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DAMASCUS — Syrian authorities arrested Wassim Al Assad, a cousin of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad, the interior ministry said Saturday, in one of the most high-profile arrests since the former president's ouster.
Bashar Al Assad fled to Russia in December with only a handful of confidants, abandoning senior officials and security officers, some of whom have reportedly fled to neighbouring countries or taken refuge in the coastal heartland of Assad's Alawite minority.
An interior ministry statement said that intelligence services and other authorities managed to "lure the criminal Wassim Al Assad", carrying out a "well-planned ambush that resulted in his successful arrest".
He is "considered among the most prominent drug traffickers and people involved in a number of crimes during the period of the former regime", the statement said, without elaborating on the other allegations against him.
While Wassim Al Assad did not hold high office, he is the first prominent figure from the Assad family to be arrested since Islamist-led forces toppled the government on December 8, ending five decades of one-family rule.
The US Treasury sanctioned him in 2023, saying he had led a paramilitary unit and was "a key figure in the regional drug trafficking network".
State news agency SANA, citing an unidentified security source in Homs province, said Wassim Al Assad was arrested on the Syria-Lebanon border.
A security source, requesting anonymity, told AFP he was arrested Saturday in the Tal Kalakh area, in Homs province near the frontier.
In recent years, Wassim Al Assad, who called himself a "customs broker", posted images of himself on social media near luxury cars, sometimes appearing in military clothing and bearing arms or shooting, at times alongside other armed men.
Since taking power, the new authorities have occasionally announced the arrest of Assad-era security and other officials.
In April, Syrian authorities said security forces had arrested Sultan Al Tinawi, a former officer in the feared air force intelligence, one of the Assad family's most trusted security agencies.