On Sunday morning, as gaunt detainees flooded out of Syrian regime prisons and jubilant Damascenes streamed into the presidential palace to root around among abandoned designer shopping bags, Bashar al-Assad was nowhere to be found.
The only sign of the dynastic president, whose family had ruled Syria for half a century, was his ubiquitous portrait. Except now, instead of being in its usual pride of place on walls and above desks, Assad’s images were being trampled under the feet of people the dictator had for years tried to bomb, gas and torture into submission.
