What’s the matter? Vogue won’t send its cover photographers to Moscow?
Life on the run can certainly prove stressful. Other fun couples have managed it in the past at least for a little while, such as Bonnie and Clyde, Gerald and Charlene Gallego, and Caril Ann Fugate and Charles Starkweather, just to name a few. You know — all the people whose sentences Joe Biden would have commuted just to pwn the MAGAs. Duane will have more on that next, in fact.
It’s not so much all of the murder that breaks these kids up, but the sudden end to it. Reportedly, that has Asma Assad petitioning a Russian court to escape Moscow and leave her husband Bashar, now that he’s retired from his career in mass murder and total tyranny. Or so say reports in Arab and Turkish media:
The British wife of deposed Syrian tyrant Bashar al-Assad has filed for divorce, say reports.
Asma al-Assad, 49, is currently exiled in Moscow with the former Damascus dictator but wants to move to London. The former first lady is reportedly dissatisfied with her life under guard of the Putin regime in Russia.
She has applied to a Russian court for permission to leave Russia for Britain, according to The Jerusalem Post, citing Turkish and Arab media reports.
The Kremlin denies this, but then again, Vladimir Putin is also denying that having the puppet he shared with Iran get run out of Syria and losing his military link to Africa and the Mediterranean isn’t a defeat for Russia. At the same time, the Russian navy is actively exfiltrating its troops and materiel out of Syria, and one ship is now adrift near Portugal, according to Ukrainian intelligence. Let’s just say that the Russians may not have the largest amount of credibility on all things Assad for the moment.
The Russians may be what’s ailing the Assads’ marriage, if this report is accurate. The Jerusalem Post offers a glimpse of life in Moscow for a deposed dictator who escaped with a big part of his country’s wealth, and it does sound pretty grim, although life could certainly have been worse for the Assads had Russia not bailed them out. Putin has apparently decided to freeze what the Assads stole:
Although his asylum request was accepted, Bashar al-Assad is still reportedly subject to severe restrictions. He is not permitted to leave Moscow or engage in any political activities.
Russian authorities have also frozen his assets and money. His assets include 270 kilograms of gold, $2 billion, and 18 apartments in Moscow.
Well, then, what’s a girl to do? Asma can’t spend the money she and her husband appropriated, and she can’t do all of the fun things that the world used to allow — such as getting splashy cover profiles in Vogue and other vapid Western media platforms. No more flashing heart hand-signals at the Asia Games while her husband tortures people and commits mass murder through chemical weapons attacks. Asma didn’t sign up for a post-menopausal life as the wife of an unemployed ophthalmologist and eventual war-crimes defendant. Who would expect a London-born socialite to endure in a marriage to a nutless ex-potentate, anyway?
The British might, actually. The UK refused to restore the citizenship of a 19-year-old ISIS bride a few years ago, and that young woman had much less insight into what she married that Asma did. William Atkinson writes today in the Telegraph that the UK needs to treat Asma just as they treated Shamima:
Mrs Assad was born in London to Syrian parents. She grew up in Acton and graduated from King’s College London. She still retains her British citizenship. Having been diagnosed with leukemia earlier this year, she is said to want to return to London for cancer treatment. The Kremlin has denied the reports, as well as suggestions that the pair are being confined to Moscow.
But if there is any truth in the idea that she is pining for North London, the Government must dismiss it out of hand, and do a Shamima: strip her of her citizenship. Enthusiasts for the erstwhile jihadi bride could at least argue that she was a teenager, too naïve to quite realise what life would be like in the Real Housewives of ISIS. The ex-first lady had no such excuse, however many Vogue profiles she starred in.
One could make excuses. Bashar was a family friend! If he was willing to gas, bomb, and murder tens of thousands of his own people, what might he have done to her if she started looking for an out?
Spare me. We should not be allowing eligible twenty-somethings to think that if they marry a dictator they can expect to be welcomed back to Britain as soon as they find themselves on the wrong side of a revolution.
As the old saying goes, you can’t go home again, especially when you leave home to hang out with terrorists and live off the blood of their victims. The only differences between Shamima Begum and Asma Assad are that Asma had a much clearer idea of what she was marrying, and she got a lot more joie de vivre from it. Shamima Begum is still living in Syria. Maybe Asma should join her there.
