The London mother and father who modified perpetually when their daughter married into evil: Assad’s in-laws misplaced all their associates, turned ‘caught up’ and flaunted their wealth in Acton, say their neighbours

The father-in-law of Bashar Al Assad used to enjoy friendly chats with neighbours before he turned ‘arrogant’ and standoffish after his daughter married the Syrian dictator, MailOnline has been told.

Fawaz Akhras, a renowned cardiologist, and his wife Sahar Akhras, a retired diplomat, are the parents of Asma Al Assad, who married the deposed Syrian tyrant in 2000 when he was studying in London.

The couple live in a smart, modest home in North Acton, west London where they raised Asma before she went on to live a life of opulence as the Syrian First Lady while her husband waged a campaign of terror to suppress his political opponents.

MailOnline has spoken to neighbours, friends and business owners in the heavily Syrian part of London where Asma’s parents own a £1million home. 

Neighbours say the couple flew to Moscow 10 days ago, where their daughter, Al Assad and grandchildren are seeking asylum under Vladimir Putin.

Mohamed Ekrayem, who owns Abu Zaad, which boasts of being London’s oldest Syrian restaurant, recalled locals sharing friendly chats with Mr Akhras before he changed for the worse when his daughter married President Assad.

Speaking from its West Ealing branch just down the road from where Asma grew up, the businessman recalled locals sharing friendly chats with her father before he became ‘stuck up’ and flaunted his wealth.

‘Her father and mother used to come into my cousin’s shop, but that stopped after Asma married,’ he told MailOnline. ‘A lot of money came to her. Yesterday you saw all her clothes and Louis Vuitton handbags – she was very rich.

‘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.’

Describing the doctor’s arrogant attitude after his daughter wed the Syrian dictator, Mr Ekrayem continued: ‘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.’

Mr Ekrayem hoped Assad’s fall would make life better for ordinary Syrians, and predicted that if this happened many currently living in London would return home.

‘We’re very happy because he’s not a good man at all,’ he said. ‘We’re pleased that Al Jolani [the rebel leader] has taken Assad out but we don’t know exactly whether he’s a good man or not.

‘Speaking to my family and friends now in Syria the situation is good. But the prisons being emptied is not good because you have a lot of criminals who are now out on the streets. I’m afraid about that.

‘I think what will come is going to be better than Bashar but we won’t know until we get there.

‘If the situation improves a lot of people here will go back, because everyone wants to be in their country.’

Acton has a significant Syrian community. Many Syrian emigres were attracted by the Saudi-backed King Fahad Academy, which offered an Islamic education to children aged three to 18 before closing in 2023 after nearly four decades.

Local community leaders welcomed President Assad’s downfall but shared their fears that the new regime that replaces him could be even worse.

Archbishop Athanasius Toma Dawood, the most senior Syrian Orthodox cleric in Britain, spoke to MailOnline from the Syriac Orthodox Church, which was opened by Prince Charles in 2016.

‘It’s good that the regime is gone but I’m not excited because he don’t know the future,’ he said.

‘We know what happened in Iraq. Everyone was dancing and demolishing the statues but after that it was even worse.

‘That’s why we’re very concerned about what’s going on. I’ve spoken to the bishops in Aleppo, Homs and Damascus and they are saying it’s quite quiet but people are stealing from houses. That’s what happened in Iraq as well. ‘We are waiting for tomorrow to see what happens. If we’ve finished with dictator one are we going to see more?’

Archbishop Dawood, who is originally from Iraq, also spoke of his fears that Islamic fundamentalists could persecute members of Syria’s vulnerable Christian community.

‘The Christians are a small group – in Iraq they all emigrated because everyone hated them. We could see people flee in Syria too,’ he said.

‘We need Western governments to help protect Christians and other minorities. I’ve heard they’re removed Christmas decorations in Syria – that’s not a good sign.’

The cleric has previously come into contact with the Akhras at official events – and met Bashar too on a visit to Syria.

‘I know Asma’s father but haven’t seen him since the start of the war,’ he said. Maher Al-Nouri, the Syrian owner of Damas Gate grocery store, also welcomed Assad’s downfall but was similarly worried about what comes next.

‘We are very happy because we’ve had more than 50 years under a dictatorship and now we’re free of that regime,’ he told MailOnline.

‘But we don’t know what’s going to happen after. We hope things are going to be better with these new people in power. We want Syria to become a democracy.’

Mr Al-Nouri said Asma Assad’s parents used to be customers at his store.

‘I’ve not seen them for a long time. They used to be clients here before she got married to Bashar Al-Assad, but we’ve not seen them in the shop since then.

‘Asma came in here too when she was young too with her family.’

It comes after MailOnline revealed that Al Assad’s in-laws have fled the UK and are believed to be in Moscow. 

The owner of a Syrian supermarket in Acton, who knows Mr Akhras but did not wish to be named told MailOnline: ‘I saw him about ten days ago and he said he was going abroad for a while and that his wife was already out of the country.

‘He didn’t say where but there is a large Syrian community in Acton and the word is that he and his wife have gone to Moscow to console their daughter and son-in-law. 

‘It doesn’t surprise us because they are a close family and they’ve always supported their daughter.’

One neighbour, who has known the family for 30 years but did not want to reveal her name, said that the property had been empty for the past week and that Mr Akhras and his wife have likely flown to Russia to meet their daughter and her family.

She added: ‘The house is empty and we’ve heard that they are abroad. They are usually around but keep a low profile because there are a lot of Syrians living around here.’

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.

The west London suburb of Acton has one of the capital’s largest Syrian communities and many had gathered in a local coffee shop to discuss events in the country.

One man, Tariq, said: ‘We all know that Asma’s parents live in Acton, but we don’t bother them because it’s not their fault that their son in law was such a brutal tyrant. And we also don’t want to do anything illegal in this country.

‘We’ve heard that they have left the UK for now, partly for their own safety and because they want to be with their daughter.’

Meanwhile Abdel, who said that his father knows Mr Akhras, added: ‘He (Mr Akhras) and his wife are not in the UK. They’re probably with their daughter comforting her and helping to spend all the money they’ve stolen from the Syrian people.’

Mr and Mrs Akhras raised their daughter Asma in their terraced house, which is worth £1million today. 

Born in 1975, Asma enjoyed a gilded childhood before carving out a successful career in international banking.

On the face of it, she was destined for a glamorous career, having been raised by her hard-working Syrian parents.

As a child, she was enrolled at a prestigious public school, Queen’s College, Marylebone, where fees are almost £9,000 a term before graduating at King’s College London in 1996 with a degree in computer science and French literature. 

Not even Asma, who was known simply as ‘Emma’ by friends at school, could have imagined that she would go on to marry an authoritarian president who would rule over Syria with an iron fist. She was later branded the ‘First Lady of Hell’ herself.

It was during the 90s in London that she grew close to future President Bashar al Assad, who had moved to the capital in 1992 to train as an eye doctor. 

But two years later, his own ambitions to break into the medical profession in London were stalled as his elder brother died in a car crash and he was suddenly propelled to being the heir apparent for his father Hafez, who had ruled over Syria since 1971.

The London student, more interested in technology and medicine, was called back home. 

And after fast-track military training, rising from captain to colonel in three years, Bashar was ready to succeed his father. 

When Hafez died in June 2000, Bashar kept the Assad dynasty going, winning 97 per cent of the vote and taking over as president.

Asma’s banking career, which started at major companies including Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan, was dramatically put on hold as she embarked on a new life, marrying Bashar the same year he came to power. 

Her seemingly ‘normal’ upbringing had taken a fatal turn after her husband’s ‘accidental’ rise to presidency transformed her life forever.

Asma, who holds dual citizenship, British and Syrian, was born in London in 1975.

Her parents, both Sunni Muslims, moved from Syria to London in the Fifties so that her father, a cardiologist at the Cromwell Hospital and in Harley Street, could get the best possible education and medical training.

She was first educated at a Church of England school in Ealing before attending Queen’s College, Harley Street. 

The former president and first lady, whose 24-year dynasty came crashing down when Syrian rebel forces stormed the country, have three children who are aged between 19 and 23.

At Queen’s College — alma mater of heiress Christina Onassis, broadcaster Emma Freud and celebutante Peaches Geldof — the girl fated to become a president’s wife was said to have often ‘bunked off lessons’.

Queen’s girls are known for their tendency to frequent the nearby shops of Oxford Street in break time – and it seems Asma was no exception.

A former pupil once said: ‘They are mouthy and precocious, or outspoken and opinionated, depending how you look at it. No shrinking violets there.’

Another said: ‘The girls are concerned about global poverty, but they also love designer handbags.’

From Queen’s, where she achieved four A-levels, Asma went to King’s College London to read Computer Science and take a diploma in French Literature.

She graduated with a First and, after six months of travelling, joined Deutsche Bank as an analyst in hedge-fund management.

She then moved to the investment bank JP Morgan and worked in Paris and New York, as well as London. On family holidays back in Syria, she met Bashar.

Then he, too, came to London to study ophthalmology, though he had to leave early to return to Syria after his elder brother’s death.

Asma started seeing him in secret, resigning from JP Morgan just a month before the wedding without being able to explain the real reason.

As she told American Vogue, her boss couldn’t believe her timing, as she quit after closing a major deal and two months before her bonus was due.

She said: ‘He thought I was having a nervous breakdown because nobody quits two months before bonus-time after closing a really big deal.

‘He couldn’t accept my resignation. I was like: ‘Please, I just want to get out, I’ve had enough.’ And he [said]: ‘Don’t worry, take time off, it happens to the best of us.’ ‘

After their wedding in December 2000, Asma told The Observer that she spent the first weeks of her marriage travelling around rural areas of Syria in jeans and a t-shirt, so that she could ‘meet ordinary Syrians before the world met her’.  

Before the outbreak of the civil war in Syria in March 2011, the first lady had projected an image of a reformer. For years, she was was the face of female liberation in the Middle East.

In February 2011, Vogue magazine called an interview with her ‘A Rose in the Desert’ describing her as the ‘freshest and most magnetic of first ladies’.

But that year, war broke out in Syria between rebels and Assad’s regime over his brutally repressive regime and the reputation of the country as open and secular was trashed.

The gushing profile, published as Assad began terrorising his own people, was met with a wave of criticism and both Buck and Vogue’s editor, Anna Wintour, were accused of pushing a public relations campaign on the regime’s behalf, reported The Guardian.

In June 2012, Wintour issued a statement about the feature, saying, via The New York Times: ‘Like many at that time, we were hopeful that the Assad regime would be open to a more progressive society.

‘Subsequent to our interview, as the terrible events of the past year and a half unfolded in Syria, it became clear that its priorities and values were completely at odds with those of Vogue.

‘The escalating atrocities in Syria are unconscionable and we deplore the actions of the Assad regime in the strongest possible terms.’ 

During the conflict the couple are understood to have drifted apart, but with Assad’s mother dying in 2016 and Mrs Assad’s diagnosis of breast cancer in 2018, she was repositioned at the heart of the regime’s economy.

But this new role was nothing more than a ‘shakedown’ operation of the country’s middle class merchants and businessmen.

She orchestrated a secretive labyrinth of committees and policies, run by her henchman, which controlled everything from access to the internet to subsided food rations.

Her empire also extended to the distribution of foreign aid – effectively she controlled who got what when.

With her role within Assad’s dictatorship growing, she was unable to maintain her early image of the liberated woman operating at the heart of power in a Muslim country.

She became one and the same with the Syrian regime’s terrible suppression of its people.

But as pressure mounted on the oppression of the Syrian people, even Vogue pulled its interview with her from its website in 2012 after public backlash to the war.

Despite the challenges to her public image, she was still seen on the international stage meeting with the heads of state in Europe.

But Assad’s forces have clung to power until now, thanks to opposition forces reaching Damascus and recapturing areas on the outskirts of the capital following a years-long siege.

The regime has been accused of severe human rights violations and cruel assaults against civilians throughout the 13-year civil war, including the use of chemical weapons against their own people. 

President Assad, his wife, and their three children have been driven out of Syria, leaving their presidential palace to begin a new life in Russia after being granted asylum by Vladimir Putin.

Ms Al-Assad has become accustomed to a life of luxury, with reports that she spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on home furnishings and clothes during her husband’s reign of terror.

The US state department estimates that the family are worth $2billion, with their wealth concealed in numerous accounts, shell companies, offshore tax havens and real estate portfolios.

Now they are likely to draw on their family connections and extensive assets in Moscow in the hope of keeping up their comfortable lifestyle in exile.

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.

The Kremlin yesterday confirmed that the family was given asylum on the direct orders of Putin. 

Moscow disclosed no further details, with presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov telling reporters: ‘We have nothing to say about Assad’s whereabouts.’