President Bashar al-Assad’s name has been synonymous with brutality and repression for a generation. His legacy — presiding over the deaths of an estimated 300,000 Syrian civilians — is made all the more astonishing given that he was once a member of the medical profession. Assad graduated as an opthalmologist in Damascus in 1988, before pursuing an advanced degree at London’s prestigious Western Eye Hospital. There, according to Middle East expert Neil Quilliam, he was “sort of seen as the geeky I.T. guy,” NBC News reported.
