A six-storey townhouse in Mayfair belonging to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s uncle is still in use despite being frozen by the Government seven years ago.
The building, on a corner close to London‘s Park Lane, was bought for a reported £4million by Rifaat al-Assad, the so-called ‘Butcher of Hama’ in 2008, and is now worth at least £27million.
The property was thought to have been empty for some time after Rifaat returned to Syria – but a MailOnline reporter this week witnessed a woman stepping out its front door to collect a takeaway.
The woman, who appeared to be staying in the property, denied being related to the Assads but declined to answer any more of our questions.
Alleged war criminal Rifaat had told a French court he lived in the house for a time, as did one of his four wives and one of his sons, Siwar, all while his nephew oversaw a murderous regime and a brutal civil war that killed hundreds of thousands.
But he fled the house, and Europe, after the court found that the Mayfair house, along with scores of other properties, had been purchased with looted Syrian state funds.
Records show that the property was frozen in 2017 by the Crown Prosecution Service, pending proceeds of crime proceedings to sell it off, while a further edict preventing its transfer to another owner was put in place in 2023.
This is the six-storey townhouse still owned by the uncle of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in the heart of London’s Mayfair
Rifaat Al-Assad (left) is the brother of the late Syrian president Hafez Al-Assad. Hafez’s son, Bashar Al-Assad (right), succeeded Hafez from 2000 until 2024
There are security bars across the windows on the ground and first floors of the property, said to be worth at least £27million
MailOnline visited the property on Tuesday – finding its windows barred, its entrances well covered by security cameras, and its condition decaying.
Outdoor lights and brickwork in its lower bulkhead were covered with moss, while the white paint of the window sills was flaking and an upper window was boarded up.
The exterior is flanked with multiple CCTV cameras, security sensors and two entrances for the ground and basement floors, each of which was fitted with a video intercom.
However, some of the windows were open and a chandelier was lit up in a first-floor room.
When a MailOnline reporter rang the bell, there was no answer. But they later witnessed an UberEats delivery driver dropping off two bags of food to the mansion.
A woman, dressed in a grey sweatshirt and dark jeans, walked out from the property to collect the food which was delivered from a nearby Lebanese restaurant called Noura Mayfair.
When MailOnline asked the woman if she was related to the Assad family she replied ‘No.’
The young woman, who had dark black hair and a foreign accent, refused to comment further on who she was and what she was doing in the mansion.
She gave the UberEats cyclist her delivery code and walked back inside the mansion, closing the large black doors.
MailOnline witnessed a woman come out from the property to collect a takeaway order from an UberEats rider. She declined to answer questions
This image shows a property on the same street in Mayfair as the home owned by Rifaat Al-Asaad. Other homes in the area are likely to be just as opulent
This image shows a property on the same street in Mayfair as the home owned by Rifaat Al-Asaad. Other homes in the area are likely to be just as opulent
A chandelier inside the property was illuminated – visible behind the security bars across the windows
The property, worth at least £27million, is covered in security cameras covering every conceivable angle
A security light hanging from the poorly maintained basement bulkhead (left) – but the house is protected by security cameras across the entrances
Rifaat Al-Assad’s neighbours are made up of formal and private residences, many of which are filled with housekeepers but no residents.
But one couple that lives nearby told MailOnline: ‘They need to take the Assad family down.
‘A dictator family should not have a property like this in the UK.’
The resident, who had not seen signs of movement at the house, added that ‘it is not nice for people to be living near an Assad home’.
A Mayfair worker employed near the house said they had seen a family enter the house but not since the Assad regime fell.
‘A family used to come here around a year ago and there were also takeaways dropped off,’ he said.
A builder working at the property opposite said he had not seen any activity in recent days either.
A man employed at one of the neighbouring mansions for the last four years said he sometimes used to see maids and staff entering the basement entrance.
While a staff member who works in another mansion on the street said: ‘I work here but if I lived next to that family I would not be happy at all.’
Rifaat was found guilty of money laundering in a French court in 2020, and the conviction was upheld on appeal in 2021.
Rifaat Al-Assad founded the Arab News Network in London in 1997 (pictured in a screengrab on the channel in 2000)
Some windows at the Assad-owned property were open today despite its owner fleeing Britain years ago
The doors were flanked with two video intercoms – joining security lights and CCTV cameras in turning the townhouse into a six-storey fortress
The basement bulkhead is tiled in black marble, with Assad having carried out the works before seeking permission for them from the council
Satellite dishes and security cameras on the roof of the property, where paintwork is flaking away
Rifaat Al-Assad (left) pictured with his older brother, and one-time Syria president, Hafez (right)
Rifaat also owned properties in France, including one on Paris’ opulent Avenue Foch (pictured)
The court found he had amassed an €800million (£660m) property empire across France, the UK and Spain, laundering money he had embezzled from Syria through bank accounts connected to 12 financial institutions.
Rifaat had protested his innocence, claiming the money for his investments had come from other successful financial ventures, all while speaking against Bashar al-Assad.
‘Even if it takes time and is difficult, I am going to work to topple the regime and give power to the people,’ he told AP in January 2011 from his decadent home on Paris’ Avenue Foch, which he later sold for a reported £60million.
But he never did – instead using Syria’s building a huge property portfolio later found to have been funded by the money reputedly given to him by his brother Hafez, who took power following a 1970 coup.
Rifaat played a key role in Hafez’s takeover of Syria and went on to command the paramilitary Defence Forces.
He earned the moniker of the ‘Butcher of Hama’ after ordering a biblical shelling of the city in 1982, killing tens of thousands of people in a bid to quell a Muslim Brotherhood uprising.
But after a failed coup against his brother – whose son and successor Bashar has just fled to Russia after his government crumbled – Rifaat left Syria in 1984, reportedly with $300million under his belt.
He moved around Spain, Switzerland and France, before founding the Arab News Network in London. He bought the Mayfair property in 2008, according to property records, and went about renovating it.
Apparently unconcerned about revealing himself, Assad put his own name to a planning application for works already carried out, including tiling the basement exterior with black marble.
But a subsequent application to keep a security gate he had installed without planning permission was made anonymously, on the grounds that he was of ‘high diplomatic and very sensitive status’.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians have died over the course of Syria’s 13-year civil war (file photo of rescue workers in Aleppo in 2019)
A child receives oxygen after a suspected toxic gas attack in Khan Sheikhun, Idlib, north-west Syria, in 2017
Bashar al-Assad and his wife Asma pose during a visit to the Great Wall of China at Badaling on June 22, 2004
Syrian First Lady Asma al-Assad’s parents, London-based doctor Fawaz Akhras and former diplomat Sahar Akhras, in Syria in 2012
The house of the Akhras family in West London where Asma Akhras grew up
The Assads, planning agents said, had ‘encountered couple (sic) of scary moments while trying to enter their property’.
‘To say the least the neighbours made their feeling known towards their existence,’ the application added – without alluding to why those living next door might feel a degree of discomfort about living next to an alleged perpetrator of war crimes.
The bid was initially refused by Westminster City Council – but overturned on appeal. A later bid to add an extra storey to the roof, submitted anonymously on the Assads’ behalf by Savills, was later turned down.
Historical images of show the palatial home adorned with bushy geranium shrubs that bloomed bright red petals in the summer.
But sometime between July 2019 and November 2020, the shrubs disappeared altogether. Rifaat was convicted of money laundering in the first instance in June 2020, before the verdict was confirmed following an appeal in September 2021.
He wa sentenced to four years in prison he will likely never serve – and turned tail and returned to Damascus for good after 36 years.
Earlier this year, Swiss prosecutors opened a war crimes trial against Rifaat in connection with the 1982 Hama massacre, charging him with ‘ordering homicides, acts of torture, cruel treatments and illegal detentions’.
An international arrest warrant had been issued last year. Even if tried in absentia, he is unlikely to serve any time in prison in Switzerland – and his current whereabouts following the fall of his nephew’s government are unknown.
The hunt for assets belonging to the oppressive regime is underway following the fall of Damascus at the weekend.
The Al-Assads reportedly bought hotels in London and, at one time, was the owner of Witanhurst, the Grade II* listed Georgian Revival mansion in Highgate.
It had been purchased in 1985 by Mounir Developments, the true beneficiary of which was a member of the Assad family.
Syrians gathered in Trafalgar Square on Sunday after Bashar Al-Assad’s tyrannical government fell
Further rallies took place in Piccadilly Circus on Monday night after it emerged Assad had fled the country for Moscow
Bashar Al-Assad is closely affiliated with Vladimir Putin. He and his family have been given asylum in Russia after fleeing Syria
The foreign correspondent Marie Colvin, who died covering the Syrian civil war alongside French photographer Remi Ochlik in 2012. A court later ruled the Syrian government was liable for her death
Before it was sold off in 2007 for £32million, the BBC spent £1.5million renovating the house to serve as the base for short-lived singing show Fame Academy.
Political ally Soulieman Marouf, who was once sanctioned by the EU due to his ties with the Assad family, was revealed via the Panama Papers leak to have owned at least six luxury flats in London worth nearly £6million.
Marouf is said to have carried out shopping errands for British-born Asma Al-Assad, the former Syrian first lady, taking orders for luxury goods and vases from Harrods.
Asma, an investment banker born to Syrian parents, had sent emails about Christian Louboutin shoes as Syrian citizens and foreign journalists – including war correspondent Marie Colvin – were slaughtered in Homs in early 2012.
Her parents, cardiologist Fawaz and diplomat Sahar Akhras, have lived in a nondescript terraced house in Acton, west London for years after buying it for £650,000 in 2012, records show.
The Akhras reportedly travelled from their £1m home in Acton to Moscow to be by their daughter’s side as the regime collapsed.
Neighbours told MailOnline this week they had left almost two weeks ago as it became apparent the Syrian regime was about to be toppled by rebels.
Mohamed Ekrayem, who owns Abu Zaad, which boasts of being London’s oldest Syrian restaurant, recalled the Akhras being amicable – until their daughter married into opulence and the endorsement of her husband’s barbarous regime.
‘Our family friends were neighbours and he’d speak with them every day when he took his daughter to school. But after she married he stopped,’ he recalled of Fawaz, who remains a registered doctor in the UK despite being sanctioned by the US government.
‘You couldn’t speak with him because he was like ‘My daughter is married to Bashar Al Assad’. He stopped speaking to anyone because he was stuck up.
‘They have no friends here now and don’t live here. They keep their home in Acton but have been living in Syria.’
One local in Acton, named Abdel, glibly noted of the Akhras: ‘They’re probably with their daughter comforting her and helping to spend all the money they’ve stolen from the Syrian people.’
The Kremlin has confirmed that Al Assad, Asma and their three children were given asylum on the direct orders of Vladimir Putin after fleeing Syria.
Moscow disclosed no further details, with presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov telling reporters: ‘We have nothing to say about Assad’s whereabouts.’
The Syrian dictator’s extended family bought up at least 20 Moscow apartments worth more than £30million in recent years, illustrating Russia’s status as a safe haven for the clan.
And videos of the presidential palace in Damascus have shown how money meant for the Syrian people was splurged on rare sports cars, including a Ferrari F50 worth around £3.5million.
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