Bashar al-Assad

September 11, 1965

Bashar Hafez al-Assad (born 1965) is a former Syrian politician, medical doctor, and military officer who served as president of Syria from 2000 until his overthrow in 2024 after the Syrian civil war. The son of Hafez al-Assad, who ruled Syria from 1970 to 2000, he presided over a personalist dictatorship that governed Syria as a totalitarian police state. In August 2026 he was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity by a Syrian court and sentenced to death in absentia.

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Biography

Bashar al-Assad trained as an eye doctor in Damascus and London. He became heir after the death of his elder brother Basil in 1994 and succeeded his father, Hafez al-Assad, as president of Syria in 2000.

Hopes of reform faded quickly. When protests broke out in 2011, his government met them with force, and the country slid into a long civil war. His forces were accused of mass detention, torture and the use of chemical weapons. With military support from Russia and Iran he regained much of the country.

In late 2024 a rapid rebel offensive led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham took Damascus, and on 8 December Assad fled to Russia, ending more than fifty years of his family's rule.