“When they wanted to get him out of Syria there was a conspiracy to get him out,” he told the Telegraph. “When he left (Syria) in 1984 they started to accuse him of corruption, of everything, because they wanted to blame him for everything.” Rifaat al-Assad is not thought to have applied for asylum in Britain, as he had lived in exile in France for more than 10 years before he set up a home in the UK.