DAMASCUS, Syria — The bedroom featured soft recess lighting illuminating elegant cornicing and the dimpled headboard of the bed below. The mattress though, was resting on the coffee table in the middle of the room. 

Guarded by bulletproof doors several inches thick, this was the master bedroom in one of the palaces owned by Syria’s former President Bashar Al-Assad and his wife Asma until they were forced to flee to Russia earlier this week with their adult children.

Swept from power by a…