Footage shows people looting expensive items after ‘butcher of Damascus’ fled to Moscow with family
As prisoners were set free from their subterranean jail cells around Damascus, shocked crowds roamed the ousted former president Bashar al-Assad’s mansions to grab what they could carry – and marvel at the trappings of his wealth.
Pictures from the presidential palace showed a man carrying a beige plush chair over his shoulder as people roamed the tiled floors beneath intricate carved wooden ceilings. In another image, a smashed chandelier lay in a courtyard beneath an ornate sloping staircase, a crumpled Syrian flag bunched among the broken glass. More images showed wooden furniture and fittings that had been carried into the garden outside as people attempted to haul them away.
