Fahd Jassim Al-Frayj is the former Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Syrian Arab Army. Al-Frayj graduated in 1971 from the Military Academy and reached the rank of Lieutenant General in 2009. He was the Chief of Staff of the Syrian Arab Army and was then appointed Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Army and the Armed Forces (2012-2018). Al-Frayj was then the Minister of Defense of Syria from 2012 to 2018 and was directly responsible for implementing the brutal military response policy of the Assad regime against the peaceful uprising of 2011 until his dismissal in 2018; response which has resulted in over 610,000 casualties, over 130,000 forcibly disappeared, and the displacement of over half of the Syrian population His name has appeared on European, British, and Canadian sanction lists owing to his shared responsibility for the regime’s violent repression against the civilian population.