Paris: Syrian General Mustafa Tlass passed away at a French hospital on Tuesday morning, his family said.
According to sources, Tlass fell and broke his hip last week, and he was transferred to a hospital in Paris for surgery.
However, due to the presence of a pacemaker in his heart, the surgery was postponed to ensure that his vital signs and heart are stable. He later died in the hospital.
His son, Firas Tlass, declared his father’s death on his Facebook page. Tlass was considered very close to the late Syrian President Hafez Al Assad. He held the post of Defence Minister and Deputy Prime Minister from 1972 to 2004.
Tlass defected from the Syrian army in 2012 following the outbreak of Syrian events. Since then, he’s been living in Paris along with his son Manaf Tlass.
Tlas was a Republican Guard military commander. He is the son of a former defence minister and possibly the most senior Sunni in a power structure dominated by the Alawite minority.
In 2012, he escaped from the Syrian city of Rastan to Turkey with the help of the Maher Noaimi Brigade of the rebel Free Syrian Army, Syrian journalists with the opposition were quoted then by reports.
Tlas then said he was not going to join the opposition now, but a US official noted if Tlas did join the insurgency, it would be “significant”. His departure was regarded as a stunning blow to the then embattled Al Assad regime.
“He’s an inside confidante of Al Assad. So it counts that even an insider thinks it’s time to go,” one Western official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said then.
