The Truth About Syria

Following their military defeat at the hands of the regular army, the legions of the anti-Syrian coalition have now turned to blind terrorism.

Thus, on Friday, Syrian special services foiled an attempted attack in Aleppo, the second largest city. A suicide bomber riding on a minibus loaded with 1.2 tons of explosives, meant to destroy the densely populated neighborhood of al-Shaar, was stopped by security forces before he could detonate the device [1]

This follows the twin bomb explosions on Thursday that killed 55 people and injured 372 in Damascus. The attacks occurred almost simultaneously on a highway south of the city, during the morning rush hour when people were going to work and pupils to school. The blasts were so powerful they shook all the buildings in the capital. The attack was claimed by the terrorist group Jabhat al-nusra, the same one behind the January attack that killed 26 people in al-Midan, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Damascus.

Announcing that “the Kalashnikovs would not overthrow the regime,” the armed groups and their handlers abroad are gearing up to wage a “low intensity” war against Syria [2]

In late April, the Loutfallah 2, a cargo ship, was intercepted [3] in Lebanese waters, transporting 150 tons of weapons to be delivered to Syrian fighters, including 155mm shells earmarked in theory for heavy artillery, something the the armed opposition does not have. The explosive charge of these shells, which contain a mixture of TNT and RDX, may however be used to manufacture extremely powerful explosives.

Moreover, at least five explosives experts recently arrived in Syria from Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.

One of them, Abdel Ghani Jawhar, chief bomb maker of the pro-Saudi terrorist group Fatah al Islam, was killed in the border town of Al-Qusayr when the bomb that he was planting against the Syrian army went off accidentally. A chemistry graduate, he went to Syria to teach fighters how to develop explosives and car bombs [4].

While Western and Gulf states media allege that the armed groups are defending the population against the “regime’s bloody crackdown,” this version has been consistently contradicted by the facts since the beginning of the operation to destabilize the country in March 2011. Seeking to cause chaos to justify a foreign “humanitarian” intervention, it is indeed the mercenaries sponsored by the international coalition who are perpetrating these attacks, which target not only the army and the police, but also the civilian population.

[1] “Un terroriste actionne sa ceinture explosive en tentant de faire exploser un microbus bourré d’explosives à Alep,” SANA, 11 May 2012.

[2] “ALBA countries join chorus condemning “Contras” interference in Syria,” Voltaire Network, 7 February 2012.

[3] An arms-laden cargo plane had already been seized in February this year: “Lebanese security officials seize suspicious cargo from US, Brazil”, Voltaire Network, 8 February 2012.

[4] “In Syria, Lebanon’s Most Wanted Sunni Terrorist Blows Himself Up,” by Aryn Baker and Rami Aysha, Globalspin, 23 April 2012. 

By Tom Miles

GENEVA (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is battling al Qaeda-backed “terrorists” including at least 15,000 foreign fighters who will seize towns across Syria if government troops withdraw, a Russian diplomat said on Thursday.

Russia is a staunch defender of Syria despite international condemnation of the crackdown by Assad’s forces and evidence of human rights abuses against unarmed civilians.

Addressing a one-day humanitarian forum on Syria at the United Nations in Geneva, Russia’s deputy ambassador Mikhail Lebedev said rebels had recently committed large-scale attacks against Syrian infrastructure, including schools and hospitals.

“Rebel groups attack, kill, torture and intimidate the civilian population. The flow of all kind of terrorists from some neighbouring countries is always increasing,” Lebedev told the forum.

Asked by Reuters how many foreign fighters were believed to be in Syria, he said: “How many got in through illegal routes? The border there is not demarcated, not delimited, so nobody knows. But at least 15,000.”

On Thursday, Kofi Annan, the U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria, said he would urge Assad and his foes to stop fighting and seek a political solution, drawing angry rebukes from dissidents.

Russia wants a ceasefire by all parties and an inclusive political dialogue. Lebedev told the U.N. meeting criticism of Assad was overdone.

“We urge our partners not to yield to temptation to exaggerate things but to expedite a balanced and professional approach to delivering help to all segments of the Syrian population with no exception,” he said.

“Most of the militants are indeed directly or closely affiliated with al Qaeda.”

COUNTERPRODUCTIVE

Lebedev told Reuters the information about al Qaeda links in Syria was an “unambiguous fact” but declined to say if Russia would provide the U.N. with evidence to back its allegation Syrian rebels were committing torture.

“All I know is that all the way through (the wars in the Russian region of) Chechnya nobody believed us when we said the Islamic underground, including terrorist organisations, was developing its operations on our soil,” he said.

“It’s just that five years later there’s a recognition that we did everything right.”

Lebedev said attempts to force Assad to rein in his troops unilaterally would be counterproductive.

“If we demand that the Syrian government withdraw its forces from the cities without addressing the same call to the opposition we should be ready (to see) that the relevant towns will immediately be occupied by the violent armed groups,” he said.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Sophie Hares)

In this photo, he can be seen in Libya (in blue bulletproof vest) with, on the right, Al-Qaeda leaders Mahdi al-Harati (in black body armor) and Abdelhakim Belhaj (in camouflaged jacket).

• Mahdi al-Harati married an Irish woman and lived in Dublin. Paul Conroy is from Northern Ireland and was raised in Liverpool.

According to former Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, Mahdi al-Harati is still wanted in Spain for his involvement in the Madrid bombings of March 11, 2004.

In 2010, with a well-groomed beard and an NGO cover, Mahdi al-Harati was planted by MI6 in the “Freedom Flotilla,” which was on a mission to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Mahdi al-Harati led the Al Qaeda brigade who besieged the Rixos Hotel in Tripoli in August 2011. According to Khamis Gaddafi, he was overseen by French instructors. According to a high-level foreign military source, NATO had given al-Harati the assignment of capturing the Libyan leaders who sheltered in a secret facility of the hotel, and of murdering former congressman and Martin Luther King assistant, Walter Fauntroy, who was staying in the hotel. He was also to eliminate two Voltaire Network collaborators, Thierry Meyssan and Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, who were based at the Radisson Hotel, whence al-Harati operated his torture center. This decision had been made at a meeting restricted to the NATO command in Naples a few days earlier. The meeting minutes mentioned the presence of Alain Juppé. When questioned, his secretariat denied any involvement by the French Foreign Minister, saying that he was on vacation at that time.

In October 2011, Mahdi al-Harati organized a model village in Syria located in the mountains on the Turkish border. For two months, he hosted Western reporters singing them the praises of the Syrian “revolution.” The village is inhabited by a tribe that was paid to stage demonstrations and pose for the press. Al-Harati was visited in particular by Paul Moreira of Canal Plus and Edith Bouvier of Le Figaro.

• Abdel Hakim Belhaj is Ayman al-Zawahiri’s right-hand man, and currently Al Qaeda’s number two commander. Although officially still one of most wanted criminals in the world, NATO named him military governor of Tripoli.

Abdel Hakim Belhaj holds a Qatar residence permit.

Abdel Hakim Belhaj has recently made several trips to Turkey, where he was given an office on the NATO base at Incirlik, and to Syria where he built up several groups comprising up to 1,500 combatants. According to Ayman al-Zawahiri, it was his men who perpetrated the attacks in Damascus and Aleppo.

His organization, the Islamic Fighting Group in Libya, has merged with Al-Qaeda but still figures on the terrorist list of the U.S. State Department and the British Home Office.

By associating with renowned terrorists, Conroy falls within the scope of the law of both in United States and Great Britain for complicity or association with a terrorist group. He faces 15 years in prison, unless he pleads immunity as an agent of the Crown.

DAMASCUS– Terrorist Yasser Fouzi al-Abd on Tuesday confessed to assassinating businessmen Mahmoud Ramadan and Mahmoud al-Sourani, in addition to committing acts of killings, robbery and sabotage in Aleppo Province and its countryside.

In confessions broadcast by the Syrian TV, al-Abd said ” Mohannad Jafala and I were close friends, we had the same salafi ideas.”

He added that Jafala was a jihadist in Iraq, adding that he had stayed in Tikrit city for three months during the war.

“We made a group and named it ‘Abu Amara Battalion’, its members were Mohannad Jafala, Hassan Othman, Abdul-Fattah Abdu-Majid, Said Hajj Othman and I.” He confessed.

Al-Abd added that they set fire to many cars in several neighborhoods, the cars were for people who support the government.

He confessed to looting several shops and stores in order to buy weapons and to rent a house to be their center.

“We were stealing cars and sending them to ‘Abu Ali’ in Dabiq town, Abu Ali would paint the cars and change their panels. As for explosives, we got them from ‘Huzayfa Jandouri’, he was specialized in manufacturing home-made explosive devices.”

“One day, four persons visited us and said they want us to kill a businessman named ‘Mahmoud Ramadan’, they asked us to help them in planning the assassination because we had weapons and experience in this field.”

Terrorist al-Abd said that they had a ‘Facebook’ page and they were listing posts on all of their operations, adding that the name of the page was ‘Abu Amara Battalion’.

“After we killed Mahmoud, we were surprised that he was a brother of one of Istanbul Council’s members whose name is ‘Ahmad Ramadan’. Istanbul Council asked Ahmad to delete the post about the assassination from Abu Amara Battalion page because they had other plan.”

“At that time we had an account in Turkey opened and funded by two persons, Hassan Hashem Abu Omar and Yassin Abu Ahmad who had connections with Turkey. I told them that if they want to delete the post from the page, they must support the battalion financially through our account in Turkey and they agreed. We sent them the account number and deleted the post. After two hours, the Council issued a statement in which Ahmad Ramadan accused the Syrian security forces of killing his brother Mahmoud, but they didn’t send us any money.”

He added that he brought two pump-action shotguns to a person named ‘Jihad Albo Assi’, adding that he turned to be a member of al-Qaeda.

“I was told that they are preparing for something big in Aleppo, they gave me a list of materials to bring, they told me these materials are the recipe used by al-Qaeda to make explosives.”

“They had a leader in each town in Aleppo Countryside, they called the leader ‘The Hajji’ –religious rank-, the Hajji of Mari’a town was a jihadist in Afghanistan, The Hajji of Indan city ‘Abdul-Aziz Salama’ was the general leader of the countryside, they told me that he takes direct orders from al-Qaeda.” He concluded.