Rifaat Ali al-Assad is the younger brother of the late President of Syria, Hafez al-Assad, and Jamil al-Assad, and the uncle of the incumbent President Bashar al-Assad. He was the commanding officer of the ground operations of the 1982 Hama massacre ordered by Hafez al-Assad.
Rifaat al-Assad
Rifaat al-Assad with Hafez al-Assad, 1980
Rifaat al-Assad meets with Yasir Arafat, 1983
Hafez al-Assad was a Syrian politician, military officer and revolutionary who served as the 18th president of Syria from 1971 until his death in 2000. He had previously served as prime minister of Syria from 1970 to 1971 as well as regional secretary of the regional command of the Syrian regional branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party and secretary general of the National Command of the Ba'ath Party from 1970 to 2000. Hafez al-Assad was a key participant in the 1963 Syrian coup d'état, which brought the Syrian regional branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party to power in the country.
Official portrait, c. 1987
Hafez al-Assad (above) standing on the wing of a Fiat G.46-4B with fellow cadets at the Syrian AF Academy outside Aleppo, 1951–52
Hafez (center) and Nureddin al-Atassi (left) meeting with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, 1969
General Hafiz al-Assad in 1970.
