Free Republic

Full Title:As Syria implodes, Mrs Assad splashes out on chandeliers, Western food and fitness fads: Bizarre shopping spree of the British beauty holed up in bunker with vile dictator She was once described as ‘a rose in the desert’, a long-limbed, London beauty who used her elegance and Western style to mask the increasing brutality of her husband’s murderous regime. But as Asma Assad shelters in a bomb-proof bunker to avoid the horrors erupting within Syria – and to escape the US missiles expected soon to rain down on the country – she has become more of a Marie Antoinette...

Asma al-Assad, the British-born wife of Syria’s president, told a friend that she was the “real dictator” in the family, according to leaked emails that suggest she holds a cherished place in the leader’s inner circle.Despite the ambitions she expressed for liberalising Syria before the uprising, Mrs Assad, 36, displays no misgivings about the regime’s bloody crackdown, which has accounted for most of the estimated 8,000 lives lost. Her correspondence with Bashar al-Assad, his aides, friends and family portray her as highly supportive of her husband. In an email to a family friend on Jan 10, she praised a speech...