DAMASCUS: Syrian authorities arrested Wassim Assad, a cousin of longtime ruler Bashar Assad, the interior ministry said Saturday, in one of the most high-profile arrests since the former president’s ouster.
Bashar Assad fled to Russia in December with only a handful of confidants, abandoning senior officials and security officers, some of whom have reportedly fled to neighboring countries or taken refuge in the coastal heartland of Assad’s Alawite minority.
An interior ministry statement said that intelligence services and other authorities managed to “lure the criminal Wassim Assad,” carrying out a “well-planned ambush that resulted in his successful arrest.”
He is “considered among the most prominent drug traffickers and people involved in a number of crimes during the period of the former regime,” the statement said, without elaborating on the other allegations against him.
While Wassim Assad did not hold high office, he is the first prominent figure from the Assad family to be arrested since Islamist-led forces toppled the government on December 8, ending five decades of one-family rule.
