The images, believed to have been discovered in photo albums from Mr. Assad’s hilltop homes in Damascus and Aleppo, paint an unflattering portrait of Mr. Assad and his father, Hafez Assad, who led the Syria with an iron fist for decades. They have destroyed the carefully constructed image that the Assad family had cultivated for decades.
One photo showed Hafez Assad in his underwear, striking a bodybuilder pose. Other images show Bashar Assad in a swimsuit flexing his biceps, riding a yellow motorcycle in his underwear, perched on a hand cycle, also in his underwear, and staring into space in a kitchen, wearing nothing but white briefs and a sleeveless undershirt.
Footage on social media shows Syrians touring the Assads’ opulent properties, revealing extravagant decor, jacuzzis and other lavish possessions out of reach of ordinary people who have lived in civil war since 2011. Fueled by decades of persecution and a desire for revenge, people stripped mansions of valuables and exposed Assad’s private world, including some of his photo collections.
The unseemly images of Assad in various states of undress and in bizarre scenarios quickly went viral, becoming an object of mockery. For many Syrians, who suffered forced imprisonment, displacement and oppression under the Assad dynasty, these photos served as both spectacle and a moment of catharsis.
“What drives the Assad family to have their underwear photographed? I am very interested in the fantasy behind it,” wrote journalist Hussam Hammoud on X.
A particularly unusual photo shows Bachar in swimming trunks on board a boat, surrounded by other people. Another depicts him on a balcony overlooking the sea, teasing a girl sitting on his shoulders.
See also: Fall of the Assad regime in Syria: “it’s like a dream”
In another photo, taken in a mountainous setting, Bashar Assad is pictured with a group of people, including his presumed maternal cousin, Ihab Makhlouf, who is wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with an image of Hitler.
A video posted on social media shows a man looking through hundreds of photos in an album, which include images of family events. One photo shows a young Bashar in a suit and his wife Asmaa in a white dress, apparently at their engagement ceremony, as he puts the ring on her finger. Another image shows a shirtless Bashar posing with a camera, as if taking a photo.
