President Bashar al-Assad's brother-in-law, Assef Shawkat, was also the deputy defence minister. He was one of an inner circle of security chiefs focused on the Assad family, one of the top three in the regime, alongside the president's younger brother Maher although he was not always in favour.
According to some reports, Maher al-Assad shot him in the stomach in a row in 1999. In 2010 Shawkat lost his job as head of military intelligence, possibly because he was judged to have been at fault for failing to prevent the assassination of the Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus two years earlier.
However, Julien Barnes-Darcey, a Syria expert at the European Council of Foreign Relations, said: "At the end of the day, it is not the title that is important, it is the relationship to the family"
Shawkat's importance at the centre of power was unquestioned. He was targeted by US and EU sanctions for his role in directing the suppression of the uprising. Born in 1950 to an Alawite family, he emerged from obscurity to rise up the ranks in the Syrian army but rose to real prominence with his marriage in 1995 to Assad's sister, Bushra, 10 years his junior but a highly influential family member who serves as the president's assistant.