Bashar al-Assad released a statement on Monday (Image: GETTY)
Former Syrian leader issued his first statement since his brutal regime came to an end earlier this month.
Assad, whose family was in power in Syria for five decades, released a lengthy letter via social media dated December 16, which also gave away his location – Moscow.
In his statement released via the Syrian presidency’s Telegram account, Assad made claims about his final hours in Syria before the fall of his regime.
Claiming his last few days in power were marred by “misinformation and narratives far removed from the truth”, the letter said he left Damascus for on December 8.
The departure, he added, was “neither planned nor did it occur during the final hours of the battles, as some have claimed”.
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The former president, whose regime was deemed responsible by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) for a horrifying poison gas attack that killed 43 people in a suburb of Damascus in 2018, added that he carried out his duties “until the early hours” of Sunday, December 8.
He added: “As terrorist forces infiltrated Damascus, I moved to Lattakia in coordination with our Russian allies to oversee combat operations. Upon arrival at the Hmeimim airbase that morning, it became clear that our forces had completely withdrawn from all battle lines and that the last army positions had fallen.”
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