Asma al-Assad didn’t search divorce from Bashar al-Assad, Kremlin says

The British-born spouse of deposed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad isn’t looking for a divorce, a Kremlin spokesperson has stated.

Experiences in Turkish media recommended Asma al-Assad wished to finish her marriage and go away Russia, the place she and her husband have been granted asylum after a insurgent coalition toppled the previous president’s regime and took management of Damascus.

Requested about these reviews at a press convention, Dmitri Peskov replied: “No, they don’t correspond to actuality.”

He additionally denied reviews that Assad had been confined to Moscow and that his actual property had been frozen.

Russia was a staunch ally of the Assad regime and supplied it army assist through the civil struggle.

However reviews in Turkish media on Sunday recommended the Assads have been residing below extreme restrictions within the Russian capital and that the previous Syrian first woman had filed for divorce and wished to return to London.

Ms Assad has twin Syrian-British citizenship, however the British International Secretary beforehand stated she wouldn’t be allowed to return to Britain.

Talking in Parliament earlier this month, David Lammy stated: “I need it confirmed that she is a sanctioned particular person and he or she isn’t welcome right here within the UK.”

He added that he would do “every part in my energy” to make sure that no member of the Assad household “finds a spot within the UK”.

In an announcement attributed to Bashar al-Assad final week, he stated he by no means meant to flee Syria, however that he flown from a Russian military base at Moscow’s request.

Asma al-Assad, 49, was born within the UK to Syrian dad and mom in 1975 and grew up in Acton, west London.

She moved to Syria in 2000, on the age of 25, and married her husband simply months after he succeeded her father as president.

All through her 24 years as Syria’s first woman, Ms. Assad has attracted the curiosity of Western media.

A controversial 2011 Vogue profile referred to as her “a rose within the desert” and described her as “the freshest and most magnetic of first women.” The article has since been faraway from the Vogue web site.

Only a month later, Ms Assad was criticized for remaining silent as her husband violently cracked down on pro-democracy activists firstly of the Syrian civil struggle.

The battle has price round half 1,000,000 lives, together with her husband accused of utilizing chemical weapons towards civilians.

In 2016, Ms. Assad instructed state-backed Russian tv that she had rejected a deal providing her secure passage out of the war-torn nation. to stay by her husband’s side.

She introduced that she was treated for breast cancer in 2018 and stated she made a full restoration a yr later.

She was recognized with leukemia and commenced remedy for the illness in Might this yr, then-President Assad’s workplace stated.

A press release stated she’s going to “briefly step again” from public engagements.