
TOKYO: Former Syrian diplomat Bassam Barabandi, who defected to the United States in 2013, says “the Assad regime’s dictatorial system is a copy of North Korea’s.”
Asahi Shimbun quoted Barabandi as saying that former President Hafez Assad, father of deposed President Bashar Assad, visited North Korea shortly after the 1971 coup in Syria and while there learned dictatorial methods such as ideological control and surveillance.
Barabandi also said that the nuclear reactor that North Korea was building in eastern Syria was likely funded by Iran. The Israeli military destroyed the reactor in an airstrike in September 2007.
It is also believed that the two countries collaborated on developing nuclear and chemical weapons.