(Adnkronos) – France will return 50 million euros to Syria that had been seized from the Assad family. This was announced by French President Emmanuel Macron during a visit to Damascus. On the sidelines of the Elysée chief’s visit to the Syrian capital, France and Syria signed a global partnership and concluded several agreements, including a letter of intent regarding the restitution of assets confiscated from Rifaat al-Assad, uncle of the deposed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. ”More than 50 million euros, coming from the seizure of illicit assets of the former dictator’s family, will be returned to the Syrian people to finance concrete development projects in the territory,” Macron announced during a joint press conference with Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa. “We were the first to initiate this legal action and bring it to completion. And we will continue wherever possible,” Macron promised.
The document signed by the foreign ministers of the two countries cites the sum of 51 million euros. Died in exile in early 2026 at the age of 88, Rifaat al-Assad was nicknamed the “Butcher of Hama” for his role in the bloody repression of a Muslim Brotherhood uprising in 1982 in Hama. At the time, he was head of the elite forces under Hafez al-Assad, his brother and father of Bashar al-Assad. The massacre caused the death of thousands of people, between 10,000 and 40,000. Rifaat al-Assad left Syria in 1984, after an attempted coup, going first to Switzerland and then moving to France. He lived there for 37 years, presenting himself as an opponent of Bashar al-Assad. In 2021, he returned to Syria to escape a four-year prison sentence in France for money laundering and embezzlement of Syrian public funds.
