As Syrian troops were brutally crushing any opposition to the ruling regime last November, the wife of the country’s president had few cares. Asma al-Assad wrote to a friend: “We just got back from an Eid break to the north of Syria, completely spontaneous but extremely useful and well-timed.
“Kids are well, they enjoyed it too, especially after their mid-term exams ... Otherwise I am busy in the real world and looking forward to meeting my new nephew soon who is already five weeks old!”
The real world for many other Syrians was very different. Thousands of protesters against her husband, Bashar al-Assad, were being tortured; many were being killed.
Amid the horrors and violence, the Assads carried on as normal, joking, flirting and shopping.
Last summer, Asma was indulging in some luxury retail therapy. At a contemporary furniture supplier in Billingshurst, West Sussex, an email arrived from a client calling herself Alia Kayali, inquiring about the price of several bespoke items that had caught her eye on the company’s website.
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Tony Carpenter, who runs the store, recalled her “pleasant and unassuming” manner.
“She called a couple of times and the rest of the time contact was by email,” he said. “It was a simple, normal transaction as we do every day.” It now appears that “Kayali” was in fact Asma, the British-born wife of the Syrian dictator, though Carpenter had no idea of her true identity.
Then, on August 16, when 12 people were killed in and around the Syrian city of Homs, “Kayali” went on to buy a Baxter Gilbert marble-topped table costing £6,257 (€7,520); a Terzani suspension light for £2,475; and a Reflex Avantgarde cabinet for £5,067.
Carpenter admits the order was much bigger than previously thought. “She paid the bill very promptly,” he added.
The deaths in Homs were not the only ones at the time. Assad’s security forces were also bombarding the port of Latakia, killing many more.
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The onslaught against the year-long rebellion has now cost more than 8,000 lives, according to the United Nations, with news of fresh atrocities emerging almost daily.
How has the president felt during the carnage? Judging by a cache of his and his inner circle’s emails, obtained by opposition activists and passed to Al Arabiya, a television channel in Dubai, Assad has not been unduly worried. Emails, apparently from his personal account, reveal him downloading country and western music from iTunes, exchanging dirty jokes with his father-in-law, and flirting with young female advisers and friends. One attractive young aide on a trip to America cooed to Assad: “I miss you. I am meeting Piers Morgan tomorrow. I can’t wait to tell you about my meetings. I feel appreciated here!”
On another occasion she wrote to a colleague going to meet the president: “Tell him also that I love him so so so much and that I miss him.” One female correspondent wrote to Assad: “I can’t see a life without you.”
Another sent him a photograph, apparently of herself, semi-naked in a thong.
The emails also shed new light on attempts by the Syrian leadership to keep tabs on western media, the influence of Iran and the regime’s links to Britain.
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This weekend Assad’s crackdown continues, refugees still stream across the border and yesterday bombs killed at least 27 in Damascus. Yet there is no sign of Assad yielding ground to the protesters.
One email, from Mayassa Al-Thani, the daughter of the emir of Qatar, summed up the feeling of many outside Syria. She wrote to her friend Asma: “I hope it’s not too late for reflection and coming out of a state of denial.”
ASMA AKHRAS, the daughter of a Harley Street cardiologist and a Syrian diplomat, grew up in Acton, west London, and was known to her private-school friends as Emma. After graduating in computer science and French literature from King’s College London, she went to work in the City.
It was during her banking career that she started dating Assad, who had studied ophthalmology in London and who was being groomed to succeed his authoritarian father, Hafez, as Syria’s next ruler.
On becoming first lady in 2000, Asma, 36, was feted by the West as a potential moderniser. Even last February US Vogue, which interviewed her as part of a carefully choreographed PR campaign, was calling Asma “a rose in the desert”.
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However, emails apparently obtained from a private account by activist hackers, suggest a woman prone to lavish shopping sprees and making flippant remarks while opponents were being crushed across Syria.
Last July, using an email address with the initials of a close aide, she asked a cousin in Paris to acquire four gold and diamond-encrusted necklaces on her behalf. “As you can see, I’m absolutely clueless when it comes to fine jewelry [sic]!” she wrote. “Kisses to you both, and don’t worry, we are well!”
Around the same time, Asma placed an order for £29,200 worth of candlesticks and chandeliers from Paris, requesting that the goods be sent to an address in Dubai.
An email sent on February 3 — the same day that Assad’s troops started their shelling of Homs — was entitled: “Christian Louboutin shoes coming shortly.” Asma wrote to a friend: “Does anything catch your eye — these pieces are not made for general public.” One pair, with crystal heels, cost £3,795.
On January 18 Asma forwarded a joke email to an unidentified friend with the sarcastic message: “A really bright Homsi student!”
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The subject heading read: “Student who obtained 0% on an exam.” It features a mock test paper with questions such as: “In which battle did Napoleon die?” Answer: “His last battle.”
Within weeks the Baba Amr district of Homs was being shelled relentlessly, killing men, women and children.
The emails also appear to show Asma’s unswerving loyalty to her husband. On December 28 she wrote: “If we are strong together, we will overcome this together ... I love you.” She sent a more practical message to her husband two days later, forwarding internet links for armoured clothing, including a “Bulletblocker barn coat”.
On July 6 last year she wrote: “Will be finished at 5pm. love u.” Assad, 46, using the email address sam@alshahba.com, replied: “This is the best reform any country can have that u told me where will you be (sic), we are going to adopt it instead of the rubbish laws of parties, elections, media . . .”
The response makes a mockery of the president’s claims last year that he would introduce reforms to defuse the crisis.
Andrew Tabler, a fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who has interviewed Asma, said: “It’s hard not to like her — she’s a very affable person. The trouble is that she married Bashar and he is leader of this terrible corrupt system that has hijacked her.”
The emails provide further evidence that the Assads cannot claim to be above the regime’s violence and torture. On December 31, Asma received an email headed “favour” from a Sarah Akhras, possibly a relative.
It read: “Hi A, sorry to be bothering you with this. A friend, Ahmad Safi, was picked up in Kafar Sousseh [a neighbourhood in Damascus] yesterday at 3pm. Apparently he was just with a group of his friends and was not doing anything. Family are obviously worried about his safety ... could you please check the status of his arrest.”
Within hours the first lady had forwarded the plea, which included 21-year-old Safi’s passport details, to her husband. The man was released a few days later.
Yesterday questions were being asked about the president’s relationship with two female public relations aides, Hadeel al-Ali, and Sheherazad Jaafari, the daughter of Syria’s ambassador to the UN.
Both women, who are in their 20s, sent messages to Assad in which they told him: “I miss you.” Jaafari signed off another message to Assad by writing: “Thank you so much. MISS U.”
On December 11 last year — when troops opened fire on funeral processions in Syria, killing at least a dozen mourners — Assad received a photo in his inbox of a near-naked woman striking a provocative pose. It was apparently sent by a female admirer.
Another woman, Rasha Mouakeh, who appears to be a Syrian jewellery designer, sent the president the following message last June: “I can’t see a life without you, please be careful and please don’t leave.”
Part of the work of the young PR advisers was to report on and manipulate media coverage of Syria.
On January 12, Jaafari, who appears to use an email account with the name Sherry Hunter, told Assad she was meeting the editor-in-chief of the New York Times to discuss a front page story on Syria.
She apparently masked the exact nature of her role. “I am representing myself as a freelancer [sic] public relations and international communications member who is in touch with the office of the Pres,” she wrote to Assad.
The depiction and coverage of the regime in the western media is a recurring theme throughout the emails.
On November 27 last year, Ali forwarded a message to Assad which stated that Paul Wood, the BBC reporter, had been “smuggled” into Homs.Assad’s father-in-law, Fawaz Akhras, who lives in Acton, drew attention to the fact that Stuart Ramsay, chief correspondent of Sky News, had “entered Syria illegally” in December.
Both Ramsay and Wood filed reports from a makeshift media centre in Baba Amr which later came under direct attack from the Syrian army on February 22, killing Marie Colvin, the Sunday Times correspondent, and Rémi Ochlik, a French photographer.
Two other journalists, including Paul Conroy, a Sunday Times photographer, were injured.
Akhras, who has refused to speak in public for much of the past year, has in fact been advising his son-in-law and daughter, Asma, on a regular basis via email.
In a strategy note he sent the couple on December 10, Akhras, 66, accused the BBC of operating a “facts distortion policy”.
A few days later, he suggested that a Channel 4 film showing evidence of civilians, including children, being tortured could be dismissed as “British propaganda”.
Another email to Assad includes a joke about the relative penis sizes of President Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli leader.
Last week Akhras, who works at the Cromwell hospital in Kensington as well as at his Harley Street practice, broke his silence over his son-in-law’s crackdown by trying to compare the murderous repression of the Syrian uprising and the London riots.
“When the London riots burst out and Mr Cameron [the British prime minister] said he would get the army out, now would you compare that to Homs?” he said.
“What would you do? Just watch them killing you? You have a responsibility to ensure the security of your people.”
Akhras’s interventions will embarrass establishment figures. He is co-chairman of the British Syrian Society, intended to foster better relations between the two nations. Among its directors is Sir Andrew Green, a former British ambassador to Damascus. Lord Powell, a former adviser to Baroness Thatcher, is a trustee of the Syria Heritage Foundation, a British charity set up by Akhras.
In June, Akhras indicated to his daughter that the British Syrian Society was in trouble when he forwarded her an email from Wafic Said, the billionaire Tory donor and a director of the society. Said had written: “The current situation in Syria is simply unacceptable and the continuing killings and violence are indefensible ... Our position has become untenable and unfortunately our society will be dormant for a long period.”
THE Akhras family is just one part of the Syrian leadership’s network in London. Described by opponents as a “fifth column”, it is now coming under closer scrutiny from the British government.
A key figure is Soulieman Marouf, 39, who is the sole director of the UK arm of Al-Shahba, a Syrian conglomerate with close links to Assad’s regime. One of Al-Shahba’s main investment partners is Cham Holdings, a company controlled by Rami Makhlouf, the president’s cousin and Syria’s richest businessman.
The UK director of Al-Shahba, Marouf, is said to own eight British properties, including a £1m flat in St John’s Wood, north London. Last Thursday a woman who answered the flat’s intercom claimed she did not know the family.
Marouf also owns a stake in a Syrian TV station that is accused of inciting violence against civilians; he may now be investigated by officials enforcing EU sanctions against the Assad regime. “He is on our radar,” said a government source.
War crimes investigators from the Foreign Office have also started collecting evidence of atrocities in Syria in an effort to achieve “a day of reckoning” for Assad in a criminal court. One line of inquiry is whether Colvin and other western journalists were deliberately targeted by the Syrian army.
This weekend it emerged that the team’s chief investigator is a former police officer who helped to bring Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serbian leader, to trial at The Hague. The investigator has begun interviewing Conroy, the wounded Sunday Times photographer.
Meanwhile, Assad continues to crush all dissent and his wife appears steadfast. Recently, her friend Mayassa Al-Thani, of the Qatari royal family, wrote to Asma, suggesting she flee Syria.
In a separate email she wrote: “As you know, being in positions of affluence [sic] means that you are often told what you want to hear, and therefore voices of reason are rare and should not be undervalued.”
How did Asma respond to these diplomatic concerns? She forwarded the email to her husband, adding the note: “For a laugh . . .”
Additional reporting: Hugh Macleod and Annasofie Flamand, Beirut, Sara Hashash, Cairo, and Miles Goslett.