Rifaat Ali al-Assad (Arabic: رِفْعَتُ عَلِيِّ ٱلْأَسَدِ, romanized: Rifʿat al-ʾAsad; born 22 August 1937) 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.
After launching a failed coup attempt against Hafez al-Assad in 1984, Rifaat lived in exile in France for 36 years and returned to Syria in October 2021 after being found guilty in France of acquiring millions of euros diverted from the Syrian state. In September 2022, France's highest court, the Cour de Cassation, confirmed the ruling.
In August 2023, Switzerland issued an international arrest warrant on Rifaat al-Assad after its Federal Criminal Court demanded his extradition to prosecute him for his role in supervising ground operations of the Hama Massacre. The warrant was issued as part of the proceedings related to the war-crimes complaint filed in 2013 by the human rights organization "TRIAL International" at the Swiss Office of Attorney General. In March 2024, the Swiss OAG charged Rifaat Al-Assad with numerous crimes committed in the February 1982 Hama massacre.
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