Opposition predicts Bashar al Assad, family face gruesome fate
Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and his wife, Asma, walk in Paris during an official visit to France in 2010. A member of the Syrian National Council has said al-Assad will be “killed like Gaddafi.”
A leading member of the Syrian opposition told a newspaper the country’s president, wife and three children will die a “bloody” death.
Haitham Maleh said his Syrian National Council offered Bashar al Assad a peaceful exit from the country, but in light of the violence there, that can’t happen anymore, The Telegraph reported.
Maleh said Assad will suffer a similar fate as Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who was dragged from a drainage ditch and reportedly sodomized by a knife before being killed.
“Assad and his family will be killed in Syria, their next steps will be very bloody," Maleh told the newspaper on Monday. “Two months ago we offered him the option to leave us alone and go, but instead he went for the blood of his people. The end for him will be that he is killed like Gaddafi.”
More from GlobalPost: The death of Gaddafi
According to The Daily Mail, the Assad family has attempted to flee the country only to run into opposition forces and military defectors.
Assad's wife, 36-year-old Asma, is a London-born former financial analyst with duel Syrian-English passports.
She studied computer science and French literature at King’s College before working at Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan; the family has three children, Hafez, Zein and Lareem.
Regions of Syria are embroiled in what some call a full-blown insurgency, the Guardian reported. More than 5,000 people have died since violence there began a year ago.
Russia, a member of the UN Security Council, may block UN efforts to force Assad to resign in the latest attempts to stop the killing.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague is to debate the proposal, which is in line with an Arab League effort, at the UN.
“This is not the west telling Syria what to do," Hague said, according to The Guardian. "It is not the permanent members of the UN security council imposing their view. This is the Arab world calling on the UN security council to help address the crisis in Syria and the threat which it poses to the stability of their region."
More from GlobalPost: Syria: UN calls for urgent action to prevent civil war
Maleh said it would not work, anyway. A former judge, he was imprisoned for the first time in 1951, then again from 1980 to 1987 for his civil rights work, according to the Haitham Maleh Foundation.
A military trial sentenced the 81-year-old Maleh to three years in prison in 2010, but he served only a few months behind bars.
A leading voice in Syrian calls for democracy, Maleh told the Telegraph there is no hope for the peace initiative.
“Talks will not happen,” he told The Telegraph. “How can we have dialogue with a criminal regime? We can't do it now. The game is over. How can we talk with a person who has put a pistol to our heads? It is impossible to make dialogue with this person.”
More from GlobalPost: UNICEF: 384 children killed in Syria
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