New round of US sanctions target Syrian president’s son and key regime supporters
The US Department of State and the US Treasury have announced a new round of sanctions against Syria, designating 14 individuals and entities including the adult son of President Bashar al-Assad and the First Division of the Syrian Arab Army.
In a 29 July statement, US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo said that the latest designations were covered by executive orders and the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, in a campaign that began with a first round of designations in June.
He said that the designations include the Syrian president’s son, Hafez al-Assad, the First Division of the Syrian army and its commander, Zuhair Tawfiq al-Assad, as well as his adult son Karam al-Assad.
‘We have named today’s tranche of designations the Hama and Maarat Al-Numan sanctions,’ Pompeo said, memorialising two deadly attacks on Syrian civilians which occurred in 2011 and 2019 in the Syrian cities of Huma and Maarat Al-Numan in the same week that the new sanctions were announced.
Ten of the 14 designations are by the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (‘OFAC’). It has designated Syrian businessman Wassim Anwar Al-Qattan and nine entities owned or controlled by him – a hotel, three shopping centres and five companies.
Al-Qattan is believed to be linked to powerful figures in the regime and to be the person in charge of luxury real estate developments backed by the Syrian president.
He ‘holds several contracts with the Government of Syria to develop government-owned shopping malls and hotel properties in Damascus,’ the Treasury Department said in a press release. It said Al-Qattan is ‘tied to powerful regime figures’, and that the Syrian government has given almost all of a recent major real estate project in Damascus to him.
Al-Qattan and three investment companies that he owns have also been listed under the new Caesar Act for knowingly providing ‘significant support’ to or engaging in a ‘significant transaction’ with the Syrian government.
