BEIRUT — As Syria’s bloodshed deepens, the British-born first lady has become an object of contempt for many, a Marie Antoinette figure who shopped online for crystal-encrusted Christian Louboutin stilettos while her country burned.
The European Union slapped sanctions Friday on Asma Assad, the 36-year-old wife of the president who for the past decade offered a veneer of respectability to one of the world’s most opaque and ruthless dictatorships.
The European action — the latest punishment imposed by world leaders on Syria for its crackdown — bans her from traveling to EU countries and freezing any assets she might have there.
“She is one of the regime’s deceptions,” said Amer Mattar, a 26-year-old Syrian who recently fled the country because of the violence that has killed 8,000 people in the past year. “She is definitely part of this ugly formula in Syria.”
A trove of e-mails — purported to be from the private accounts of Bashar and Asma Assad and published last month by London’s Guardian newspaper — have helped unmask that deception. They appear to capture the first lady splurging on luxury goods as violence sweeps her country, placing orders for expensive jewelry, bespoke furniture, and a $4,200 vase from Harrods department store in London.
Born Asma Akhras to a prominent Syrian family living in the U.K., the future first lady grew up in the west London suburbs.
She and Assad married in 2000 — the same year Bashar inherited power from his father — and Asma became a glamorous face of the new regime. With her honey-colored hair and designer clothes, she provided a charming counterpoint to Assad’s gawky demeanor.
In the years after her husband ascended to the presidency, Asma played a key role in shoring up the image of the regime, gathering fawning headlines from feature writers and fluffy profiles in fashion magazines.
“Du chic, du chic et encore du chic,” gushed France’s Elle magazine in 2008, which went on to name her the world’s most stylish woman. In 2009, Britain’s top-selling tabloid The Sun introduced its readers to the “sexy Brit” who was “bringing Syria in from the cold.”
Asma has been mostly out of sight in the year since her husband’s regime came under fire. Although she has been largely silent, she appears to be standing by her man.
In one of the e-mails obtained by the Guardian, she describes herself as “the real dictator” in the family, a tacit acknowledgment that her husband is seen in the wider world as a despot leading a suffocating regime.
