Critically ill Asma al-Assad has been barred from coming back to London for cancer treatment, it was reported.
The British wife of Syria’s toppled dictator Bashar fled to Russia along with her husband when rebels swept to power earlier this month.
But reportedly unhappy in exile, she was said to have applied to a court for permission to return to her birth country.
Born in London, Asma, 49, has joint Syrian citizenship but her British passport is reported to have expired in September 2020.
The Times quoted Whitehall sources that her travel documentation is no longer valid, and she will not be given permission to return.
Home secretary Yvette Cooper said the decision to allow her to return ‘cannot be based solely on health reasons’, they said.
Asma al Assad is reportedly seriously unwell with leukaemia, with only a 50-50 chance of survivial.
It was not clear whether the government had blocked an attempt to renew her passport or if she had herself allowed it to lapse.
She had been placed under sanctions by both the UK and the EU in 2012 amid Syria’s brutal civil war.
Foreign secretary David Lammy previously said she is ‘not welcome’ in the UK.
The Telegraph reported that Asma was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia in May this year having recovered from breast cancer in 2019.
Her father Fawaz Akhras, a Harley Street cardiologist in London, is reported to have left his role to care for his daughter in Moscow.
The last weeks have seen an exodus of the Assad family after an offensive by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) forces.
The wife and daughter of one of former president Assad’s cousins were arrested on Friday at the Beirut airport, where they attempted to fly out with allegedly forged passports, Lebanese judicial and security officials said.
Rasha Khazem, the daughter-in-law of former Syrian vice president Rifaat Assad, the uncle of Bashar Assad, and her daughter, Shams, were smuggled illegally into Lebanon and were trying to fly to Egypt when they were arrested, according to five Lebanese officials familiar with the case.
Assad’s uncle left the day before on his real passport and was not stopped, the officials said.
Nicknamed the ‘Butcher of Hama’, he was indicted in Switzerland for war crimes earlier this year.
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