Qaddafi daughter-in-law escapes arrest after deliberately running over Syrian policemen in Damascus

The daughter-in-law of former Libyan dictator Muammar Al-Qaddafi has deliberately run over policemen and pedestrians in the Syrian capital Damascus while drunk, activists and Arabic news websites have reported.

The New Arab’s sister site Al-Modon said that on Sunday Aline Skaf, a Lebanese former lingerie model who is married to Muammar Al-Qaddafi's son Hannibal, deliberately ran over two policemen in Al-Mazzeh, an upscale area of Damascus.

Hannibal Al-Qaddafi has been in prison in Lebanon since 2015 and Skaf has been granted political asylum by the regime of Bashar Al-Assad.

Al-Modon reported that Skaf, 40, had parked illegally on a side street in Al-Mazzeh and a policeman approached and started writing her a ticket.

Skaf's security guards, who were in another vehicle, then began to attack the policeman.

Other policemen arrived at the scene and Skaf drove her vehicle into the officers, while also running over bystanders.

Witnesses said that at least two policemen and three bystanders were injured in the incident. Skaf, who crashed into parked motorcycles, was not arrested.

Syrian social media users - including those supportive of the Assad regime - reacted with outrage and published photos of the incident on social media.

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They said that Skaf's security guards continued to beat policemen and bystanders who had gathered around her car.

She shouted insults and threats at the crowd, threatening to run over more of them.

Eyewitnesses said that a "senior regime official" then arrived at the scene and told policemen to make way for her car so she could drive away, saying the matter was "of concern" to him.

Suhaib Al-Masri, a pro-regime Syrian journalist working for Iranian Al-Kawthar TV, said that "the woman [Skaf] was released after running over and attacking policemen because a higher-up had got involved".

"People are not flies - they can't be run over and then the whole story is forgotten," he commented.

Al-Masri was previously injured while embedded with the Tiger Forces, an elite Syrian regime military unit which has committed atrocities against civilians.

Syrian fashion designer Manal Ajaj, who is based in the UAE and supportive of the Assad regime, said on Facebook: "Who is this official who has no problem with a policeman being dragged and humiliated by a woman with no respect?"

"If you're the daughter [sic] of a former president and you live here as a political refugee, you're welcome but you have to respect people and respect the country which opened its doors to you," she added.

Opposition Syrian social media accounts also expressed outrage.

This is not the first time Aline Skaf, who married Hannibal Gaddafi in 2003, has been involved in a violent incident.

In 2008, Swiss authorities arrested her and Hannibal for beating and abusing two employees at a hotel in Geneva. The incident caused a diplomatic crisis between Switzerland and Qaddafi's regime in Libya.

In 2011, following the Libyan uprising against Qaddafi's rule, rebels found Shweyga Mulla - an Ethiopian nanny employed by Hannibal and Skaf - abandoned at a luxury villa in Tripoli.

She testified that Skaf had tied her up and poured boiling water over her head because she had not been able to stop one of the couple's children from crying. Another of the couple's employees said that Mulla was regularly beaten and slashed with knives.

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