Rifaat Ali al-Assad (Arabic: رِفْعَتُ عَلِيِّ ٱلْأَسَدِ, romanized: Rifʿat al-ʾAsad; born 22 August 1937), known as the "Butcher of Hama",[2][3] is a Syrian former military officer and politician.

[4][5] After launching a failed coup attempt against Hafez al-Assad in 1984,[6][7] Rifaat lived in exile in Europe for 36 years and returned to Syria in October 2021 after being found guilty in France of acquiring millions of euros diverted from the Syrian state.

[10] In August 2023, Switzerland issued an international warrant for Rifaat's arrest after its Federal Criminal Court demanded his extradition to prosecute him for his role in supervising ground operations of the 1982 Hama massacre.

The warrant was issued as part of the proceedings related to the war crimes complaint filed in 2013 by the human rights organization "TRIAL International" at the Swiss Office of Attorney General.

[1] Rifaat joined the Syrian Arab Army in 1958 as a first lieutenant, and was rapidly promoted after training in various Soviet military academies (mainly in the Yekaterinburg Artillery school).

[1] In 1965, he became commander of a special security force loyal to the military wing of the Ba'ath and soon, supported Hafez al-Assad's overthrow of Salah Jadid and seizure of power in 1970.

[1] He was allowed to form his own paramilitary group, the Defense Companies, in 1971, which soon transformed into a powerful and regular military force trained and armed by the Soviet Union.

Rifaat played a key role in his brother's takeover of executive power in 1970, dubbed the Corrective Revolution, and ran the elite internal security forces and the Defense Companies (Arabic: سرايا الدفاع; Sarāyā ad-Difāʿ) in the 1970s and early 1980s.

[15][16] In addition to his military posture, Rifaat created the "League of Higher Graduates" (Arabic: رابطة الخريجين العليا, Rabitat al kharijin al-'ulia ), which provided discussion forums on public affairs for Syrian post-graduates, outside the constraints of the Ba'ath party.

[23] [24] Ion Mihai Pacepa, a general in the security forces of Communist Romania who defected to the U.S. in 1978, claimed that Rifaat al-Assad was recruited by Romanian intelligence during the Cold War.

In Pacepa's 1996 novel Red Horizons, Romanian President Nicolae Ceaușescu is quoted as saying that Rifaat was "eating out of our hand" and went on to say: "Do I need a back channel for secret political communications?

[15][35][36] Rifaat al-Assad presented his version for the Hama massacre during the conference in Paris to form the Syrian National Democratic Council on 15 November 2011.

"[38] Rifaat al-Assad was also mentioned in a CIA report regarding drug smuggling activities in Syria during the 1980s, along with other Syrian officials such as Ali Haydar, Mustafa Tlass and Shafiq Fayadh.

[47] in the 2010s, Rifaat owned a large property on the Costa del Sol,[48] in Marbella, Spain;[45] a £10 million townhouse in Mayfair, London;[49][50] and a mansion in Avenue Foch in Paris, France.

[48] Like other members of Assad family, he maintained a network of properties in Europe, which in 2011 he was reportedly attempting to sell off in anticipation of asset freezing due to international sanctions against Syria.

[46] After Hafez's death in June 2000, Rifaat again unsuccessfully made a bid for power, with his spokesman asserting that he was "ready to take up his responsibilities at any moment" and was the legitimate heir to the presidency.

[45][46] Vice-President Abdul Halim Khaddam, the interim leader until Bashar's formal succession, ordered Rifaat's arrest if he attempted to return to Syria or Lebanon.

[48] After the Iraq War, there were press reports that he had started talks with US government representatives on helping to form a coalition with other anti-Assad groups to provide an alternative Syrian leadership, on the model of the Iraqi National Congress.

Rifaat was mentioned by the influential American think tank Stratfor as a possible suspect for the 2005 bombing that killed Lebanese ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri and the string of attacks that struck Beirut after the subsequent Syrian withdrawal.

As commander of Defense Brigades that took part in the Hama Massacre, Rifaat was charged with organizing extrajudicial killings, large-scale torture, sexual violence, mass-rapes, summary executions and forced disappearances.

[63] In 2021, the Federal Office of Justice rejected the OAJ's request to issue an arrest warrant against Rifaat, on the ground that he was neither a Swiss national or resident.

[12] However, in 2022, the Federal Criminal Court ordered the office to issue the warrant, ruling that Rifaat's presence at a Geneva hotel in 2013, when the investigation was opened, was a sufficient nexus for Swiss authorities to prosecute them.

[66][67] In June 2020, a Paris court sentenced Rifaat to four years in prison upon his conviction of money laundering and aggravated tax fraud by embezzling state funds from Syria and using them to build a property empire in Europe.

[72] The next day, his daughter-in-law Rasha Khazem, the wife of his son Duraid Assad, was arrested along with her daughter Shams in Lebanon while they were attempting to fly out to Egypt.