Sarah Nakhleh, who won the title of Miss Arab Syria 2014 and was third-runner up in the Miss Arab World Pageant, expressed vehement support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in interviews to both an Egyptian TV channel and a radio show within a day of each other."Bashar al-Assad is a leader and an ophthalmologist," Nakhleh said in a video interview translated by MEMRI, "and no ophthalmologist in the world is capable of harming an ant." She reiterated her stance in a radio interview the next day, saying of Assad "I support him," and "at the end of the day he is a doctor and no doctor can possibly be a butcher."
