Former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is reported to have been the target of a poisoning assassination attempt in Moscow, where he was granted political asylum after being deposed 10 months ago. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, citing a private source, Assad was released from a hospital on the outskirts of the Russian capital on Monday.
The source claimed that Assad had been poisoned, and that the motive behind the operation was to embarrass the Russian government and accuse it of complicity in his death. Only his brother, Maher Assad, was allowed to visit him in hospital amid a major security operation. Assad's condition is now reported to be stable.
The Russian government has not commented on the claims. The new authorities in Syria have demanded Assad's extradition, but Russia has refused. President Vladimir Putin personally granted asylum to Assad, along with members of his family and regime associates. Assad, 60, has not been seen in public since arriving in Russia and is believed to be kept under close guard by Russian secret services.
There is no independent evidence of the poisoning. An earlier report, less than a month after Assad's arrival in Russia, claimed he complained of feeling unwell and having trouble breathing, but this was not confirmed.
