Syrian Vice President Farouq al-Sharie has defected to Jordan, claimed spokesman for the Higher Revolutionary Council of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), Luay al-Miqdad, in an interview on Friday.

Miqdad told Al Arabiya that two other high-ranking officers have also defected, but did not give any names, Al Arabiya reports.

Sources from the Syrian opposition said that Sharie has been missing for the past two days and that he did not announce his “explicit” defection untill after he arrived in Jordan.

According to Miqdad, the regime of President Bashar al-Assad has been working on a scenario to make the FSA seem as the culprit behind Sharie’s “killing.”

Sharie, 74, has been Syria’s vice president since 2006.

Born in the southern city of Deraa, Sharie did not work in politics at first, but in the aviation sector early 1960s.

He has Bachelors in English, and in 1972 he left to study international law in London and was appointed in 1976 as Syria’s ambassador to Roma. In 1984, he served as the country’s foreign minister.