The Metropolitan Police launched a preliminary investigation into Asthma al Assad, Sky News understands.
The British wife of Syrian President Bashar al Assad is accused of supporting and encouraging terrorism. If charged, the Met could seek his extradition.
Guernica 37 International Justice Chambers accuses her of being one of several “influential actors” who encouraged and incited acts of terrorism and international crimes.
Bashar and Asma al Assad were married in 2000
The report states that the Syrian government is guilty of a systematic approach to torture and murder of civilians, including the use of chemical weapons.
The legal team told Sky News: “This is an important step in holding senior political officials accountable for their actions and ensuring that a state, through an independent and impartial legal process, takes responsibility for the actions of its own citizens.
“How [she] is a British citizen, it is important that she faces legal action if the evidence supports the claim and not just the one deprived of her citizenship. This is an important process and it is only fair that justice is done before an English court.
“We recognize that it would be politically convenient to simply withdraw citizenship from the First Lady. This will not serve the interests of the hundreds of thousands of civilian victims of the 10-year conflict.”
In a statement, the Metropolitan Police Service said: “We can confirm that the Met’s War Crimes Unit, part of the Counter-Terrorism Command, received a referral on July 31, 2020 related to the ongoing Syrian conflict. is in the process of being evaluated by officers from the War Crimes Unit. “
This month marks 10 years since the start of the war in Syria. It is estimated that 400,000 people have been killed and more than 6.5 million people have been displaced. The Syrian government has denied having committed war crimes and says it is who is fighting terrorism.
Asma al Assad, 45, was born and raised in West London. In the late 1990s, she worked as an investment banker for JPMorgan.
“She looked completely normal and didn’t stand out from anyone,” recalls former colleague Paul Gibbs. “I couldn’t tell where she was going.”
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At the same time, Asma met her future husband. After a trip to Libya as a guest of the then leader Muammar Gaddafi, she ended her career in London to marry Bashar.
“It was the same thing as going out as a guest of Colonel Gaddafi at that time, it was very radical. He was a bit like Assad – a dishonest leader – so it was a strange thing to go and do, and nobody could understand why you would give up a career promising investment bank to go and do that, “said Gibbs
But the evolution of Asthma was complex, says Ayman Abdelnour, a former friend and adviser to Bashar al Assad.
“You cannot compare the existing Asthma al Assad with the previous version which is Emma Akhras in London,” he said, referring to the name she used at school.
“In the beginning, she was not treated as part of the family,” he explained. “She is from Homs, she is Sunni and her Arabic was not good, so she was not allowed to speak to the media if she made mistakes. They didn’t even let her have the title of first lady.”
“But after 2013 she fully supported her husband. Her position corresponded to everything he did militarily: bombing, murder and torture.”
Abdelnour added that Asma has spent the past nine months courting the Alawite community in Syria, of which her husband is a part, but with which she traditionally shares icy relations. It is all part of his ambition, he says, to increase economic influence by having entered the marriage with little visibility.
An Asthma presidency? “It’s a Plan B,” he said.