After the US government announced on Monday (December 9) that it is to impose sanctions on Fawaz al-Akhras, the father of Asma al-Assad, the ‘First Lady of Hell’, now in Moscow with her deposed tyrant husband, attention is turning to the other connections of the Assads and their extended family.

The US Treasury Department announced in a statement that Al-Akhras had been included on the sanctions list for "providing material or technological assistance and facilitation to Bashar al-Assad, related to financial matters and evasion of sanctions."
Al-Akhras and his wife, who live in Acton, west London, have reportedly fled the UK and are believed to be in Moscow with the Assads and their children.

Bashar al-Assad’s parents-in-law have spent the past 21 years lobbying for the regime in Britain through the British-Syrian Society, which Al-Akhras set up in 2003 to promote business relations between the regime and the UK, and which, since 2011, has been used to endorse assorted conspiracy theories about the Syrian opposition, deny the regime’s crimes and slander all dissent.

In February 2017, Al Akhras appointed Peter Ford, who served as British Ambassador to Syria from 2003 to 2006, as co-director of the British-Syrian Society. Ford used his contacts to great effect, appearing on multiple media outlets, including the BBC, to promote regime propaganda.

On the Khan Sheikhoun chemical attack in April 2017, for example, Ford said in a BBC interview there was no proof of the Assad regime’s involvement in the attack, saying "[i]t defies belief that [Assad] would bring all this on his head. For no military advantage. The site that was hit had no military significance. It made absolutely no sense. It would have angered the Russians for no other reason: it was simply not plausible.”

The OPCW and other bodies have proved beyond a doubt that the Assad regime carried out that CW attack and others, with the Syrian Network for Human Rights counting over 200 chemical weapons attacks by the regime.

In December 2023, Ford was elected as one of the Deputy Leaders of George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain. Galloway has been a longstanding supporter of Assad’s and of Putin’s, using his Russia Today programme to relentlessly slander the Syrian opposition.

Like Galloway, Ford has also faithfully promoted the Kremlin’s narrative on Ukraine, with both figures suspected of having close ties with the Kremlin.

Earlier today (December 10), Ford appeared on the UK's far-right 'GB News' TV station, asserting that Syrian asylum-seekers now have no right to remain in Britain.

"Now they've got their way: Assad, with our help, has been removed. They have no excuse to be in this country anymore,” he told the station, owned by a multibillionaire tax exile with connections to Moscow, which is best known for promoting racist, Islamophobic propaganda.

Ford further slandered Syrian dissidents by claiming that Syrian refugees in Britain are either “sympathisers with the jihadis” or “economic refugees pretending to be fleeing Assad, and suggested that "Some of the people that they've been tied with turn out to be terrorists. Therefore, the sooner we get shot of them, the better.”

Ford omitted to mention the Assad regime’s genocide and numerous crimes against humanity or its longstanding sponsorship of actual terrorists and terror groups, including Al Qaeda and ISIS, or to reveal his own interests and dubious connections.

With the Assads’ crimes against humanity finally receiving some long overdue attention, there should surely be some investigation of Peter Ford’s dealings with the Assad regime and with its erstwhile sponsors in Moscow.