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Bashar al-Assad's regime has close historical ties to Britain, which opposition groups believe have been used to circumvent sanctions for years and will fund the family's exile.
President Assad's wife Asma, 49, is the daughter of Fawaz Akhras, a consultant cardiologist, and Sahar, a diplomat at the Syrian embassy.
Her family still owns the luxury home in west London where Asma grew up.
Since the start of Syria's civil war, the area has also become home to a large community of Sunni Muslim refugees who fled the Assad regime.
Asma called herself Emma while she was a pupil at Twyford Church of England High School in Acton, before taking her A-levels at the private Queen's College in Marylebone. After completing a degree in computer science at King's College London, she joined Deutsche Bank and later JP Morgan, working in New York, Paris and London.
She met her partner during a childhood holiday in Syria, but they got to know each other better when he moved to London in 1992 to train as an ophthalmologist at the Western Eye Hospital.
Assad suddenly returned to Damascus after the death of his older brother, Bassel, in a car accident in 1994. He inherited the dictatorship when their father, Hafez, died in June 2000.
The couple married six months later and now have three children.
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