Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa has signed a temporary constitution that will be in force for a five-year transitional period, three months after his forces led a lightning offensive that toppled Bashar al-Assad’s government.

By bnm Gulf bureau Ahmed al-Sharaa has signed a draft constitutional declaration, making him president of Syria for a five-year transitional period, state media reported on March 13. The committee tasked with drafting the constitutional declaration has granted the new Syrian president the authority to declare a state of emergency,

Syria’s interim president has signed a temporary constitution that leaves the country under Islamist rule for five years during a transitional phase

Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa was born in October 1982 in Saudi Arabia, where he spent the first seven years of his life. In a rare photograph of him as a child, found in a dossier compiled by Assad’s intelligence services, Sharaa has the same unsmiling, enigmatic expression he is often seen wearing today.

Religious and ethnic minorities, as well as the US and Europe, are wary about freedom of expression protections