Wall Street Journal: The 2012 Bombing Was the Work of Bashar al-Assad

The American newspaper Wall Street Journal has reported that one of the most devastating bombings in recent years in Syria, which resulted in the deaths of the Minister of Defense and the head of Syrian intelligence, was orchestrated by Bashar al-Assad rather than the opposition. The Wall Street Journal published this report on Friday, December 29. In the bombing of a meeting of the highest military and intelligence officials in Syria in the summer of 2012, Assef Shawkat, Bashar al-Assad's brother-in-law who had headed the intelligence organization for years, along with several other important Syrian officials, were killed. General Assef Shawkat, who was also the Deputy Minister of Defense, was considered one of the closest figures to Hafez al-Assad and then to Bashar al-Assad for decades. General Dawood Rajha, the then Minister of Defense of Syria, who was a Christian figure, along with Mohammad Ibrahim al-Shaar, the then Minister of Interior, and General Turkmani, a former Minister of Defense and military advisor to Assad, were also killed in that bombing. After the explosion, which occurred at the headquarters of the Syrian National Security Organization in the 'Al-Rawda' neighborhood in central Damascus, the 'Free Syrian Army' claimed responsibility for it. However, the Wall Street Journal cited an interview with Brigadier General Manaf Tlass to highlight Bashar al-Assad's role in the decision to eliminate these figures in the bombing. General Tlass told the newspaper that the Minister of Defense and the head of Syrian intelligence, despite their close ties to Bashar al-Assad, had advised him to cooperate with the Syrian national opposition forces and include them in the government to end the Syrian civil war. According to this report, only two weeks before Shawkat's death, six bombs were also found in General Tlass's office, as he stated that Bashar al-Assad had made a definitive decision to kill him as well. General Manaf Tlass, a significant figure in the Syrian government, fled to Europe after learning of Assad's intent to kill him. Tlass has been living in Paris for the past two and a half years. He is the son of General Mustafa Tlass, who was Minister of Defense under both Hafez al-Assad and Bashar al-Assad for many years. In his interview with the Wall Street Journal, General Manaf Tlass also stated that Bashar al-Assad has 'sold Syria to Iran' and that Assad's claims of being ready to implement 'reforms' in Syria are baseless. Tlass emphasized that the Assad regime could have prevented this massive crisis through peaceful means from the beginning of the crisis. Since his separation from Assad's government, Tlass has stated that the Syrian regime should not have responded to the people's protests with killings. Syria has been embroiled in bloody battles since early 2011, when the first protests began in the southern city of Daraa; millions of the approximately 23 million Syrian population have fled or been displaced, resulting in massive destruction, and there is still no prospect for the end of this war. At the beginning of the Syrian crisis, Bashar al-Assad's regime faced Syrian nationalist groups, but in the last two years, extremist Sunni groups, especially the 'Islamic State' (formerly ISIS), have taken control of parts of Syria. According to estimates, despite extensive support from the Islamic Republic of Iran and Hezbollah, Bashar al-Assad still governs only one-third of the country's territory. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports that about two hundred thousand people have been killed in this war, which has reached its fourth year.