Ottawa has reached a $10-million settlement with Maher Arar over Canada's role in a U.S. decision to deport him to Syria, where he was jailed and tortured. According to different video footage, Maher personally shot unarmed protesters in several different locations. Another powerful Alawite family, the Makhloufs have also held powerful positions in Syria through marriages of their respective members to the Assad clan. Maher al-Assad, the younger brother of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, is accused of being responsible for the recent chemical attacks in Syria. She told Reuters about Maher’s violent past, but also about his great arrogance and ignorance to ideas other than his own.

He is known for his notorious atrocities against protesters and opposition forces during the Arab Spring protests and later in the civil war, too. After former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad’s eldest son, Bassel al-Assad, died in a car crash in 1994, Maher was widely rumored to be the next in line for the Syrian head of state. Shawkat had to be transported to France for life-saving surgery. Video, 00:00:57'Vote him out': Trump booed at US Supreme Court, Third time's a Mercury Prize for Michael Kiwanuka.

Today’s news has reports of a UN official claiming it was Maher’s order that called for the chemical attack. Due to his reputation for being hot-tempered, he was overlooked by the ruling Ba’ath Party and the Army in favor of his older brother by two years, Bashar al-Assad, who is now the Syrian president. The two were not related to each other by blood. According to some report, he owns more than half of Syria’s wealth.

Fourteen years after joining, he became its top commander in 1964. The Bloomberg report suggests that his rash nature may have contributed to the decision, rather than a strategic decision by his older brother, President Bashar al-Assad. Until 2000, he led Syria with an iron fist, suppressing rebellions by force and leaving a violent legacy to his son, Bashar al Assad, who emulated his harsh methods and repressed the Arab Spring protests in its early stages in 2011. But after the two brothers met in Rifaat’s house, the younger brother decided to defer to the older brother, ordering his troops to pull back from their positions in the capital Damascus. He was later killed in 2012 in the attack that resulted in Maher losing his leg. A picture is worth a thousand words. More than 400,000 people were killed under Assad’s brutal dictatorship. Video, 00:00:53, The prisoners fighting California’s wildfires. He began life as a doctor in 1988. He made us shoot at their hearts and heads. The trail of destruction that Assad's police and armed forces left sparked a brutal civil war. “We saw father at home but he was so busy that three days could go by without us exchanging a word with him. Pakistan's Gilgit-Baltistan: Between the Kashmir conflict and China, Magawa the rat wins a medal for sniffing out landmines in Cambodia, UK government pushes bill to ‘decriminalise torture’ by troops overseas, Saudi Arabia adopts “soft normalisation” with Israel, Show people, places and other topics in this story. (Getty). Through them, he cemented his position as an indispensable public figure. (Getty). As a family, we used to spend a day or two in Lattakia in the summer, but then too he used to work in the office and we didn't get to see much of him,” remembered Bassel al Assad, Hafez’s eldest son, who was expected to succeed the father.