The wife of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Asma Assad, who is battling leukaemia, is unable to return to the UK, where she was born, to continue her treatment there.
According to The Times, her British passport expired in 2020, presenting an obstacle to Asad’s return to London. It is unclear whether British authorities prevented her from renewing the document or whether she herself allowed it to expire. The woman also holds Syrian citizenship.
Sources in the British foreign ministry confirmed to the newspaper that the former first lady of Syria does not have a valid passport of the kingdom. In addition, the head of the department, Yvette Cooper, is not going to allow her to enter the United Kingdom because of Assad’s health problems, the interlocutors told the newspaper.
Asma Asad (maiden name Asma Fawaz al-Akhras) was born in London in 1975 in a family of emigrants from the Syrian city of Homs. Her father is a cardiologist (according to The Times, he quit the clinic in London where he worked to personally oversee his daughter’s treatment) and her mother is a diplomat. Asma graduated from King’s College London. She left for Syria in 2000, the same year her wedding to Bashar al-Assad took place.
In 2019, the former first lady was cured of breast cancer, but in May this year she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia. She was first treated in the UAE and then in Russia, according to The Times. The Financial Times reported that Asma al-Assad arrived in Moscow a few weeks before her husband arrived there after his ouster on December 8. Bashar al-Assad has been granted asylum in Russia.
Asma al-Assad’s parents and her children by the former Syrian president, 23-year-old Hafez, 21-year-old Zein and 19-year-old Karim, are also in the Russian capital.
On December 25, The Telegraph reported that doctors treating Assad estimated her chances of survival as 50/50. One of the newspaper’s sources stated that “Asma is dying.” According to the newspaper, the former president’s wife has been isolated to avoid transmitting infectious diseases to her.
