Flash villas, cars and drugs: Assad's legacy in Latakia

A child in the empty swimming pool at the summer residence of Bashar al-Assad in Latakia.

Sat, 28 Dec 2024

By Anne Chaon, with photography by Ozan Kose The drive winds between manicured lavender-lined lawns to a crescent-shaped home with a gleaming swimming pool on the Syrian coast: Bashar al-Assad's holiday hideaway disgusts those who now come here. "To think that he spent all that money and we lived in misery," spat Mudar Ghanem, 26. He is grey-skinned and his eyes are sunken after spending 36 days in a Damascus jail, accused like other suspected dissidents of "terrorism" against the ousted president'...

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