Luna al-Shibl rose from television presenter to one of Bashar al-Assad’s most powerful advisers, but her sudden death in 2024 exposed the dangers of proximity to a regime whose inner workings she knew intimately.
On 5 July 2024, Syrian news channels broadcast a startling announcement: Luna al-Shibl, one of President Bashar al-Assad’s closest advisers, had died after a car crash near Damascus. Officially, it was an accident. But among people who knew Shibl and understood her remarkable rise through the Assad regime, the explanation was immediately questioned.
“We were waiting for news of her assassination,” a source close to the regime’s inner circle told The Observer, referring to the months before her death. “She was digging her own grave.”
In the days that followed, competing explanations emerged. Some suspected that Iran had targeted Shibl because she was believed to be an Israeli spy. Others alleged that her relationship with Assad had become intimate and that the president had grown tired of her. Another theory focused on jealousy within the presidential palace, particularly from Assad’s wife, Asma al-Assad.
An investigation by The Observer, drawing on medical evidence and interviews with witnesses at the scene and the hospital where Shibl was treated, found evidence that added to suspicions that her death may have been deliberate.
Before entering the heart of the Syrian regime, Shibl was a familiar television personality. She became known as a presenter on Al Jazeera, where she hosted the current affairs programme Lilnisaa Faqat (For Women Only), covering politics and social issues affecting women across the Arab world.
In 2010, while at the height of her television career, she announced her resignation from the Qatari broadcaster. The stated reason involved management comments about her dress and appearance. But according to the account examined by The Observer, Shibl had already been cultivating a relationship with Assad. In 2011, she resurfaced in Damascus, working at the national security bureau, which co-ordinated Syria’s intelligence agencies.
Amira, whose name was changed to protect her identity, worked with Shibl for years in the first lady’s office. She said intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk had introduced Shibl to Assad, recommending her as a talented media performer capable of delivering forceful nationalist messaging.
“She was an artist with the media,” Amira said.
Her arrival in the presidential circle coincided with the Arab Spring, when pro-democracy demonstrations spread across the Middle East and protesters took to Syria’s streets. Shibl became part of the regime’s response, helping present the government’s campaign against opponents as a battle against terrorism and a defence of Syria rather than a popular uprising.
In February 2012, only months after moving into her new role, she was appointed head of the president’s media office. Four years later, she strengthened her position further by marrying Ammar Saati, a loyalist of the regime.
But rumours about the nature of Shibl’s relationship with Assad had already begun to circulate. Ibrahim Hamidi, a prominent Syrian journalist, claimed that the relationship was sexual and that Shibl was the president’s girlfriend. Hamidi also alleged that she was involved in bringing women to Assad.
Amira said she had heard similar rumours, including claims that Shibl had been asked to procure women for the president from “simpler backgrounds, including cleaners and the like”. Such allegations intensified tensions between Shibl and Asma al-Assad.
Abdo al-Dabbagh, a cousin of Asma, described Shibl as a serious problem for the first lady. “Just imagine: you’re sitting with your husband and his mistress and you can do nothing about her,” he said.
The allegations of an affair have been rejected by Asma’s father, Fawaz Akhras, who told The Observer that claims of Assad’s infidelity were “based on spurious articles, with no foundation” and said that “at no time did Asma discover serious infidelities by Bashar”.
Whatever the truth of those allegations, Shibl’s political fortunes changed sharply by early 2023. Despite years of loyal service, she was increasingly sidelined. She was removed from the Ba’ath party’s central committee and her responsibilities were reduced.
For someone accustomed to power at the centre of the presidential system, the loss of influence was difficult to accept. A regime insider said Shibl was expected to step back quietly and accept a smaller role. “But I don’t think Luna’s ambition could take that.”
Amira described a more volatile response. “Luna lost it,” she said. Shibl allegedly threatened members of the regime, claiming that she knew everything and might speak publicly. According to Amira, she described herself as “the real first lady” and spoke openly about Assad’s relationships with other women.
At the same time, suspicion surrounding Shibl extended beyond the presidential palace. A leaked memo written by Qassem Suleimani, the former commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force and a military strategist in Syria, warned Syrian intelligence that Shibl was a spy. Hamidi, whose publication Al Majalla first reported the comments, described the accusation as serious because of Suleimani’s position.
“She knew too much about everything,” Hamidi said.
The suspicion became more significant in 2024, as Israeli strikes against Iranian interests in Syria intensified. More than a dozen members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were killed in the early months of the year, culminating in the 1 April Israeli strike on the Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus, which killed seven IRGC officers, including one of Iran’s senior commanders in Syria.
Weeks later, Shibl’s brother and his wife were arrested at Damascus airport. Syrian intelligence accused her brother of leaking details of a sensitive meeting at the Iranian compound, information allegedly passed to Israel before the strike. His arrest further fuelled suspicions surrounding Shibl.
Those close to her described a woman increasingly distressed. Her nail technician recalled Shibl saying that everything would eventually work out because Assad “is moving worlds to bring back my brother”. But shortly before her death, she appeared angry and distracted.
On Tuesday 2 July 2024, Syria’s official news agency, Sana, quoted the president’s office as saying that Shibl had been involved in a car accident. A witness who arrived at the scene shortly afterwards told The Observer that marks on the vehicle appeared to indicate that it had been deliberately rammed off the road. The witness also said Shibl’s security detail had been delayed by traffic and that her head injuries appeared consistent with a blow to the back of the head rather than injuries caused solely by a crash.
A brain scan taken at al-Shami hospital on the day of the accident and seen by The Observer appeared consistent with blunt force trauma rather than a brain injury resulting from a crash.
Other details deepened the questions. The witness said Shibl’s personal mobile phone was later found in a bin, while a second work device was missing. The Observer also saw video showing Shibl’s driver and security detail being escorted from the hospital in handcuffs by Syrian intelligence officers.
The circumstances surrounding her funeral were equally unusual. Syrian media reported the funeral but did not show video footage, despite Shibl’s former importance within the regime. One attendee said few people were present and that her body was not draped in the regime’s flag, as had been customary for other senior officials.
Two years later, no official explanation has replaced the government’s account that Shibl died in a car accident. What is beyond dispute is how dramatically her position had changed. The woman who had once occupied a central place in Assad’s inner circle, helping shape the regime’s media strategy through years of war, had become increasingly marginalised before her death.
Months later, the regime itself would collapse. A rebel army advancing from the north swept towards Damascus, Assad and Asma fled the country in the middle of the night, and senior regime officials were left behind to face an uncertain fate.
Shibl’s story offers a stark illustration of the precarious nature of power inside an authoritarian system. She had risen through proximity to the president, accumulated knowledge of the regime and helped defend it through years of conflict. Yet when her influence diminished and suspicion gathered around her, the protection that proximity appeared to provide became far less certain.
Shibl believed that being close to power meant being protected by it. Her death, still officially unexplained beyond the account of a car accident, left a different question hanging over the final years of the Assad regime: what happens to those who know too much when their usefulness to power comes to an end?
Names and identities have been changed or removed to protect sources.
