Assef Shawkat (Arabic: آصف شوكت) (born 1950) is a Syrian general, and head of the country's military intelligence. Assef Shawkat studied history at Damascus University in the 1970s, and then joined the Syrian Army. In the mid-1980s he met Bushra al-Assad, daughter of president Hafez al-Assad. Their relationship encountered opposition from within the ruling family, and her brother Basil reportedly had Assef jailed on several occasions. In 1995, Assef and Bushra married against the will of the family, after which Hafez chose to support their marriage (however, conflict with some members of the Asad family continued: it has been widely reported, but never confirmed, that a younger son of the president, Maher al-Asad, shot and wounded Shawkat after a dispute about Hafiz's brother and his uncle, the exiled Rifaat al-Asad, in 1999). After this, Shawkat Assef's star rose quickly within the ranks of the Syrian ruling elite, and he became a close adviser of his brother-in-law, president Bashar al-Assad, who had succeeded his father in the year 2000. In 2001, Assef was named Deputy Director of Syrian Military Intelligence, one of the main branches of the Syrian intelligence apparatus. In 2005, he assumed control of the entire Military Intelligence apparatus. In October 2005, Assef Shawkat, Maher and others were mentioned in a leaked draft version of the United Nations' Mehlis report as suspects in the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri. There is much speculation on how president Bashar al-Assad would deal with a request for extradition on such a close relative. On January 18, 2006, the United States government announced that it had decided to freeze any assets belonging to Assef Shawkat in the US, and ban all United States nationals from having economic relations with him. The US Department of the Treasury commented that,
| “ | As the Director of Syrian Military Intelligence, Shawkat has been a key architect of Syria's domination of Lebanon, as well as a fundamental contributor to Syria's long-standing policy to foment terrorism against Israel.[1] | ” |
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(Photo: Shawqat, centre:)
