Asma’s choice | We call her Emma Ep3

Summary

---

We Call Her Emma | Tortoise Investigates

Episode 3: Asma’s Choice

Release Date: July 21, 2026
Host/Reporter: Chloe Hadjimatheou
Producer: Gary Marshall
Series: We Call Her Emma (Ep3)

---

Main Theme

This deeply reported episode examines the pivotal decisions faced by Asma al-Assad (referred to as "Emma"), the British-Syrian First Lady of Syria, as her husband Bashar al-Assad’s regime responds with escalating brutality to the 2011 Arab Spring protests. Through eyewitness testimonies and insider accounts, it explores what Asma knew about the bloody repression, how she navigated her personal influence and moral conflict, and whether she played an active or complicit role in the regime—or was herself ultimately trapped.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Asma’s Position: Influence and Power Dynamics

• Initial Observations

  • Zaki Meshi, former Syria Trust colleague, recounts a 2008 incident where Asma, unfazed, brusquely tells her presidential husband Bashar al-Assad to wait on the phone amid her staff. This shocks colleagues, used to the cult of personality around Bashar (04:01).
    • Quote:
      “Obviously, she was in control. Definitely she was in control...he was the president and she ordered him to wait, and without any [hesitation],...we were like very shocked.”
      — Zaki Meshi (04:01)
  • Zaki concludes that Asma was not “that weak person within the palace” (05:10).

• Implications for Later Events

  • Asma’s early demonstration of control is significant as, once the uprising begins, “she'll be forced to decide how to use that power, whether to protect the Syrian people or herself.” (05:20-05:42)

2. Atmosphere in Pre-Revolution Syria: Hope, Fear, and the Arab Spring

• Life Under the Regime
  • Osama Othman describes the omnipresent fear under Assad rule, the regime’s security apparatus “meddling in every detail” (07:08).
• Reform Hopes Quickly Dashed
  • Despite Bashar's reformist promises, “not in the slightest” does Osama hope for change (07:27).
  • As the Arab Spring spreads, protests spark even in Syria, initially with hope Bashar might be a reforming leader (10:35).

3. Escalation & Violent Repression

• Early Atrocities

  • The regime responds to peaceful protest with arrests and shootings. A notorious incident: children in Daraa tortured for graffiti (“It’s your turn, Doctor”) and their parents shot when demanding justice (09:13-09:52).
  • Quote:
    “When their parents took to the streets to protest, they were shot at.” (09:49)
  • Massive escalation—by six months in, ~3,000 protesters shot, 20,000 arrested (14:43).

• International Attention

  • The killing and brutal mutilation of 13-year-old Hamza Khatib becomes a turning point; US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton weighs in:
    • Quote:
      "I can only hope...this child did not die in vain, but that the Syrian government will end the brutality and begin a transition to real democracy."
      — Hillary Clinton, referenced by Chloe Hadjimatheou (16:01)

4. Asma’s Response: Silence, Distancing, and Deliberate Choices

• Contrast in Public Persona

  • Asma’s old interviews reveal her as an advocate for the voiceless, outraged over bombings in Gaza, urging action (2009 CNN interview: 17:30-18:22).
    • Quote:
      “We have a choice. We can either sit by...or we can get up and do something about it.”
      — Asma al-Assad (18:22)
  • Yet, as violence engulfs Syria, she is publicly silent—avoiding appearances but still attending work (18:34-19:31).

• Behavioral Shifts at Syria Trust

  • Employees, including Zaki, notice she oscillates from cold and arrogant to suddenly approachable—possibly to “hedge” loyalty and protect herself (19:31-20:14).

• Her Directive to Staff

  • Asma tells staff at Syria Trust to keep political discussions out of the office but says they're “free to do whatever you want” individually (20:32-21:17). This equivocal stance is seen as significant in Syria’s authoritarian context.

• Limits and Rationalizations

  • When the regime detains activist employees, colleagues hope she will intervene. She does not, nor does she claim she cannot—just that she “will not” intervene (23:40-23:57).

    • Quote:
      “She believed that she has the power, but she wanted to be very clear that ‘I will not intervene in the work of my husband’.”
      — Zaki Meshi (23:40)

  • Some speculate Asma convinces herself regime brutality is justified by “terrorist” threats (24:03-24:25), despite knowing the individuals involved.

5. Regime Atrocities: Firsthand Accounts and Evidence Collection

• Inside the Regime’s Machinery

  • Osama Othman’s brother-in-law Farid, a military forensic photographer, shows Osama shocking images: bodies with burn marks, signs of torture and starvation, cause of death always listed as “sudden cardiac and respiratory arrest” (25:05-27:26).
    • Quote:
      “[Some] had their eyes removed...signs of extreme starvation...the overwhelming majority bore signs of intense suffering. I never, never imagined that I would ever have to see something like this.”
      — Osama Othman (26:52)

• Building a Record

  • Osama urges Farid to covertly save and share the photos, hoping to one day hold perpetrators accountable (29:25-30:51).
    • The proximity of Mezze Military Hospital—where bodies were photographed—to the Assad palace is noted for its symbolic and practical implications (31:12-32:01).

• No Plausible Deniability

  • “There is simply no way that this could have remained unknown to her.” — Osama Othman, asserting Asma’s awareness of atrocities (32:01-32:38).

6. The Bubble of Denial and Propaganda

• Asma as the Good Queen?

  • Some persisted in hoping Asma could moderate her husband. Hind Kaobab (now a government minister) and Huda Mujaki recount meeting Asma in 2011 to beg her to act (37:04-38:51).

    • Initially empathetic, after a suspicious phone call Asma switches to official talking points—regurgitating “conspiracy” theories and regime propaganda (39:13-40:19).

  • Huda suspects surveillance and regime pressure caused the abrupt switch, referring to Asma’s distancing and elevation of Bashar: “She elevates him so that he's almost like a God, not a human being.” (41:04)

• Farm Analogy

  • Huda and others (notably Ayman Abdel Nour) explain how the Assad family see Syria as “their farm” and treat citizens as livestock—disposable and owned.
    • Quote:
      “When you own a farm, you own the livestock on it. You can slaughter them...We think that family, they own Syria. So it's like a farm. They can do whatever, whatever.”
      — Huda Mujaki (43:26)

7. Asma’s Attempt to Flee?

• Rumors and Reports
  • Around a year into the uprising, rumors surface that Asma tried to flee to London. Sources confirm this but believe her motivation and the full story are complex and remain to be explored in future episodes (43:52-44:35).

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Zaki Meshi on Asma’s Authority (04:01)
  “Obviously, she was in control. Definitely she was in control.”

• Osama Othman on Life under Assad (07:08)
  “Every day there was this gnawing dread and paralyzing fear of the regime’s security apparatus that never left us.”

• Asma al-Assad, 2009 (on Gaza), repurposed by the podcasters for contrast (18:22)
  “We have a choice. We can either sit by...or we can get up and do something about it.”

• Osama Othman on the regime’s brutality (26:52)
  “Some had their eyes removed...the overwhelming majority bore signs of intense suffering...I never imagined I would ever have to see something like this.”

• On the “Farm” Analogy (43:26)
  “When you own a farm, you own the livestock on it. You can slaughter them...We think that [the Assad] family, they own Syria. So it’s like a farm. They can do whatever, whatever.”

---

Timeline of Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment Summary | |---------------|----------------| | 02:20–05:20 | Zaki Meshi’s anecdote of Asma’s behavior with Bashar—a window on palace power dynamics. | | 06:40–08:04 | Osama Othman’s introduction: Syria before and during the Arab Spring. | | 09:13–10:35 | Story of graffiti boys in Daraa; unfolding revolution. | | 15:30–16:17 | Hamza Khatib’s murder and international response. | | 18:22–19:31 | Asma’s “choices” rhetoric—contrasts with her silence on Syria. | | 20:32–21:17 | Asma's directive to staff: keep politics out of Syria Trust. | | 23:40–23:57 | Zaki reveals: “I will not intervene” – not ‘cannot.’ | | 25:05–27:26 | Farid shows Osama photos of regime victims: torture and coverup. | | 29:25–30:51 | Decision to preserve evidence at great risk. | | 32:01–32:38 | No plausible deniability—Asma must have known. | | 37:04–40:19 | Testimony of Hind Kaobab and Huda Mujaki: Their audience with Asma, sudden change after a phone call. | | 41:54–43:52 | The “farm” analogy: dictatorship, power, and disposability of citizens. | | 43:52–44:35 | Asma’s rumored attempt to escape to London; foreshadows further revelations. |

---

Tone & Style

The episode balances investigative rigor with personal testimony, placing listeners inside the regime and the mounting horror. The tone is direct, sometimes haunting and urgent, with a focus on moral complexity: not just what Asma did, but what she could have done, and the psychological as well as practical stakes.

---

Conclusion

Asma’s Choice interrogates the myth of Asma as either a Hollywood-style liberal reformer or a helpless consort, revealing a far more ambiguous reality—one shaped by opportunity, fear, loyalty, denial, and complicity. It foreshadows deeper investigation in the coming episodes about whether Asma was ever truly trapped, or an actor in her own right.

---

Transcript

[Osama Othman]

ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend

[Brooke Devard]

hello hello, it's Brooke Devard from Naked Beauty. Join me each week for unfiltered discussion about beauty trends, self care, journeys, wellness tips, and the products we absolutely love and cannot get enough of. If you are a skincare obsessive and you spend 20 plus minutes on your skincare routine, this podcast is for you. Or if you're a newbie at the beginning of your skincare journey, you'll love this podcast as well. Because we go so much deeper than beauty, I talk to incredible and inspiring people from across industries about their relationship with beauty. You'll also hear from skincare experts. We break down lots of myths in the beauty industry. If this sounds like your thing, search for Naked Beauty on your podcast app and listen along. I hope you'll join us.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

A Better Help Ad matching with my therapist was very quick and easy. I just filled out a couple of questions. Before you know it, I was matched with a therapist and I just felt like a weight just was lifted off of my shoulders and I felt like it was a good match from the first time we talked.

[Brooke Devard]

BetterHelp is there to meet people at their needs, giving them a space to feel safe.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

There is a stigma about therapy, but

[Osama Othman]

with BetterHelp, I meet people where they are.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

Wherever you are, that's where BetterHelp begins. Visit betterhelp.comrandompodcast to get started.

[Zaki Meshi]

Paid testimonials Results may vary.

[Boost Mobile Announcer]

He's dribbling the ball with everything on the line. He's driving down the pitch. He's facing price hikes and cuts past him. Carrier contracts, tries to block him. Oh, he leaves him in the dust. He's at the edge of the box. He cuts past the non stop group chat trash talk. He clears on goal. He shoots no unlimited data for $25 a month. Forever. Visit your local Boost Mobile store today to get unlimited data with a price that never changes. Boost mobile after 30gb, customers may experience lower speeds. Customers will pay 25amonth as long as they remain active on the Boost 25 Unlimited plan.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Tortoise Investigates.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

Just a quick warning before we start

[Narrator/Reporter]

that we're going to report on some very graphic things in this episode. We're including them because they're important to the story. But this episode isn't always an easy listen.

[Zaki Meshi]

I don't know if I told you this story. I went with asmaa as an expert.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Zaki Meshi spent quite a lot of time with Asma when he worked with her at the Syria Trust, including this one time in 2008 when he travels abroad with her. During a break in their busy schedule, they retreat to the hotel and Asmaa

[Zaki Meshi]

invited me and a colleague to her suite.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

The three of them are sat round a table together, and Asma's phone starts to ring. It's her husband, Bashar, the President of Syria.

[Zaki Meshi]

She looked at the mobile. Bashar. She answered, yes, no, wait for me. And she closed.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

Zaki's laughing here because what she'd done, it felt so insane to him. Syrians spent their whole lives pledging allegiance to their country's leader. His portrait hung in every classroom, in every government office, in shops, in homes, and on huge billboards on the streets. People were so fearful of the regime and Bashar that someone once told me she was too afraid to curse the President, even in the safety of her own head. And although Asma isn't just any ordinary citizen, Bashar is still His Excellency, the Supreme Leader.

[Zaki Meshi]

Obviously she was in control. Definitely she was in control. He was the president and she ordered him to wait, and without any, I mean, in front of her employees. And this was like. We were like very shocked.

[Narrator/Reporter]

So when Zaki first told me this story, I wondered whether this could have just been an unguarded moment, a wife feeling mildly irritated with her husband for calling about something unimportant when she's busy. But Zaki says it, he remembers everything about this incident exactly because of what it showed him about asthma. The asthma he knew was so controlled, so aware of the fact that she was always on show, that she could never have slipped up.

[Zaki Meshi]

Okay, you trusted us that much, or you wanted to send us this message, or to give us this message that you are in control.

[Narrator/Reporter]

It seemed to Zaki a clear signal at the time about the dynamics of her relationship with her husband and who had the higher status.

[Zaki Meshi]

So this small stories you can say, you can build on them and understand that she was not that weak person within the palace.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

That's what Zaki took from it back when it happened. She had influence over her husband, which in just a few years time, when the war starts, will matter more than ever. Then she'll be forced to decide how to use that power, whether to use it to protect the Syrian people or herself.

[Zaki Meshi]

You are either with the authoritarian regime or against the authoritarian regime. And I think she would have taken a huge risk if she was against Bashar Al Assad. They could have killed her very easily.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

I'm Chloe Hajima Thayu and from Tortoise investigates and the observer. This is. We call her Emma. Episode 33 Asma's Choice.

[Osama Othman]

First of all, this wasn't a war, it was a revolution.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

This is Osama Othman. And the story that will eventually connect him to Asma starts back when he's in his mid-40s, living in a town a short drive from Damascus. He has all the ingredients for a happy life. A nice home, a wife he loves children, and a great job as an engineer. But he can never be truly content because there's always something hanging over him.

[Osama Othman]

Every day there was this gnawing dread and paralyzing fear of the regime's security apparatus that never left us. It was always there, meddling in every detail of our daily lives.

[Narrator/Reporter]

He told me a story in Arabic, so we asked a Syrian actor called Majd to interpret for us.

[Osama Othman]

I was never, not even for a moment, optimistic that Bashar Al Assad's coming to power would actually result in any meaningful improvement in the daily lives of the Syrian people. Not in the slightest.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

Osama is right, of course.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Not only has Bashar failed to be the reformer he promised to be, but this soft spoken man who says he can't stand the sight of blood will end up being far more brutal and

[Chloe Hajimatho]

murderous than his father. But when the Arab Spring spreads across the Middle east in 2011, it feels

[Narrator/Reporter]

like an unstoppable force.

[Osama Othman]

Every day we were following around the clock the events that were rapidly unfolding in the neighboring countries under the banner of the Arab Spring.

[Narrator/Reporter]

I remember watching this all play out from afar from a new posting in Washington D.C. i was working for the BBC at the time and I just finished a stint in the Middle East.

[Boost Mobile Announcer]

Unrest is spreading across the Arab world. Protesters in the Persian Gulf nation of Bahrain held their ground for a third day. They're calling for sweeping.

[Narrator/Reporter]

I'd been in Damascus just months before, working with a local BBC reporter, trying to document some of the small reforms the government had achieved. And lots of people felt sure that the Arab Spring would bypass Syria. The regime just felt too powerful and the opposition too weak. But then I'd also been in Egypt the previous year and seen protests with just 12 people. Revolution seemed impossible there too. And yet these countries dictators were falling one by one.

[Zaki Meshi]

The protest movement that toppled President Mubarak here in Egypt is now spreading all across the region, particularly to Libya.

[Narrator/Reporter]

But then in a town in the southwest of Syria, a group of kids excited by all the protests in neighbouring countries, spray painted a wall with anti regime graffiti which said it's your turn Doctor. It was a reference to Bashar, who'd trained as an eye doctor when he lived in London. These boys were arrested and then they were tortured. When they were eventually returned to their families, it was clear that these 13, 14 and 15 year olds had been badly beaten and their fingernails had been pulled out. When their parents took to the streets to protest, they were shot at.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

There was widespread outrage about this and demonstrations broke out across Syria. And the usually pessimistic Osama, well, he can't help being infected by the energy, to be honest.

[Osama Othman]

I went out to the first protests a bit timidly because the intelligence officers in my neighborhood knew my face and my name. So I just hovered around the edges of the demonstrations. I took some photos, doing what I could in that fleeting moment. It was a surreal, historic time when we couldn't believe we were finally in the streets chanting for the freedom.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

At this point, early on in the protests, most people weren't calling for Bashar to step down. They thought he could be the one to overthrow his father's old system and lead them to a new, more just future. This was even after all the signs that Bashar wasn't really implementing any reforms, People still had hope.

[Osama Othman]

I was busy handing out flyers along the sidewalks and I would wait all week for Friday to arrive, just to make sure that the flame of our revolution was still burning bright.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Friday afternoons are important in the rhythm of the Syrian week. They mark the beginning of the weekend and they start with prayers at the local mosque. Unauthorized gatherings are illegal, so these weekly prayers, when the community are all in one place, they become the focal point for organizing demonstrations.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

At first, the regime's forces arrest a few people. Then they begin using snipers to shoot one or two protesters. Look at this amateur video thought to be shot on Friday that was posted on YouTube over the weekend. Suddenly, protesters panic and start to flee as gunfire erupts nearby.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Then they wait for the international response. When all the authorities get are a few muted reprimands from world leaders, they go further and further. Before long, the revolution is all consuming and where you stand on it defines who you are and it exposes fault lines within communities, just like it did on Allen Way, Asma's childhood street back in London. Neighbours living side by side have different allegiances. Those who are for the regime and those against it. Those who are on the streets protesting and those who are working for the state, even within the same families. Ena Sammer's family is no exception.

[Osama Othman]

I didn't have any specific details about his work because I didn't. I didn't get involved in that, in that side of things. He didn't talk much about the subject.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Osama knew his brother in law fared worked for the government, but not much more. And Farid knew that Osama was anti regime and that he was going to protests. Their family ties kept them bonded together, but they kept a safe distance from each other. Sometimes it's easier not to know too much.

[Osama Othman]

It wasn't exactly what you'd call a full friendship. It was more of a profound sense of kinship and comfort whenever I was around the family.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

People in Syria were constantly having to make choices about who to trust and who to share intimate details of their lives with. An American guy once told me that soon after he moved to Syria, he found out that lots of the new friends he'd made were spying on him and reporting back to the secret police. Seriously unsettling. But he never held it against them because he understood that it was what they had to do to survive. This was the Syria they lived in.

[Osama Othman]

One evening I got a call from Fareed. He said he really wanted to see me. He actually said, I need to see you right now. But he didn't give any details over the phone and it was late at night.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

Nothing about this call is normal. The time of day, the urgency in his voice. So Osama drops what he's doing and he goes straight upstairs to his brother in law's flat.

[Osama Othman]

At his apartment door, without me even stepping inside, he told me.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

Farad starts talking, words tumbling out over each other. He's in a terrible situation and he needs Osama's advice. What should he do?

[Narrator/Reporter]

Osama spends a long time thinking about it and his response will change the course of these two men's lives forever. And asmus. In the first six months of the revolution, around 3,000 protesters are shot and another 20,000 people are arrested. The world's starting to see videos coming out of Syria of unarmed protesters being shot in the streets and of bodies lying in pools of blood. Looking back, there was this one incident that sticks with me from those early days that I now realise hinted at what was to come. It was in May 2011 when a kid followed his brothers to a protest.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

Hamza Khatib, a 13 year old boy's body was returned to his family last Wednesday after he was arrested by security officials a month ago in Daraz region of Syria.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Hamza's corpse is a bruised, swollen mess and most shocking of all, the child's penis had been cut off. The shock waves from this incident ricocheted all the way up to the White House and then to the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, Hamza Ali Al Khatib.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

And I can only hope that, you know, this child did not die in vain, but that the Syrian government will end the brutality and begin a transition to real democracy.

[Narrator/Reporter]

That had been the hope, that Bashar would accept the demands of the people. But a month after Hamza's bodies returned to his family, the President gives a speech at Damascus University.

[Osama Othman]

Today we meet at an important juncture

[Chloe Hajimatho]

in the history of our nation. Instead of using the language of reform and concessions, he's blaming the protests on a conspiracy. The insinuation being that these aren't real people asking for change, but troublemakers drummed up by the west in an attempt to orchestrate regime change.

[Narrator/Reporter]

And then Bashar compares the uprising to germs. The treatment will be difficult, he tells his people, but it's necessary in order to strengthen the country's immunity.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

Former conservative MP Brooks Newmark told me that when he met Asma, she told him she only wanted her husband to be president for a couple more terms before handing over power. If she's serious about that, surely this is the moment she can help Bashar make that move.

[Asma Al Assad]

Nobody is immune from what's happening. We've heard of women, children being killed, medics, journalists. It seems like this. It affects everyone.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

This is what you might imagine Asma would have said about the torture of children in Daraa and the torture and mutilation of Hamza Al Khatib. As the first lady of Syria, as the mother of the nation, now as

[Asma Al Assad]

a mother and as a human being, as I said, we need to make sure that this. These atrocities stop.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

But actually, this was an interview she gave to CNN in 2009, two years before the revolution in Syria. She was talking about a massive Israeli offensive in Gaza. And in this case, she seemed outraged that the world was watching Palestinian civilians being killed.

[Asma Al Assad]

We have a choice. We can either sit by and we can sit and watch our TV screens and watch the atrocities and see some really horrific images, or we can get up and do something about it.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

She's acknowledging that in these moments, when you can see history happening before your eyes, you have choices to make, even when the consequences could put you in danger. But just a couple of years later, on the atrocities in her own country, Asma was silent. In the months after the protests began, she stayed well clear of any public appearances. But she was still turning up to the office every day. And at the Syria Trust for Development, her employees were watching her, wondering if she would give anything away about how she really felt. In the years before the revolution, Zaki had noticed a change in his boss. Asma used to sit at the same table as her employees and listen to them giving weight to their opinions. That didn't happen anymore. And as time went on, she became colder and more distant.

[Zaki Meshi]

She started to become very alienated from the people. She started to be very arrogant in the way she discussed matter with us.

[Narrator/Reporter]

But now that the protests were getting bigger and bigger, there'd been another noticeable shift. A return to how she was in the early days.

[Zaki Meshi]

She went back to her first personality. She became friendly, she became more approachable and she wanted to listen to many of us.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

Looking back now, Zaki wonders if she was hedging, making sure her employees wouldn't turn against her.

[Zaki Meshi]

I think she wanted to tell people again that she's one of them and if anything happened to the regime, so she had this kind of protection from people. I'm a part of the regime, but I'm not like them.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

But then one day, she gathers everyone together at the Syria Trust to convince

[Zaki Meshi]

everyone in the room working in Syria Trust that Syria Trust should not be involved in any political discussion. However, at the individual level, you are free to do whatever you want.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

So keep.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Keep it outside the office.

[Zaki Meshi]

Keep it outside the office.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

She's acknowledging that something significant's going on. It might not sound like much, but in a dictatorship it's a pretty big deal. So Zaki and the others in the office take her up on her offer. They're careful not to criticise the regime directly, but they also speak out against the bloodshed.

[Zaki Meshi]

Me and my colleagues were telling her that the regime is using brutal brutality against demonstration.

[Narrator/Reporter]

You felt like you could say that to her without any repercussions?

[Zaki Meshi]

Yes, yes.

[Narrator/Reporter]

She listens, but she doesn't offer solutions. Meanwhile, things are getting worse and worse out on the streets. And before long, like it or not, politics is coming into the office.

[Zaki Meshi]

Many of our colleagues were detained.

[Narrator/Reporter]

For what? What were they detained for?

[Zaki Meshi]

Because they participated in the demonstration. One of them is. I mean, I don't know if you know Rima Dali.

[Boost Mobile Announcer]

The months of bloodshed between the opposition and President Assad's forces pushed Reema Dali

[Osama Othman]

to the streets of Damascus on Sunday.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

I do remember Rima Dali. One afternoon in 2012, this 33 year old woman put on a paint splattered red dress and went to a crossroads near the Syrian Parliament building. She walked out into the middle of the road and stood there as Cars honked and swerved past her. A crowd of people nearby clapped and whistled as she held up a scarf with words painted across it.

[Boost Mobile Announcer]

Stop the killing. We want to build a Syria for all people.

[Narrator/Reporter]

She volunteered for the Syrian Red Crescent and had worked for the Syria Trust. The first lady knew her well.

[Boost Mobile Announcer]

Dolly's friends confirmed she was arrested, but no video has been released in the moments after her one woman stand.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

When Zaki hears about Rima's arrest, he knows what that might mean for her and he hopes that Asma might intervene before Rima's lost in the labyrinth of the the prison system. In the end, it's an international campaign by her friends that helps Reema get out relatively quickly. Not any intervention from Asma, as far as we know.

[Zaki Meshi]

So at that time, we believe that she would have supported us. I mean, these are her employees at the end of the day. And she was very clear at that time that I cannot do anything.

[Narrator/Reporter]

So what was she saying? My hands are tied. I can't do anything. I can't speak to the security services.

[Zaki Meshi]

She doesn't talk like that. She will never, ever say something like, my hands are tied. No. She believed that she has the power, but she wanted to be very clear that I will not intervene in the work of my husband.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

Not, I cannot intervene, but I will not intervene.

[Zaki Meshi]

I think she was trying to convince herself that those people are bad and they should be detained. I'm not sure if she was trying to convince herself or if she was really convinced that, okay, they're fighting against terrorist groups, not against their population.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Even though she knew some of these people, these people were working for her and she knew them well. Yeah.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

Asma had a decision to make whether to buy into the government's propaganda about the war or believe all the videos that activists were posting and what the world's media was reporting, that this was a real revolution of the Syrian people.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Osama and his brother in law, Farid also have a decision to make.

[Osama Othman]

He was clearly in a state of agitation.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

Remember, Farid's called Osama to come round to his flat because he needs his

[Narrator/Reporter]

advice about something work related. Farid's job isn't exactly for the faint of heart.

[Osama Othman]

So he worked in the field of photography for the forensic evidence department for the military police.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

He manages the collection of evidence, including photos of the bodies of people who've died in incidents involving military activity. They're typically people who've died in car

[Narrator/Reporter]

accidents or drowned or sometimes suicides.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

When his office gets a call, Farid dispatches one of his junior colleagues to the scene.

[Narrator/Reporter]

They're just job is to photograph the deceased.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

But since the revolution, the bodies that Fared's dealing with have changed.

[Narrator/Reporter]

For a start, there are more of

[Chloe Hajimatho]

them, a lot more. And the bodies look terrible.

[Narrator/Reporter]

It's hard to explain how bad. So Fared opens up his computer and he shows Osama some of the photos.

[Osama Othman]

There were signs that they had been beaten. Some of the bodies bodies had burn marks. Several looked like the person had been violently ripped from his hospital bed with various pieces of medical equipment still attached to his arms. It became painfully obvious some of them had been executed right there in the hospital.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Most of them had been tortured to death and their bodies tried transferred to the hospital. But others had been executed at the hospital itself. These were people the security services had arrested, sometimes at protests or because they were suspected of being anti regime. Or else they were just unlucky. Or maybe they'd just annoyed a neighbor or a colleague who'd given their name to the authorities.

[Osama Othman]

Some of the bodies had their eyes removed. The hollowed out sockets had been left entirely empty and void. And they were signs, visible signs of extreme starvation. You could see how the victim's skin was hanging from their bones. The overwhelming majority bore signs of intense suffering. I never, never imagined that I would ever have to see something like this.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

And the craziest thing of all, the cause of death for these people was often listed as the same thing.

[Osama Othman]

They said that they had died of sudden cardiac and respiratory arrest.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

In other words, their heart stopped beating, which I'm not a doctor, but I'm pretty sure is the end result of almost any death. It doesn't really tell you very much about the why. Farid was inadvertently witnessing the scale of the repression and the lengths the regime was willing to go to to torture and kill its opponents. He'd been seeing more and more of these photographs, sometimes dozens a day. But until now he'd kept this all to himself and a sense of panic was paralyzing him. Fared knew he was being drawn into the regime's systemic cover up. Like it or not, he felt complicit in what they were doing. He'd forged his career working for the regime, but this felt different. This was mass killing on a huge scale. Osama's mind was racing, trying to take in everything Farid had just shown him.

[Osama Othman]

I couldn't stop thinking about the perpetrators. What could have been going through the mind of these individuals who subjugated these poor people to months of torture right up until the moment they died? Starving, bruised, wounded and burned all over their frail bodies. I couldn't stop thinking about these twisted people, the torturers.

[Narrator/Reporter]

They were walking among them, ordinary people, fathers and brothers and sons, going to work every day and then coming home to wash the blood off their hands before tucking their children into bed. It was a chilling thought. The regime's crimes had been framed as careers, and the fact that thousands of people were employed in these kinds of jobs normalised it. Those people needed to be held to account.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

It occurred to Osama that these photos were an incredibly valuable record. They could help families find out what had happened to their loved ones, many of whom had simply been lifted off the streets and disappeared. And so a plan started to form in Osama's mind.

[Osama Othman]

And so I told Farid, I need you to continue working in your position and you need to give me a copy of all the photographs you collected. The idea was to ensure that the people responsible for these people's deaths would eventually face justice, that they'd be trialed in a fair, impartial court once the Assad regime falls. And we expected that to happen within months, just as it had in other countries.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

Osama was sure that it wouldn't take

[Narrator/Reporter]

long for Bashar's regime to collapse. After all, it had only taken months in Egypt and Libya. In the meantime, Fared agreed to start saving all the day's photos on a memory card and bring them back home and then hand them over to Osama, who would then download them and keep them safe. It was crazy dangerous. If the regime got wind of what they were up to, they'd likely end up like those they were documenting. Not just dead, but tortured horribly to death. I can't imagine how scary it must have been, taking this kind of risk.

[Osama Othman]

It was at that moment that Farid's job in the military police, his job for the Syrian regime, it changed. Now it was something that was morally justified. And suddenly we had a very noble goal that we were working towards together.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

There's something I haven't told you about those photos. Most of them were taken in the courtyard of Mezze Military Hospital in central Damascus. The building sits right at the foot of Mount Mezeh, a hill which overlooks the city. And right at the top of Mount Mezeh is the palace, the traditional residence of the Assad family. More than a decade later, when the regime fell and the palace was being ransacked, people stood at the large, ornate windows looking down on the city. And several people have told me that you could see directly into the courtyard of that hospital. And in some of the photos Osama was seeing behind the bodies in the distance, the palace windows are clearly visible.

[Osama Othman]

This extremely close proximity to the palace was very symbolically significant. But Bashar al Assad didn't need to see these images with his own eyes. He didn't need to examine them with a magnifying glass. The various networks responsible for all these heinous crimes, they were also directly connected to a private network overseen personally by Bashar al Assad. And Asma Al Assad was definitely aware of the whole situation. There is simply no way that this could have remained unknown to her.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

Did Asma look down from the palace windows and see those emaciated bodies covered in burn marks? Even if she couldn't make out the details, the sheer number of corpses lying in that courtyard would have been something

[Narrator/Reporter]

new in the early years of the war. The unavoidable truth was that her husband

[Chloe Hajimatho]

had made up his mind about the

[Narrator/Reporter]

approach he was going to take to the protesters.

[Boost Mobile Announcer]

He's dribbling the ball with everything on the line. He's driving down the pitch. He's facing price hikes and cuts past him. Carrier contracts, tries to block him. Oh, he leaves him in the dust. He's at the edge of the box. He cuts past the nonstop group chat, trash talk. He clears on goal. He shoots. Go unlimited data for $25 a month forever. Visit your local Boost Mobile store today to get unlimited data with a price that never changes. Boost mobile after 30gb, customers may experience lower speeds. Customers will pay $25 a month as long as they remain active on the Boost $25 unlimited plan. Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson. And I'm Ste Steven, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the Smash Daddy. And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

[Zaki Meshi]

That's right.

[Huda Mujaki]

Hey.

[Osama Othman]

Hey.

[Boost Mobile Announcer]

So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter. And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong. News flash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy Fan Fellows wherever you get your podcasts.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

A better help ad matching with my therapist was very quick and easy. I just filled out a couple of questions.

[Boost Mobile Announcer]

Before you know it, I was matched with a therapist.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

I just felt like a weight just was lifted off of my shoulders and I felt like it was a good match from the first time we talked.

[Brooke Devard]

BetterHelp is there to meet people at their needs, giving them a space to feel safe.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

There is a stigma about therapy, but

[Osama Othman]

with BetterHelp, I meet people where they are.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

Wherever you are, that's where BetterHelp begins. Visit betterhelp.comrandompodcast to get started.

[Zaki Meshi]

Paid testimonials Results may vary.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

By July 2012, Syrian government forces had begun carrying out airstrikes against cities and towns under the control of opposition forces.

[Narrator/Reporter]

A barrel bombing in the southwest of Damascus.

[Boost Mobile Announcer]

Barrel bombs are cheap, crude devices, essentially

[Narrator/Reporter]

barrels filled with high explosives and other

[Boost Mobile Announcer]

materials such as scrap metal.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

Thousands of civilians were being killed.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Bashar was also dropping chemical weapons like

[Chloe Hajimatho]

sarin and chlorine on populated areas and gassing his own people. More than a thousand dollars in one single attack in 2013. Around this time, Bashar And Asma's children, two sons and a daughter, were between 11 and nine years old. And I struggle to imagine what the conversations must have been like in the evenings in the Assad household. What did they talk about around the dinner table?

[Asma Al Assad]

When we come together at dinner time or in the weekends, we talk about our day and our time and what's happened. So they are very much aware of what's happening in Syria.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

This is from a few years before the war. Asma was speaking to a documentary crew.

[Asma Al Assad]

And so she asked him, she said to him, baba, what do you do? And he said to her, I try and help people. I'm not sure how much she understood of it. But now if you are to ask her, what does your father do? She says to, she says to everybody, my father helps people in Syria.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

I wonder what she told people after the war started. There's no such a thing called barrel bombs. You have bombs and any bombs is about killing. It's not about tingling people.

[Osama Othman]

This term was used only to demonize the Syrian army.

[Huda Mujaki]

That's it.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

This part of the propaganda?

[Narrator/Reporter]

Yes, he was polite and softly spoken.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

But by the time the war was underway, it was clear to Syrians and

[Narrator/Reporter]

to the world who Bashar really was.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

But some people inside and out of Syria still held out hope that Asma was different. We went to his wife, to Asma, and we scheduled a meeting. This is Hind Kaobab. These days, she's a minister in the new Syrian government. She decided not to speak to us. But this is a story she told on a podcast a few years ago. Back in 2011, she was teaching conflict resolution, and she'd been at school with Bashar. So when the revolution started, she felt like she was in a strong position to make an appeal directly to Asma. And the first lady granted her and her friends an audience. We were four women, went there from 8:30am until 12:15. And all what we ask her that, let's talk with this, with these people, listen to them.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Let's fix it.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

It's going to be lots of victims and lots of people who's going to die.

[Hind Kaobab]

She received us in the palace in the mountain.

[Narrator/Reporter]

The official palace. The big one up on the hill.

[Hind Kaobab]

Yeah, yeah, the big one, yeah.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

This is Huda Mujaki. She was there with Hind, meeting Asma that day.

[Hind Kaobab]

She was very humble and very nice to us.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

Asma was so friendly that Huda felt comfortable to ask her about the children who'd sprayed graffiti and had then had their fingernails pulled out. Couldn't she talk to her husband and prevent this kind of brutality from happening to any more children? She tried appealing to her as a mother.

[Hind Kaobab]

And I told her, you are a mom, and how do you feel when somebody punish your daughter or anything? So in the end, this kid, he wrote on the wall and you cut his finger. So this is not acceptable at all.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

At this point in the meeting, Asma seems to be listening to these women, and then all of a sudden, the phone rings and she excuses herself and goes off to speak to the person on the other end. She got a phone call, and when she answered, came back, everything was changed. She was very much like saying, no, there is a consp. This is not something organic.

[Huda Mujaki]

There is a.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

The international community are doing it to get rid of them.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Suddenly, she wasn't listening. Now she was parroting the regime's lines about the protest.

[Hind Kaobab]

And she come back with different face, different masks. She started talking like her husband. She gave. She gave us like, a slogan. We are taking care of the country. We are doing the best for you.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

Who did you think was on the phone?

[Hind Kaobab]

There is something inside the couch hearing what we are talking because we.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

In the room, there was a listening device.

[Hind Kaobab]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So somebody maybe called her. She said, you have to be tough and change the way you talk. Wow. And she start talking like that. Our Syrian people, they don't talk to listen to the government and they throw things from the car. They make their country dirty. Like creating stories, not real.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

So she was saying that Syrian people don't behave Properly. They're like spoiled children.

[Hind Kaobab]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

Huda believes the Syrian intelligence services were listening in and that they called Asma to give her directions, telling her not to be so soft and not to give in to these women's demands, to speak to her husband about all the violence.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Do you think she had freedom in that time to speak to him and say, we need to try and negotiate, we have to stop the torture? The reaction is too much.

[Hind Kaobab]

Me and my friend visited your husband, and she. She replied,

[Narrator/Reporter]

his Excellency.

[Asma Al Assad]

Wow.

[Hind Kaobab]

Wow.

[Narrator/Reporter]

So she elevates him so that he's

[Chloe Hajimatho]

almost like a God, not a human being.

[Hind Kaobab]

I think she. She believed in him, not in us.

[Narrator/Reporter]

One thing that seems to me like

[Chloe Hajimatho]

a clash in my brain is that she sold her image as a kind of Princess Diana figure, a mother of the nation, a soft, kind woman who has NGOs to help children and orphans. And then when the war began, it was the children in Daraa who painted their graffiti, and they were beaten and tortured. How can she make an excuse for this in her head, do you think?

[Huda Mujaki]

I think she thought this is mostly lies. And because of the bubble she lived in, they are totally separated from the people. She and her husband. That's the problem.

[Narrator/Reporter]

This is Ayman Abdel Noor. A lifetime ago, he and Bashar were friends when they were university students. And later Ayman became one of the new president's advisors. But he learned the hard way that his old friend's reforms didn't amount to much. And after criticizing the regime, Ayman was forced to leave Syria as a journalist in exile. He remained very well connected, and he understood how people inside the palace, including Asma, were thinking. When the civil war started in her

[Huda Mujaki]

brain and the bubble that she lived in with her husband, she couldn't understand why we are feed you, we are giving you electricity, we are giving you everything. So you are demonstrating for what? What are the demands? She couldn't understand that the people, this is. They are citizen in a country, not slaves in a farm she owns. So it's not about food, it's about freedom and dignity. So she couldn't understand this.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

A farm she owns. This analogy about Syria being Asma and Bashar's farm, it's something that Syrians I talk to keep coming back to.

[Huda Mujaki]

Yeah, the farm is. When you own a farm, you own the livestock on it. You can slaughter them. You can decide the day which you slaughter them. You own it. And they. We think that family, they own Syria. So it's like a farm. They can do Whatever, whatever.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

And the cattle is the population.

[Huda Mujaki]

The population, yes, for sure.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Around a year into the revolution, Ayman says Asma did something drastic.

[Huda Mujaki]

Yes, this is. It was very big rumors and I think it's a fact.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

The details are sketchy, but he has it on good authority that she tried to leave the country.

[Zaki Meshi]

Do you know where she was trying to go?

[Huda Mujaki]

To London, to her home.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

How did you hear that?

[Huda Mujaki]

A lot I reported at that time.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

Were you hearing that from inside the sources?

[Huda Mujaki]

Many, many, many. Yeah.

[Narrator/Reporter]

When he first told me this, I thought that maybe finally the scales had fallen from Asma's eyes. That as the number of dead and imprisoned was rising, she'd finally realized that her husband truly was an Assad, brutal and incapable of reform. Perhaps she really had looked down from that window and seen the reality of what was happening in her husband's Syria. But as I kept investigating Asma, I learned the truth. And the truth of why she tried to leave. Well, that's a very different story. Coming up on we call her Emma.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

Welcome to Syria.

[Narrator/Reporter]

We're finally passing in across the border.

[Zaki Meshi]

Yes.

[Asma Al Assad]

I was offered the opportunity to leave Syria, or rather to run from Syria.

[Huda Mujaki]

Even in terms of Bashar's relation with

[Zaki Meshi]

ladies, I think he was sick.

[Narrator/Reporter]

What do you mean sick?

[Osama Othman]

Like he was sick?

[Zaki Meshi]

I think he was sex obsessed. He has this sex obsession.

[Narrator/Reporter]

This series is reported by me, Chloe Hajimatho. It's written by me and the producer, Gary Marshall. The field producer was Sarah Dardush. Our interpreter was Aisha Aldris. The episode was fact checked by Amalia Sortland. The development producer was Jess Swinburn. Sound design is by Carla Patela. Our theme music is Yamo from the Syrian band Schkoon. Podcast artwork is by Lola Williams and Eliza Borner. The executive producers were Jasper Corbett and Basha Cummings. This podcast was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center. Thanks for listening to we call her Emma and for supporting our journalism. If you'd like to listen to the rest of the series today without any adverts, just subscribe wherever you're listening. You can also access exclusive reporting, including videos and photos from our investigation. Over on our website, observer.co.uk. Tortoise investigates.

[Boost Mobile Announcer]

He's dribbling the ball with everything on the line. He's driving down the pitch. He's facing price hikes and cuts past him. Carrier contracts tries to block him. Oh, he leaves him in the dust. He's at the edge of the box. He cuts past the non stop group chat trash talk. He clears on goal. He shoots. Goal unlimited data for $25 a month forever. Visit your local Boost Mobile store today to get unlimited data with a price that never changes. Boost mobile after 30gb, customers may experience lower speeds. Customers will pay 25amonth as long as they remain active on the Boost 25 Unlimited plan.

[Chloe Hajimatho]

Most of us are one good deal away from finally replacing that worn out rug, fixing up the backyard, or getting the bedroom we actually want. Good news, that deal's almost here. Wayfair's Black Friday in July Sale get up to 80% off off area rugs and up to 60% off outdoor and bedroom furniture. Shop Wayfair's huge selection of styles and find the piece to fit your style, budget and space. Plus free shipping. Black Friday in July ends July 27. Shop today at Wayfair.com Wayfair Every style, every home so good, so good, so good.

[Narrator/Reporter]

New summer arrivals are at Nordstrom Rack stores now get ready to save big with up to 60% off brands. And like Rag and Bone, Levi's, Adidas and free people. Join the NordicLub to unlock exclusive discounts. Shop new arrivals first and more. Plus buy online and pick up at your favorite Rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack.

[Boost Mobile Announcer]

Here's a tip for you. There's a podcast out there with fans waiting to be your next customer. They tune in every week. They trust the host, and that host wants to talk about brands like yours in their own words to their audience. The problem is you just haven't been introduced yet. We're acast where that introduction happens. As the world's largest podcast marketplace, we let you browse shows, see who's listening and book host red sponsorships or run your own ads, all from one platform. Transparent pricing, real time data, complete control. Start advertising on podcasts by visiting acast.com advertisement.