President Assad was ‘obsessed with sex and had a lover who also procured wives of high-ranking officials for him to sleep with before he ordered her assassination’

Syria’s former president Bashar al-Assad is said to have been obsessed with sex and had a lover who set him up with the wives of senior officials.

Behind the palace walls in Damascus, a portrait of the dictator was revealed; a distracted, self-indulgent leader more caught up in sexual intrigue and smartphone games than saving his crumbling regime.

He also sidelined the experienced power brokers of his father’s time and replaced them with young confidants of questionable competence.

Among them was one of his closest advisors, former Al Jazeera journalist and, according to multiple sources, his lover Luna al-Shibl.

Shibl was said to have procured other women for Assad, including the wives of senior Syrian officers, while helping shape the insular, degrading palace culture that alienated ordinary Syrians.

Then came his mysterious death. He was found dead inside his BMW on a highway outside Damascus in July 2024.

State media claimed it was a traffic accident, but the details were odd; The car suffered minimal damage, but the skull was shattered. Rumors were circulating that Iran had ordered his killing because target data was allegedly leaked to Israel.

Others tell a darker story; He says Assad ordered his death after he began providing intelligence to Russia and hedging its claims as Russia’s power waned.

Luna al-Shibl was also said to have procured other women for Assad, including the wives of senior Syrian officers

The truth remains unclear, embedded in the opaque world of Syrian and Russian intelligence.

Dozens of former courtiers and military officers also testified that Assad was obsessed with video games, especially Candy Crush, and that Syria was collapsing around him.

According to a former Hezbollah operative, Assad was retreating into games, glued to his phone for hours, rather than confronting the spiraling military and political crises.

As Syria reeled after Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, Assad remained largely silent, even as Israel launched attacks in Syria and Lebanon, killing key allies including Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

According to Lebanese politician Wiam Wahhab, Assad’s silence has increased suspicions in Tehran that he is secretly providing information to Israel and deepened the cracks within the so-called Axis of Resistance.

When the rebels began advancing towards Aleppo on November 27, Assad was in Russia, where he was defending his son’s doctoral thesis.

Assad’s stay in Moscow as Aleppo’s defenses collapsed stunned his commanders inside the country.

He appeared to hope that Putin would save him, but when the Russian President had a brief meeting with him he made it clear that Russia could not fight on his behalf in the war. By the time Assad finally landed in Damascus, Aleppo had already fallen.

The atmosphere inside the palace was reportedly one of decadence and denial rather than urgency.

As foreign ministers telephoned and offered proposals to stabilize his administration, Assad refused to respond and was reportedly sulking at the suggestion that he might have to compromise or share power.

But Assad was still reassuring as rebel fighters advanced towards Damascus on December 7.

He assured his aides that victory was near, according to regime insiders.

In an official statement the same evening, it was emphasized that he was in the palace to fulfill his ‘constitutional duties’.

In reality, the Syrian dictator was long gone. Under cover of darkness, Assad jumped aboard a Russian jet and fled the country without telling anyone.

According to The Atlantic, Assad left his private room at midnight and told his long-time driver that he would need pickup trucks.

As a group of Russians waited outside his home, he ordered the staff to quickly gather their belongings.

The middle-aged driver allegedly asked Assad if he had actually left them behind, under the impression he was fleeing war-torn Syria with his long-term employer.

Staff were told there was no room in the vehicles to carry them with them as they fled the country.

Assad turned to the driver and asked: “What about you?” “Aren’t you going to fight?”

The exiled president then turned and departed into the night, leaving his longtime allies and staff behind with the expectation that they would sacrifice their lives in the name of loyalty to him.

Some of those closest to Assad only realized the truth when celebratory gunfire erupted in the capital and militias surged forward.

High-ranking officials left behind scrambled to escape as the state they served evaporated overnight.

The betrayal stunned even hardened figures within the regime. Loyalty turned to anger as former supporters suddenly claimed they had always underestimated him.

But the collapse was not merely the result of geopolitics, as many analysts initially suggested.

Images of Assad wearing a speedo became the subject of ridicule on social media after the fall of his regime

In one of the photos, Assad is clearly seen wearing only white trousers and a vest.

Bashar Assad and his wife Asma Assad pose while visiting the Great Wall of China in Badaling on June 22, 2004.

While Russia was trapped in Ukraine and Iran distracted Israel, an even uglier statement emerged from those in the palace. Assad stopped caring.

The deposed monarch, branded ‘The Butcher’ for murdering his own people, is now said to be living in three flats in a luxury 300-metre tower with a shopping mall on the ground floor in the Moscow City district, a glittering business district in the heart of Russia’s capital.

The skyscraper’s penthouse is ‘lavishly decorated; ‘cream-coloured wardrobes with gold trim, crystal chandeliers and large sofas reminiscent of Middle Eastern palaces’.

The lavish complex, where his family owns around 20 flats over three floors worth more than £30 million, is next door to a shopping center he sometimes visits.

The brutal dictator fled to Russia in December after a blitzkrieg led by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham ended 13 years of civil war and six decades of autocratic rule by the Assad family.

He currently lives with his British wife Esma El Esad, who has cancer, his sons Hafez and Karim, aged 24 and 21, and his daughter Zein, 22.

It is stated that Asma, who was born in London and married into the brutal autocratic dynasty in 2000, is in a ‘serious’ condition due to leukemia.

She is used to a luxurious life, according to reports that her husband spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on household goods and clothes during the terror period.

Luxury Moscow Pillows provides similar opulence, with its 20-metre-high lobby filled with light and decorated with modern art. There are sofas, booths and a welcome drink for visitors.

They have a huge heated bathroom in front of a 13ft window of a 990ft skyscraper with one of the best views of Moscow. The bathroom is made entirely of Carrara marble.

“On May 9, Victory Day, you can watch the fireworks from the bathtub with a glass of champagne,” said Natasha, who sells penthouses in the same tower in the Moscow City area. De Zeit last year.

The Assads are in a good place and are enjoying the money they stole. According to the news of the German newspaper at the time, based on Syrian sources, the Syrian people do not mean anything to them.

Assad is said to be able to move freely in Moscow but spends hours playing online video games and often stays at his country villa outside the Russian capital.

He was provided with bodyguards from a private security firm paid by the Russian government.

Assad’s younger brother Maher is reportedly staying at the Four Seasons Hotel in Moscow and spending his time smoking hookah.

His 23-year-old son, Hafez, who is studying in Moscow, has previously said the family fled Damascus after Putin’s army pulled them out, just before it was swept up in the revolution.

He admitted that the collapse of the regime came as a shock.

Exiled Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad reportedly spends his days playing video games in his luxury Moscow apartment

“There was no plan to leave Damascus, let alone Syria, or even a backup,” he admitted in the deleted video.

‘After meeting with Moscow, the base command informed us that our transfer to Russia was requested.

‘After a while, we boarded a Russian military plane to Moscow and landed there the same night.’

Assad remains a wanted man by the new government in Syria, which has issued an arrest warrant on charges of premeditated murder, torture and incitement to civil war.

A family friend told the Guardian in December: ‘He is studying Russian and brushing up on his ophthalmology again.

‘It’s a passion of his, he obviously doesn’t need the money. Even before the war in Syria began, he was regularly practicing ophthalmology in Damascus.

He trained in ophthalmology in London in the early 1990s, but was called back to his hometown in 1994 following the unexpected death of his brother in a car crash.

Shortly thereafter, he entered the military academy and took over as the regime’s heir.

His friend stated that he now lives a ‘very quiet life’ and added: ‘He has little or no contact with the outside world. He is in contact only with a few people in his palace, such as Mansour Azzam. [former Syrian minister of presidency affairs] and Yaşar İbrahim [Assad’s top economic crony].’