Mohammad Bassam Imadi | |
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Born | 1950 (age 73–74) [1] Damascus, Syria |
Nationality | Syrian |
Mohammad Bassam Imadi (born 1950) is the former Syrian ambassador to Sweden, who defected from the Bashar al-Assad government in 2011 [2] and became a member of the opposition Syrian National Council. [3]
Imadi resigned from his post as Syrian ambassador to Sweden in 2009. He began working with the opposition at the start of the uprising in March 2011. [3]
Bashar al-Assad is a Syrian former politician and military officer who served as the 19th president of Syria from July 2000 until his overthrow in December 2024. As president, Assad was the commander-in-chief of the Syrian Armed Forces and the secretary-general of the Central Command of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party. He is the son of Hafez al-Assad, who was the president from 1971 until his death in 2000.
The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria is a Syrian branch of the Sunni Islamist Muslim Brotherhood organization. Its objective is the transformation of Syria into an Islamic state governed by Sharia law through a gradual legal and political process.
Major General Maher Hafez al-Assad is a Syrian military officer who served as commander of the Syrian Army's elite 4th Armoured Division, which, together with Syria's Military Intelligence, formed the core of the country's security forces until the collapse of Al-Assad's regime in 2024. He is the younger brother of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and also was a member of the Central Committee of the Syrian Ba'ath Party.
Diplomatic relations between Syria and the United States are currently non-existent; they were suspended in 2012 after the onset of the Syrian Civil War. Priority issues between the two states include the Arab–Israeli conflict, the Golan Heights annexation, alleged state-sponsorship of terrorism, etc.
Hasan Ali Turkmani was a prominent Syrian military commander and Ba'ath Party member. He served as Syria's Minister of Defense from 2004 to 2009.
Major General Hisham Ikhtiyar ; 1941 – 20 July 2012) was a Syrian military official, and a national security adviser to president Bashar al-Assad.
Parliamentary elections were held in Syria on 7 May 2012 to elect the members of the Syrian People's Council. The elections followed the approval of a new constitution in a referendum on 26 February 2012.
Riyad Farid Hijab is a Syrian politician. He was Prime Minister of Syria from June to August 2012, serving under President Bashar al-Assad. From 2011 to 2012, he was Minister of Agriculture.
International reactions to the Syrian civil war ranged from support for the government to calls for the government to dissolve. The Arab League, United Nations and Western governments in 2011 quickly condemned the Syrian government's response to the protests which later evolved into the Syrian civil war as overly heavy-handed and violent. Many Middle Eastern governments initially expressed support for the government and its "security measures", but as the death toll mounted, especially in Hama, they switched to a more balanced approach, criticizing violence from both government and protesters. Russia and China vetoed two attempts at United Nations Security Council sanctions against the Syrian government.
The Syrian National Council, sometimes known as the Syrian National Transitional Council or the National Council of Syria, is a Syrian opposition coalition, based in Istanbul, Turkey, formed in August 2011 during the Syrian civil uprising against the government of Bashar al-Assad.
Fidaaldin Al-Sayed Issa, born January 15, 1985, is a Syrian political activist who lives in Eskilstuna, Sweden.
The following is a timeline of the Syrian uprising from September to December 2011. This period saw the uprising take on many of the characteristics of a civil war, according to several outside observers, including the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, as armed elements became better organized and began carrying out successful attacks in retaliation for the ongoing crackdown by the Syrian government on demonstrators and defectors.
The National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change (NCC), or National Coordination Body for Democratic Change (NCB), is a Syrian bloc chaired by Hassan Abdel Azim consisting of 13 left-wing political parties and "independent political and youth activists". It has been defined by Reuters as the internal opposition's main umbrella group. The NCC initially had several Kurdish political parties as members, but all except for the Democratic Union Party left in October 2011 to join the Kurdish National Council. Some opposition activists have accused the NCC of being a front organization for Bashar al-Assad's government and some of its members of being ex-government insiders.
The Syrian National Council (SNC) is recognised by 6 UN members, the Republic of Kosovo and the European Union as a legitimate representative of the Syrian people in the midst of the Syrian civil war, with three of those being permanent members of the Security Council.
The Syrian opposition is an umbrella term for the groups that opposed the Assad family's Ba'athist regime in Syria. In July 2011, at the beginning of the Syrian civil war, defectors from the Syrian Arab Armed Forces formed the Free Syrian Army, a name that was later used by several armed factions during the conflict. In November 2012, political groups operating from abroad formed the Syrian National Coalition. In turn, the Coalition formed the Syrian Interim Government which operated first as a government-in-exile and, from 2016, in certain Turkish-occupied zones of Syria. In 2017, the Islamist group Tahrir al-Sham, unaffiliated to the Syrian National Coalition, formed the Syrian Salvation Government in the areas it controlled. Other groups that challenged Bashar al-Assad's rule during the civil war include the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, the Southern Front, the Revolutionary Commando Army and the jihadist organization known as the Islamic State.
The 18 July 2012 Damascus bombing of the National Security headquarters in Rawda Square, Damascus, killed and injured a number of top military and security officials of the Syrian government. Among the dead were the Syrian Defense Minister and Deputy Defense Minister. The bombing occurred during the Syrian Civil War, and is considered to be one of the most notorious events to affect the conflict. Syrian state-controlled television reported that it was a suicide attack while the opposition claimed it was a remotely detonated bomb.
The National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, commonly named the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), or the Syrian National Revolutionary Coalition (SNRC) is a coalition of opposition groups in the Syrian civil war that was founded in Doha, Qatar, in November 2012. Former imam of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, Moaz al-Khatib, considered a moderate, was elected the president of the coalition, and resigned on 21 April 2013. Riad Seif and Suheir Atassi, both prominent democracy activists and the latter a secular human rights advocate, were elected vice presidents. The post of a third vice president will remain vacant for a Kurdish figure to be elected. Mustafa Sabbagh was elected as the coalition's secretary-general. The coalition has a council of 114 seats, though not all of them are filled.
The Syrian revolution, also known as the Syrian Revolution of Dignity, was a series of mass protests and uprisings in Syria – with a subsequent violent reaction by the Syrian Arab Republic – lasting from March 2011 to December 2024, as part of the wider Arab Spring in the Arab world. The revolution, which demanded the end of the decades-long Assad family rule, began as minor demonstrations during January 2011 and transformed into large nation-wide protests in March. The uprising was marked by mass protests against the Ba'athist dictatorship of president Bashar al-Assad meeting police and military violence, massive arrests and a brutal crackdown, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths and tens of thousands wounded. 13 years after the start of the revolution, the Assad regime fell in 2024 after a series of rebel offensives.
Saudi Arabia–Syria relations refer to bilateral and economic relations between Saudi Arabia and the Syrian Arab Republic. Diplomatic ties between these two countries of the Middle East have long been strained by the major events in the region. Saudi Arabia has an embassy in Damascus, and Syria has an embassy in Riyadh. Both countries are members of the Arab League and share close cultural ties.