The Syrian authorities and official Syrian media have remained silent so far in the face of increasing rumors about the arrest of Asif Shawkat, a military intelligence officer and powerful security figure who is also the brother-in-law of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The Syrian authorities have not issued any denial or confirmation of the news, nor have Syrian newspapers reported any news about the Syrian president’s brother-in-law, even as newspapers and websites mostly close to Syrian opposition parties report on the rumored arrest of Asif Shawkat, the husband of Bushra al-Assad, the president’s sister. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has confirmed the arrest of Asif Shawkat by Syrian security services in anticipation of a coup against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. The Observatory quoted an American research center as saying that Imad Mughniyeh, a military official in Hezbollah who was assassinated in Damascus, had informed President Bashar al-Assad before being targeted that Asif Shawkat had started making contacts with the CIA and may be planning to overthrow the Syrian president.
In a news article published on its official website on Tuesday, April 8, 2008, the Observatory did not rule out that the arrest of Asif Shawkat was a response to the demand of Arab and Western circles, which do not rule out that the head of Syrian intelligence was behind the assassination of Rafiq Hariri. A few days earlier, Syrian Vice President Abdel Halim Khaddam had revealed in an interview with the Lebanese newspaper Al-Mustaqbal that Asif Shawkat had disappeared and that instructions were issued by President Bashar al-Assad personally to prevent him from leaving Syrian territory. Khaddam pointed out that President Assad took advantage of the suspected assassination of Emad Mughniyeh, the military leader in Hezbollah, to remove General Shawkat from his position and assign his cousin, Brigadier General Hafez Makhlouf, to supervise the investigation of the assassination incident.
Shawkat was born in the coastal governorate of Tartous in 1950. He studied law and history at Damascus University and received his PhD in history in 1976 before holding any official position. Asif Shawkat’s star rose quickly after his relationship with Bushra al-Assad, daughter of the late Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, and his association with her after that.
