Rifaat al-Assad, the uncle of deposed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and a figure notorious for his role in the 1982 Hama massacre, has died at the age of 88, according to two sources close to the family.
A source who worked in Syria’s presidential palace for over three decades told AFP on Wednesday that Rifaat died after suffering from influenza for around a week. A second source, a former Syrian army officer from the Assad era, confirmed the death and said Rifaat had moved to the United Arab Emirates after his nephew’s government was toppled by rebels in December 2024, though it was not specified whether he died there.
Rifaat commanded the elite Defence Brigades during the February 1982 crackdown on an armed Islamist revolt in the city of Hama, ordered by his brother, then-president Hafez al-Assad. The 27-day campaign, conducted under a media blackout, left a death toll that has never been formally established, with estimates ranging from 10,000 to 40,000. It earned him the nickname “the Butcher of Hama”.
Swiss prosecutors had accused Rifaat of ordering “murders, acts of torture, inhumane treatment and illegal detentions” during his time as a Syrian army officer. He also served as vice-president under Hafez but went into exile in 1984 after a failed attempt to overthrow his brother, living in Switzerland and then France. He later presented himself as an opponent of his nephew Bashar, who succeeded Hafez in 2000.
In 2021, Rifaat returned to Syria from France to serve a four-year prison sentence for money laundering and misappropriation of Syrian public funds, though two years later he appeared in a family photograph alongside Bashar and other relatives. After Bashar’s ousting, Rifaat crossed into Lebanon and flew out of Beirut airport, a Lebanese security source said at the time, without specifying his final destination.
