Russian intelligence had to persuade ousted Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad to leave Syria in until the last moment as rebels advanced on Damascus last weekend.
Unable to help the Assad regime contain the rebel incursion, Russia warned its ally that I would surely lose the fight against the groups under the command of the Islamist organization HTS.
That’s when he was offered safe passage to Moscow with his family if he left immediately, as reported by the American network Bloomberg.
Three sources revealed to Bloomberg News that Moscow organized Al Assad’s escape through its air base on the Syrian coast, using the “transponder trick.”
He would have been ordered not to tell anyone anything, turn off his transponder and board your private plane in the capital, Damascus. The plane then traveled to the Russian Khmeimim air base on the Syrian coast before Assad headed to Moscow, possibly on a military plane, the sources said.
The flight tracking website Flightradar24 showed a plane believed to be carrying Assad as it left the Syrian capital, Damascus, in the early hours of Sunday morning. The plane headed towards Mediterranean Seabefore making a U-turn and disappearing from the map.
Sergei RyabkovRussia’s deputy foreign minister, said that Assad was transported out of Syria “as safely as possible” over the past weekend.
In statements to NBCNewsRyabkov said: “He is protectedand that shows that Russia acts as required in such an extraordinary situation.”
Asked if Moscow would hand Assad over to the International Criminal Court, he implied that it would not, saying that Russia “it is not part of the convention” that established it.
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