The Hama massacre (Arabic: مجزرة حماة‎‎) occurred in 2 February 1982, when the Hafez Syrian Arab Army and the Defense Companies, under the orders of the country’s president Hafez al-Assad, besieged the town of Hama for 27 days in order to quell an uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood … 

The massacre, carried out by the Syrian Army under commanding General Rifaat al-Assad, effectively ended the campaign begun in 1976 by Sunni Muslim groups …

… the lower estimates claiming that at least 2,000 Syrian citizens were killed, ^[5] while others put the number at 20,000 (Robert Fisk),^[1] or 40,000 (Syrian Human Rights Committee).^{[2][6] …} 

The attack has been described as one of “the single deadliest acts by any Arab government against its own people in the modern Middle East”. …

I visited Hama in 1994. All these buildings had been bulldozed to the ground. The town rebuilt.

It was very quiet.

It was Hafez al-Assad, president of Syria, and his brother Rifaat al-Assad responsible for killing those thousands of Syrians.

In 1994 his the dictator’s eldest son and successor Bassel had just died in a car accident. Hafez turned to his his younger son Bashar. 

It’s Bashar al-Assad who’s killing Syrians in 2017.

Once seen by the international community as a potential reformer, al-Assad has few friends left. Russia continues to protect al-Assad in the the UN Security Council. 

In June 2014, Assad was included in a list of war crimes indictments of government officials and rebels handed to the International Criminal Court. …

Nobody knows exactly how much money Assad and family have extracted from Syria. One estimate says Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has amassed up to $1.5bn (£950m) for his family and his close associates. Hidden out of the nation, of course.

Sooner or later al-Assad will be gone. What comes next may be even worse — the tiny impoverish, war torn country the spoils of many different warlords.