Who Trolled Amber? - The girl from Acton | We call her Emma Ep1

Episode Date: July 7, 2026

Emma is a high achieving, middle class woman from West London - she’s destined for a successful career and a comfortable British life. But in 2001 she makes a decision that will come to define her - she marries the son of a dictator and becomes Asma al-Assad, the first lady of Syria.We call her Emma is a 6 part original series from Tortoise Investigates and The Observer.To binge listen to all episodes today, ad-free, subscribe to The Observer and use the code AUDIO50 to get 50% off your annual subscription.You'll get access to:This series and all our podcasts before anyone elseAd-free listeningPremium newslettersPuzzles from the inventors of the cryptic crosswordExclusive offers from our partners including Mubi and iescapeTickets to join Observer events in our newsroom or onlineOr subscribe to Observer+ on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to listen to all our podcasts, including this one, without any ads.Reporter - Chloe HadjimatheouProducer - Gary MarshallSound design - Karla PatellaPodcast artwork - Lola Williams & Eliza BournerExecutive producers - Jasper Corbett and Basia Cummings Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tortus Investigates. This podcast was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center. By way of introduction, I want to start by saying that my story is an exemplification of the fact that the system is not fair. I should most likely be dead in a ditch or in jail somewhere. It's February 2026 and I'm on a Zoom call with Phil Elwood. I'm at my kitchen table in London and he's on the east coast of the US sitting at his desk. He's wearing glasses and a comfy pullover. Phil could pass for an accountant or a financial advisor. But looks can be deceiving. We're just recording sound.

Back in the mid-2000s, he worked for a big public relations firm that specialized in image construction. Their specialty was representing Middle Eastern dictators. Did you have any qualms when you found out who they were representing? Yes, I was incredibly nervous. I was first worried, you know, is this legal? And it turns out that yes, it is absolutely legal for strong men and dictators to hire American public relations firms to help, hmm, make their image better to help smooth public affairs strategies

to help get them what they wanted. And so Phil finds himself doing. things like babysitting one of the adult sons of Colonel Gaddafi, the Libyan dictator. Gaddafi ruled Libya like any other tyrant. Gaddafi's image wasn't exactly glowing. His nickname was Mad Dog. He was known for running a cruel repressive regime at home and sponsoring terrorism abroad. Still, he didn't want people to know what his kids got up to. Sir Phil was tasked with catering to his son's needs. including this one time when he wanted to party in Las Vegas.

Some of the highlights of his to-do list were to buy some Harley Davidson's. He needed me to arrange a private plane to fly some girls in from Los Angeles. Maybe not that surprising for a young jet-setter son of a dictator. Other requests, though, were a bit more niche. He wanted to see a share concert. He wanted me to buy him some jean shorts. I can't make this. It's so weird.

And Phil's job was also to make sure that the press didn't get wind of any of what was going down. The last thing they wanted was a salacious headline about this group of entitled guys partying at the Bellagio. And screwing up was not an option. The whole time I was there, I was afraid of the dictator's kid because they all had guns and they were kind of hopped up on cocaine and a lot of alcohol. And then they left and then I had to pay the bill. Because can you imagine, like, throwing down a credit card that says Gaddafi on it, somebody's going to report on that.

It seems like Phil was pretty good at his job. You can scour the media, and there's absolutely no mention of Gaddafi's coped-up, gun-toting sun causing chaos in an American city. You might have stumbled out of a casino with a hangover, but the wider world was none the wiser about who he really was. Phil's got loads of these fascinating, crazy tales about building. up or preserving the image of various unsavory dictators and their families. But there's a reason I've started this story with him.

For members of the public like us, it's often difficult to see behind those carefully choreographed and curated images that were fed of the rich and powerful, the people who call the shots. And what I've spent the last few months trying to do is to find a way to peek behind the curtain, to try and figure out who the real person is. That person being Phil's next customer. So the contract that the firm had with the Syrians was primarily with the First Lady,

with Asma al-Assad. This was 2010. And at this point, Syria had a reputation for being a tightly controlled, paranoid police state. But for the last decade, the country had been pretty stable, actually. under a new young president, Bashar al-Assad. It was open for business and tourism.

I think what we'd like to see is like any other country. Peace, peaceful life, prosperity, better living, better standard of living, reform that we've been talking about. He's socially awkward, chinless and beanpole tools. That's how they can understand me. And they will understand that time that we need peace. We need prosperity and we need the reform. His wife, though, the First Lady Asma, was she something else?

Smart, charismatic, photogenic. Like a supermodel and he's like a nerd. The whole goal was basically to promote her image so that Assad would look better by association. It was like an elaborate photo op, if you will, to try and make the dictator look good by saying, you know, what a glamorous, chic, wonderful wife he has. I've watched countless videos of her, and she's got this feminine presence.

You know, when she walks into a room, you can see the atmosphere shift. As much as possible, I try to make sure that people are not embarrassed in any encounter that we have. And so I'm proactively always asking what it is that I can do to help. And they always say to them, there's a kind of Princess Diana quality about her, which might not be a coincidence. Asma would have been very familiar with Diana because asthma's from here in the UK.

Her parents are Syrian, but in many ways she's a very English woman. It just so happens that she married a dictator. I received a British education. What I did have, though, was a Syrian environment within our family. So I was very aware of Syrian values. and cultures and traditions.

How has it been to go from West London to Syria? From a personal perspective, it hasn't been too difficult because ultimately my private life, my family life, hasn't changed very much. But I take a lot of the skills that I picked up in the UK, whether it was the British education that trained me in analysts of thinking, creativity, teamwork, or whether it was the rigours of working in the city

and working to the highest professional standards. These are all skills that I use today to make a positive impact. When Phil chats to her online, she comes across as very professional. And after his ordeal with the young Libyans, he's sure this is not going to be a hard sell. So the Assad's hand over thousands of dollars. Ideas get tossed around, calls are made, levers are pulled, and they find an opportunity. Vogue magazine's editor, Anna Wintour,

agrees to publish a profile piece on asthma. It must have felt like a bit of a coup. Bogue has millions of readers around the world. So the ruling couple prepared to put on a good show. And Phil arranges for a reporter and a photographer to fly over to Damascus, the capital of Syria. Then they wait in anticipation. So was there any concern about what would end up in the magazine?

Was there a bit of trepidation? Absolutely, absolutely. But when Vogue finally hits the shelves, it's better than any of them could have hoped for. They'd given Asma a full-page photo. Looking down over the Capitol with a red shore wrapped round her shoulders and wind-swept hair, she's objectively stunning.

I mean, there was definitely the image that she wanted to project. You know, London socialite, glamorous. They referred to her as a rose in the desert, I believe. That's the headline, actually, a rose in the desert, and the entire article's gushing. Asma al-Assad is glamorous, young and very chic, the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies. She's a rare combination, a thin, long-limbed beauty with a trained analytic mind who dresses with cunning understatement, fingernails lacquered with dark blue-green. And talked about how liberal and wildly democratic they were and how Syria was.

This is exactly what the Syrian president and his wife were looking for. The reporter clearly loved what she saw of them and their kids. All three go to a Montezori school. Asma al-Assad empties a box of fondue mix into a saucepan for lunch. The household is run on wildly democratic principles. This is the apex of image management. You get the sense that this is a normal young woman doing her very best in a chaotic, unruly country.

And her husband, he's in lockstep with her. Yes, he may be a dictator on paper. This is a guy who's reluctantly inherited power from his father. But in person, he's a modernizer who wants to change his country for the better. It was a 24-hour success story. Now, what none of us were expecting was after the Vogue piece hit the newsstands, the Arab Spring broke out Syria. But as the Arab Spring hit Syria, Lebanon took a very dramatic escalation of force by the Syrian regime today.

What start as local protests in Tunisia spread across the whole region. People across the Middle East are suddenly on the streets demanding change. And I wonder what someone like the Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad, he sees what's happened in Tunisia in Egypt with Mubarak. I wonder how this plays on his mind right now as he's facing a normal. challenges from protesters throughout all of Syria. And he's got to be wondering, you know, could this happen to me? And in what turns out to be unbelievable timing for Phil,

the demonstrations hit Syria just days after that Vogue article comes out. Can you imagine the juxtaposition of the two images, this glowing profile in a fashion magazine of this First Lady? And then you cut to the Al Jazeera scene of, Assad's troops shooting his own people in the streets. And the people who live here say they're being punished for daring to defy the government. The army reportedly shot its civilians deliberately. It was a horrific thing.

Every story, and I don't care if it's on the front page of the newspaper or in the sports section, every story has three parts. A villain, a victim, and a vindicator. And now, no matter how he spins it, Serious presidents become the villain, and Vogue's editor wants nothing to do with either of the assets. And so Anna Wintour at the time freaked out and paid a great deal of money to pull Vogue off the shelves of every newsstand in America and scrub it from their website. It's a PR disaster. The hope had been that by association with asthma, President Bashar's image would improve.

But now Bashar started killing his own people, Asma's been tainted by her association with him. Even an expert like Phil can't fix that. But that image in vogue that he helped construct, it still lingers. This beautiful desert rose projecting calm from her opulent palace on the hill, while down below in Damascus people are being slaughtered. I believed her when she talked about empowering the youth of Syria. This is Joan Juliet Buck, that Vogue reporter that wrote the asthma profile,

speaking years later. I actually believed her from the moment her husband's forces began not only killing mourners at funerals, but arresting and torturing, deliberately torturing children. I wondered how this English woman I had met who so believed in the youth of Syria could stand by and not do anything. I really wondered about it all day long. Back in the late 2000s, I was based in the Middle East for the BBC, and I visited Syria several times before the Arab Spring. Then suddenly the war broke out, and I found myself trying to articulate to people exactly how barbaric and murderous the regime was. They were gassing thousands with poisonous sarin, and hundreds of thousands of people were vanishing into a vast prison complex. There were times when I struggled to comprehend some of the torture and suffering.

I was hearing about. The Assad family was in power for more than half a century and oversaw one of the most psychopathic regimes the world has ever known. And then 18 months ago, it all ended. President Assad was overthrown and the world got to finally see the full horror of what had been happening. Mass graves, thousands of families are waiting to find their missing beloved ones. of prisons and torture centers.

Tens of thousands of people were held at the Settnaya Prison, known by locals as the human slaughterhouse. In cells that still stink of misery. Bashar al-Assad knew all about this. He was responsible. He gave the orders I've seen his signature on the paperwork. But he was born into this. His dad was a hard man

who got his soldiers to bite the heads off live snakes in front of him to prove themselves. Violence was normalised for him. But at least on the surface, asthma was like me, a middle-class Londoner. Nothing about her life back here suggested she would end up as part of this monstrous dictatorship. Because all the way through that war, at least publicly, asthma stuck by her man. Well, from my perspective, it was never... a question of preference.

I stood by him because my conviction didn't tell me otherwise. But the reality is that Syria was a country where for decades, saying the wrong thing could cost you your life, even, or perhaps especially if you were the first lady. So I've always been curious what Asma was really thinking. How did she go from London girl to a woman at the heart of a murderous regime? And now that the dictatorship's finally over and the dust is beginning to settle

on what turned out to be one of the most ruthless and bloody conflicts this century, Syrians have been slowly reclaiming their voices and along with the rest of the world, they've been asking some difficult questions of Asma al-Assad, this English woman who grew up not far from where I am now here in London. Was she an enabler and a profiteer who facilitated the horror? Or did she find herself in too deep? Too powerless to stop what was unfolding around her.

In Phil's world of villains, victims and vindicators, who is Asma al-Assad? I'm Chloe Hajemothay and from Tortus Investigates and the Observer. This is, we call her Emma. Episode 1, the girl from Acton. So this is where the story starts, both for me, and I guess it's where the story started for asthma. This is where the First Lady of Syria grew up with our family. Alan Way in West London, it's a pretty quiet, unassuming street, really. Lots of terraced houses with brown pebble-dash fronts, and lots of people have cemented over their front gardens. And actually her father, Fowaz Akras, Dr Fawaz Akras, he was a cardiologist in London's Harley Street. He still lives here.

He was the first person I contacted when I started reporting this story because asthma and Bashar have had restrictions placed on them by Russia, which has given their whole family asylum in Moscow. and they've been prevented from speaking to the media. Nobody's really heard a peep from them since the fall of the regime. And so I wanted to ask her father whether he or anyone he could recommend would speak on her behalf. But I've never received a response from him. And it doesn't look like anyone's home today either.

But I wanted to understand where asthma started off. and it feels a world away from where she ended up. In many ways, this street, Alan Wei, is like a microcosm of Syrian society. Before and during the war, residents here had differing views on the Assad regime. On one side of the street, in Asma's house, they were supportive of the ruling family. Actually, Asma's mum worked at the Syrian embassy here in London. This would have been when Hafez, Bashar's dad, was in Paris. On the other side of the street was another Syrian family, relatives of the Assad's actually,

and they were staunchly opposed to the regime. I took one of them for lunch in a Syrian restaurant not far from Alang Wei. Actually, I'll tell you a funny story. I have a friend who I grew up with in North Axton. We used to play football all the time. But he was very much aware of the dynamics to do with the fact that the president's in-laws, in-laws lived opposite us and, you know, and he found it all very funny. Anyway, he moved to Canada and kind of I lost touch with him.

And on the day that Assad fell, he sent me a message saying, well, now we know who's one in that sort of Allen Way standoff. Malik Abder grew up on Alan Way right across the road from Asma. His mom and Asma's mom as second cousins. And even though one was a government employee at the embassy and the other was married to an opposition activist living in XMA, exile. The two women used to be fairly close. Asma's mum, Sacher, used to pop over to Malik's house for coffee. So it was mainly my mum who was dealing with the mother.

Asma wasn't close to her cousins across the road, but even so, Malik used to see her around. The first thing you notice as a teenage boy is that she was quite attractive. But also, she was quite westernised. It really was difficult to differentiate her from any girl that you would see on the street in the early 1990s. I mean, she used to play tennis quite regularly with her older brother in the local park, and you'd be hard-pressed to even recognize them as being Syrian. They were, let's say, thoroughly integrated and anglicized. I was born and raised in London to Syrian parents,

but I was always brought up with the notion that one day we would come back to Syria to try and help Syria, to try and work for Syria. Her family were quite traditional, but they also seemed to have aspirations beyond this Acton suburb. Her side of the family is a, let's say, a social climbing family that benefited from the regime in Syria and their close connections to Hafzal Asad. So they're always looking to ascend the ladder.

Asma went to a local state secondary, but for the last two years of school, her parents decided they wanted somewhere that could offer their daughter something more upmarket. So they sent her to a prestigious private girl school in the centre of London, Queens College. I think I'm in the same age as you guys, or very close in age anyway.

I was born in 74. Yeah, same as us. I'm November 74. And when was her birthday? Do you remember? Oh, gosh. January, January 1975. This is someone who knew asthma really well

back when they were teenagers. But saying you have. have any connection to asthma and the regime in Syria is so toxic these days that people are often afraid to associate themselves. So this person's decided that she doesn't want to be identified, so I've changed her voice and her name. But she did take the time to talk to me over the phone to tell me about these incredibly fond memories she has of a young friend she really cared about. So you knew her as Emma? Yeah, Emma. That's what we called her. I remember London in the 80s.

I was horribly embarrassed about having foreign parents. So I get why with her fair skin and light brown hair, she chose to create an image of herself as an English girl called Emma, even if at home she was someone else. Maybe I should be calling her Emma at this point. Anyway. I remember, like, just laughing really hard with her. Like, we could laugh about anything.

She had good humour. she was always smiling. And she was like really slim and really beautiful. I mean, I'd say to her, Emma, like, you can pull it off. But if anybody else wore that, they'd look horrendous. Like, I couldn't wear what you're wearing. She's totally charming. And she knows how to light up a room.

Honestly, if she smiles, you'll see it. Even then you could see it. Even if it was just going to the bus stop, you could see it. All the boys liked her. I don't know what I expect this friend to say. but I'm looking for clues. Any kind of breadcrumbs that might explain

how this London schoolgirl ended up married to an indicted war criminal. I just had a little bit more of that rebel streak in me and she didn't have that. I mean, she did have, actually. She did have a few cigarettes with me. Where would you smoke? Literally out my bedroom window

with air freshener, you know, spray. Like, thinking you'll get, rid of the smell, but it's just making it even worse. Normal stuff, you know, just normal things you do with your mates. Then, before they knew it, they were 17, and it was their last year of school, with all that entailed, exams, deciding where to go to university. But there was something else going on with Emma. That last year, I felt like there was a little bit more pressure on her.

I remember there was once that she said to me that she was going to meet someone and somebody that, you know, by way of an introduction, I'm sure she said to do with her mum. And I remember coming back and just saying, you know, and how was it? And she was like, well, she was just like so excited. She goes, oh, good, it's good, but we didn't really like go into it after that. I think like I kind of understood that she didn't really want to talk about it. Looking back now, Emma's friend has her suspicions about what was going on. She thinks that Emma's mum used her connections at the Syrian embassy where she worked.

And when Bashar attended an event there, she orchestrated a meeting between her. her daughter and the president's middle son. Do you think she was being introduced while she was in the sixth form at Queen's College? Do you think that was going on then? Yeah. Yeah, I do. Bashar's 10 years older than Emma, so he would have been in his late 20s at this point. He was in London studying ophthalmology, training to be an eye doctor,

because he was never meant to be president, until 1994 when his older brother died in a car. car crash, and overnight, Bashar became the heir apparent to the Syrian presidency. I feel that she knew that she was going in a certain direction in terms of her future, in terms of marriage. Because even at that age, 18, 19, you know, whatever, an introduction made to you in terms of a male introduction with your family, that's going to be taken seriously. Emma's aunt back in Syria was married to someone high up in the Syrian government. It seems Emma's mum saw the benefits it had brought her sister, wealth and status,

and she wanted something similar for her own daughter. Her aunt was married to the former Interior Minister of Syria, so that really benefited her family big time financially in terms of connections, getting jobs outside of Syria. Is that how Asma's mum got her job? Yes. She got her job at the embassy because of her sister and who her sister was married to in the 80s.

And as a result, came into close contact with the Assad family, and that's how the arrangement between Asma and Bashar was made. You call her Emma? Yeah, we call her Emma. Is that how she was known in the family? Yeah, Emma was her name from, like, since she was born. It's interesting that she was known by such an English name. It brings to mind Jane Austen.

Abdo al-Dabach's another of Emma's cousins. He says Emma's far closer to his side of the family than the cousins across the road. His mum and Emma's mum are sisters. Abdo grew up in Syria and mostly saw the girl who he thought of as his younger English cousin when she'd come over on family holidays. She was very clever, very shrewd,

My uncle loved Emma the most. Emma can do anything. And by the way, Amo for us used to say, Emma will never do wrong. Abdo actually knew Bashar too. They were at school together as kids. And one day back in the 90s, Bashar called Abdo to ask his advice. And he said, what do you think of Emma? I was like, Emma who?

He said, your cousin. Said, what's wrong with her? He said, what do you think of her? because he knows her every summer they came to our house and he used to be my friend so they've seen each other a lot you know they cross you know uh roads past but he was never interested in her i was like what do you need for her and he said you know what about you know is she good i said like what and i told her you're going to marry sunni he said yes and immediately i knew it wasn't his choice

So when Bashar said to you, you know, what do you think of Emma? Were you surprised? Were you surprised? 100%. The Assad's are al-Awhite Muslims. That's a minority sect. But even though there are a minority, they've been in control of the country ever since Bashar's dad Hafez seized power in the 1970s.

And the Assad's have surrounded themselves with other al-Alawites. They get many of the best contracts and government positions. It's something that the rest of the population, who are mainly Sunni Muslims are pretty resentful of. So the idea that the president in waiting might be thinking of taking a Sunni girl like Emma as a wife, well, it's a pretty big deal. Not far off, say, a Catholic leader

marrying a Protestant girl during the troubles in Northern Ireland. So the idea to marry a Sunni girl was a decision by the family? Yes. Bashar never chose Emma. Half his Assad chose Emma. Oh, really? So it was a calculation. Yes.

Like we need to bring the Sunnis in. This is something new to me. I've always assumed that Bashar fell in love with someone from across the tracks. But Abdo believes it was actually a strategic decision by Hafez al-Assad to marry off his son to a Sunni as a way to placate the population and get them on side. So when were they dating? Did you know that they were dating? There's no dating.

they called my aunt, come to Damascus. There's no public announcement. News of this engagement is confined to the two families. This is 1999, and by this point, Emma's well into a promising career working in investment banking. It's hard to reconcile this hot-shot city girl with what I'm being told by everyone that her marriage into the Syrian ruling family was decided for her. Wait a second. Do you know who pushed her to marry Bashar?

Her mom, because she had two choices. Either get married or your job is done. You see, they lived in Acton. Where's the Acton? The whole area, there is a lot of scenes and hours. For a girl to come into her house after midnight, this is a big no-no. Even if it's for work?

They don't care. Okay, this girl came. At night, would they think somebody, you know, she's fooling around. The thing is, the mismatch between the couple doesn't just seem to be in looks. Abdo, who remembers Bashar from his school days, is pretty scathing about him. He's stupid. I would tell him, go and sit at the end of the car. You know, the range rover.

You are me. No, no, not me. He's stupid, Arwa. You are me. He would give you hard time. He's still. Yeah. That's, okay.

They have the kind of relationship where they talk over each other and finish each other's sentences. We go play at soccer, you know, at that time. You know, soccer. Yeah, footballers. He would do nothing. He has no ambitions. He has, I don't know what.

He would do nothing. Didn't he like to read? Nothing. No. He wouldn't even open a book. That's it. Even playing, he doesn't know how to play. So I would get angry with him.

I'd tell him, go sit in him. of the car. And he used to do what you used to do. Oh yeah, of course. No, no, I have very strong personality. I've heard this before, that Bashar used to get bullied by the more macho guys he used to hang around with back then.

Even Arwa, who thinks Abdo's being a bit cruel, remembers first meeting Bashar and being really surprised at how unlikely the couple seemed. When I first met him, I don't know him from school, he knows him. When I first met him and we sat, I came back, I'm like, I can't believe she's marrying him. I can't believe she's marrying him. You cannot sit and have a proper conversation.

He sits and he just talks and blabs. Nothing was funny, nothing was interesting. No. I mean, I could discuss anything I wanted with Asma. Anything. And it was interesting. You know, you could talk about what you heard yesterday in the news, internationally. But you couldn't say that about him.

Everything suggests that had she carried on down the track she was on, she would have probably had a comfortable upper middle class British life but she chose to throw it all in for Bashar. What did she see in him? I think though Emma would. If she didn't want to be with him, I feel like she would have spoken up. I don't think she would be forced.

But maybe she did it to please her family, you know, and accepted it. But from what I've heard in the past, I heard that she was quite taken by him, like smitten by him. I think she would have mentally, like, on a kind of. of intellectual level maybe. He may have suited her. Years later, Asma would explain what attracted her to her husband.

He's very calm. He's very thoughtful and always polite. But probably one of the best things about him is that he is so easy to talk to. You can talk to him about anything and everything. And that's great. So great that she was apparently also prepared to give up a place at Harvard's sought-after MBA program.

When I did get accepted to Harvard, it came at the time when I found the man I loved. So it was almost not a choice. Who would choose Harvard over love? No way. It's kind of weird. I'm the only person that would talk about it that I know. Like lots of people I worked with, New Asthma, and I thought about it. You know, it's like, oh, I was a friend of Eva von Braun, right? You don't go talking about that, I think. It's a kind of squeamishness about what she's associated with now.

Yeah, I think so, yeah. In the late 1990s, Paul Gibbs was an investment banker at J.P. Morgan. That's where asthma worked. I have to say she was pretty unremarkable. Did not stand out. She was like any, I would say, well-groomed, down the list. Ambitious, well-dressed, smart, average.

Yeah, but average is a pretty high standard. These guys and girls were extremely good. She was a dedicated team member. Really, nothing about this young woman stood out for him. Until... She was working on a pharmaceutical deal with somebody, somebody that I know and I've spoken to. And one day she didn't show up for work.

No holidays booked, she hadn't called in sick, just a silent no-show. These are really sought-after positions in the bank, and it's just not something people do. So Paul and his team are pretty concerned, and they start calling round. I'm not sure how long it was before they found out, but they found out that she'd gone to Libya, without warning. She tells them she's going to be there for three weeks, and this is. This isn't just a regular holiday. We were told that she was a guest of Colonel Gaddafi and had gone to stay at one of his encampments in the Libyan desert with Bashar al-Assad.

She's the guest of the Libyan dictator, mad dog Colonel Gaddafi, and she's there with her new fiancé, Bashar al-Assad. I don't know about you, but if the guy I was dating kept this kind of company, it would definitely be a red flag. But apparently not for Emma. And then when she came back, she bagged her desk and left. Just like that. Emma had made her decision.

I was shocked, everyone was shocked about what she did. And then threw everything away and went off to go live in Damascus. By this point, Bashar's been called back to Syria to prepare for the top job. And in 2000, when his father dies, he takes over as president. Six months later, Emma will be there by his side as his wife. Now, she calls herself Asma al-Assad, the First Lady of Syria. The really big question is why somebody would walk into that kind of thing. She must have known what was happening in Syria, how the regime worked.

Why would you do that? I think, you know, she wanted to be queen. There's no way that she thought, I'm married. marrying a reformer, his family aren't that bad. Maybe I'm going to be able to change Syria? No, she knew exactly what she was doing. She wanted to be the first lady. She wanted to be part of that Arab super elite,

you know, the wives of presidents and kings and princes. Granted, she wanted the power and the wealth and the status, but is there any way she didn't know how brutal things were to be? get. I mean, to be fair, I don't think anyone fully realised. Malik's right. Back when she first left London for Syria, no one could have imagined how bad things would get.

But when the atrocities did start, how did asthma view them? Each night as she lay in bed beside her husband during those 13 years of war, what story did she tell herself about the overflowing prisons and the mass graves? how close to evil did she really get? That's all coming up on we call her Emma. Unlike other people in the West, I think in many ways she was a victim of what she ended up marrying into. And Asma al-Assad was definitely aware of the whole situation.

There is simply no way that this could have remained unknown to her. She would have taken a huge risk. They could have killed her very easily. I mean, the only way to really understand what Asma was doing in Syria is to go to Syria and try and find the people who knew her. This series is reported by me, Chloe Hajimuthé. It's written by me and the producer Gary Marshall. The field producer was Sarah Dardush.

This episode was fact-checked by Poppy Bullard. The development producer was Jess Swinburne. Sound design is by Carla Patela. Our theme music is Yamo from the Syrian band, Schoon. Podcast artwork is by Lola Williams and Eliza Borner. The executive producers were Jasper Corbett and Bashar Cummings. Thank you for listening. If you hit subscribe today wherever you're listening, you'll get early access and ad-free listening to episodes right now. And if you'd like to dive deeper into this story, you can do that too. Just head over to our website, observer.co.uk, where you can

access exclusive reporting, including videos and photographs from our investigation. Tortus Investigates