Today, Tuesday, social media sites in Syria were busy talking about Abdul Halim Khaddam, the former vice president of the Syrian regime, Hafez al-Assad, who later defected from Bashar.
The story of Abdel Halim's defection from the Syrian Baath Party regime dates back to December 2005, after his relationship with the President of the Republic and the National Secretary of the Party, Bashar al-Assad, deteriorated.
The deterioration of relations between Abdul Khalim Khaddam and Bashar al-Assad came after his criticism of Syrian foreign policy, especially in Lebanon, and the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who was a friend of his.
In August 2008, the First Military Criminal Court in Damascus issued 13 sentences in absentia against Khaddam, who fled to France, to various prison terms, the most severe of which was imprisonment with hard labor for life.
The court accused Khaddam of "criminally slandering the Syrian leadership and giving false testimony before the international investigation committee regarding the killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri."
It also accused him of "conspiring to usurp power, his illegal connections with the Zionist enemy, and plotting against a foreign country to push it to attack Syria."
Overthrowing Bashar al-Assad
