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21 Years Served For Winning Horse Race Against Assad Brother

21 Years Served For Winning Horse Race Against Assad Brother

There was much coverage of the announcement earlier this month of Bashar al-Assad's amnesty to commute or reduce sentences for thousands of prisoners in Syria, including some with connections to the ongoing uprising against the regime. But there was one untold case of a freed prisoner who has no connections to current events — and certainly no blood on his hands.

Adnan Kassar was released from a Syrian prison this month after serving more than 21 years. His crime? In 1993, Kassar won a horse race against Bassel al-Assad, son of then president Hafez Al-Assad, who was being groomed to take over from his father, Al Arabiya reports.

Kassar’s unlucky win would put him behind bars through two decades of transition in Syria that would include Bassel’s own death in 1994, when his Maserati slammed into a roundabout. President Hafez Al-Assad died six years later, succeeded by his other son, Bassel’s brother Bashar, the ophthalmologist-turned-politician widely denounced for human rights abuses and his ruthless hold on power.

It was in fact Bashar who granted Adnan amnesty this month, following elections that granted him another seven-year term as president. The winner of that race, of course, was never in doubt.

Photo: Portrait of Bashar al-Assad's Bassel — Source: James Gordon

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Society

Mapping The Patriarchy: Where Nine Out Of 10 Streets Are Named After Men

The Mapping Diversity platform examined maps of 30 cities across 17 European countries, finding that women are severely underrepresented in the group of those who name streets and squares. The one (unsurprising) exception: The Virgin Mary.

Photo of Via della Madonna dei Monti in Rome, Italy.

Via della Madonna dei Monti in Rome, Italy.

Eugenia Nicolosi

ROME — The culture at the root of violence and discrimination against women is not taught in school, but is perpetuated day after day in the world around us: from commercial to cultural products, from advertising to toys. Even the public spaces we pass through every day, for example, are almost exclusively dedicated to men: war heroes, composers, scientists and poets are everywhere, a constant reminder of the value society gives them.

For the past few years, the study of urban planning has been intertwined with that of feminist toponymy — the study of the importance of names, and how and why we name things.

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