Conservatives break link to Assad family after outcry

A foundation run by a cousin of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad appears to have lost its links to the Conservative Party after hundreds wrote in to protest.

Daniel Kawczynski, the Tory MP who had agreed to sponsor an event funded by Ribal al-Assad, whose father once commanded Syria's feared special forces, pulled out at the last minute after Downing Street and the Conservative Party had distanced themselves from it.

The outcry followed a report in The Independent which revealed the link to the Assad family. The Eid al-Fitr event went ahead in a House of Commons dining room, but with no MPs present.

Mr Kawczynski, who visited Lebanon last year for a conference funded by Mr Assad's London-based foundation, Iman Worldwide, is hoping to put together a high-powered group of MPs and peers from all parties to promote democracy in the Middle East and North Africa.

The former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has provisionally agreed to be the group's co-chairman, giving it political weight. But yesterday Mr Straw told close colleagues that, for being involved, he would insist that the group accepted no sponsorship from any source that might discredit it.

Mr Assad, 36, is a British citizen who left Syria when he was nine-years old and is a critic of the Damascus regime, with good contacts in the Conservative Party. Eight Conservative MPs have accepted hospitality or sponsorship from his Iman foundation, which has donated money to the Conservative Support Club in Romford, whose MP, Andrew Rosindell, is a friend of Mr Assad.

His father Rifaat al-Assad is a former Vice-President of Syria and was commander of the special forces during the suppression of an uprising in 1982, which reputedly cost 20,000 lives. He left the country after losing out in a family quarrel, and owns a £10.3m house in Mayfair. Syrian exiles objected to the Commons being used as a venue for an event sponsored by Ribal Assad.