Flight of the fallen

The deserted villa of a former Syrian official, after he and other senior members of the Assad regime fled the country.

IN the early hours of Dec 8, 2024, a small Syrian Air jet carried a notorious cargo out of Damascus International Airport – dozens of passengers, who just hours before had been the backbone of Bashar al-Assad’s brutal regime, were now fugitives scrambling to flee.

Among them was Qahtan Khalil, director of Syria’s air force intelligence, accused of overseeing one of the civil war’s bloodiest massacres.