Syria's First Lady Asma al Assad breaks her silence In an email sent to The Times, which has not been verified by The Telegraph, Mrs Assad, 36, wrote that her husband "is the President of Syria, not a faction of Syrians, and the First Lady supports him in that role." Unlike her husband, who is a minority Alawite, she is also a Sunni whose family originally comes from Homs, the epicentre of the revolt against her husband, and the city bearing the brunt of the violence by his forces. Stylish and charismatic, with a degree in computer science from King's College in London, the former investment banker had helped promote the soft side of an iron-fisted regime. She had known Bashir al-Assad in London where he trained as an ophthalmologist. They married shortly after he assumed power, in 2000. She has been heralded as a voice of secularism and modernisation in a country torn between its hardline politics, its alliance with Iran, and its acknowledgement of the need to open up its society economically. But she has virtually disappeared from the public eye since the revolt broke out and had drawn criticism for her silence on a crisis that has left more than 5,000 people dead in her country. Last month she appeared with two of her children to support her husband of 12 years as he spoke at a pro-regime rally, but did not speak herself. The email is believed to be her first communication with the international media in 11 months.