Asma Assad reportedly hopes to move back to her native Britain after filing for divorce from deposed Syrian President Bashar Assad – but Britain’s foreign affairs chief says she is persona non grata in the UK.
By World Israel News Staff
The former First Lady of Syria is divorcing her husband, the recently deposed president of the Arab republic, according to reports by Arab and Turkish media outlets.
Asma Assad, the 49-year-old British-born wife of Bashar Assad, has lived in Moscow with the couple’s three children for the past month, after anti-regime rebels made gains against loyalist forces in northern Syria.
President Assad joined his wife after fleeing Damascus as rebel forces seized control of the city on December 8th.
Born to Sunni Syrian expatriates living in London, Asma married Bashar, an Alawite Shi’ite, in 2000, shortly after he succeeded his father, Hafez Assad, as President of Syria.
Having retained her British citizenship, Mrs. Assad has filed for divorce and is seeking to return to the UK.
According to a report by The Jerusalem Post, Asma has submitted a request with a Russian court to allow her to take her children out of the country.
Currently, the Bashar family are living in Moscow as asylum-seekers, leaving their ability to travel – even within Russia – curtailed.
Russia has reportedly frozen Assad’s assets in the country, which are estimated at roughly $2 billion.
Other members of the Assad family have applied for asylum and are under house arrest in the interim.
Even if Asma receives permission to leave Moscow, however, it is unclear if Britain will allow her to return.
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said in an address to Parliament on December 10th, two days after the fall of the Assad regime, that the former Syrian First Lady “is not welcome here in the UK.”
A Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday denied reports that Asma had filed for divorce, and rejected reports that Moscow had frozen the family’s assets.
“They do not correspond to reality,” said Peskov.