit reportedly led Syrian diplomats to dub her Imelda Marcos, after dictator Ferdinand Marcos's wife, who was addicted to shoes.

Later that month, EU foreign ministers imposed a travel ban and asset freeze on Asma.

In April 2012, the wives of the German and UK ambassadors to the UK (Sheila Lyall Grant and Huberta von Voss Wittig) appealed to the dictator's wife to take action, urging her that her "public voice was needed".

At the point of the video's release, Asma stood beside her husband throughout a 13-month conflict, with 9,000 people declared dead.

By then, it was clear that any attempts to burnish the family reputation in the West had fallen flat.

Rejected offer of refuge

In 2016, Asma told the press she had rejected a deal to offer her safe passage out of Syria in order to stay by her husband's side.

Speaking to Russian state TV channel Rossiya 24, she accused Western media organisations of "choosing to solely focus on the plight of refugees in rebel-held areas".

"I've been here since the beginning and I never thought of being anywhere else at all. Yes, I was offered the opportunity to leave Syria or rather to run from Syria. These offers included guarantees of safety and protection for my children and even financial security," she said.

"It doesn't take a genius to know what these people were really after. It was a deliberate attempt to shatter people's confidence in their president."

At that point, as many as 400,000 people were said to have died in the country's violence.

Cancer diagnosis

In May this year, the Syrian regime announced in a statement that Asma had been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia, an aggressive form of bone marrow and blood cancer.

While some questioned whether she would be able to receive treatment in Syria, officials said she would "adhere to a specialised treatment protocol that includes stringent infection prevention measures" and "will temporarily withdraw from all direct engagements".

It was the second time the Syrian first lady was diagnosed with cancer. In 2019, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She fully recovered after receiving chemotherapy for a malignant tumour a year later.

'Not welcome in the UK'

Asma has been the subject of three referrals to the Met Police’s war crimes team – in July 2020, January 2021 and December 2021 – which led to the Met opening a preliminary investigation into allegations she had incited and encouraged terrorist acts during the war.

If she had been charged, the Met could have sought her extradition or sought to have her stripped of her British citizenship. The Met has confirmed to Yahoo News on Tuesday there were "insufficient grounds to launch an investigation".

Nonetheless, the government has made it clear she is "not welcome" in the UK.

Foreign secretary David Lammy said on Monday: “I’ve seen mentioned in the last few days, Asma Assad potentially someone with UK citizenship that might attempt to come into our country, and I want it confirmed that she’s a sanctioned individual and is not welcome here in the UK.”

Starmer said in the wake of the Assag regime's overthrow that it was too early to say whether the government would strip Asma of her British citizenship.

"We are far too early in any decisions about anything," Starmer said. “At the moment we are hours, days into a fast-moving situation and that’s why it’s very important for us to continue to talk to our allies, including here in discussions I’ve been having today, to make sure that what happens next is peaceful.

“There’s a lot of moving parts in that, a lot of risks, I absolutely accept, and challenges, but they are going to be best met if we work with our allies towards that peaceful resolution and the rejection, the utter rejection, of terrorism and violence.”