Amin al-Hafiz, known as Amin Hafez was a Syrian politician, general, and member of the Ba'ath Party who served as the President of Syria from 27 July 1963 to 23 February 1966.
10 Facts About Amin al-Hafiz
2.
Amin al-Hafiz was born in 1921 in a Sunni Arab family, the son of a police officer from the city of Aleppo.
3.
In 1948, at the age of 27, al-Hafiz volunteered to fight in the Palestinian war.
4.
When Syria broke with Egypt in September 1961, Amin al-Hafiz was sent home to Damascus.
5.
Amin al-Hafiz became president, instituted socialist reforms, and oriented his country towards the Eastern Bloc.
6.
On 23 February 1966, Amin al-Hafiz was overthrown by a radical Ba'athist faction headed by Chief of Staff Salah Jadid.
7.
The coup sprung out of factional rivalry between Jadid's "regionalist" camp of the Ba'ath Party, which promoted ambitions for a Greater Syria, and the more traditionally pan-Arab Amin al-Hafiz faction, called the "nationalist" faction.
8.
The coup was supported and led by officers from Syria's religious minorities, especially the Alawites and the Druze, whereas Amin al-Hafiz belonged to the majority Sunni population.
9.
Amin al-Hafiz died in Aleppo on 17 December 2009; reports of his age differ, but he was believed to be in his late 80s.
10.
Amin al-Hafiz was portrayed by Waleed Zuaiter in the Netflix series The Spy.