Hand in Hand for Syria

Transcription

Who is Hand in Hand for Syria Hand in Hand With? Dr Declan Hayes +447942440165
[email protected]
SYRIA’S CHARITY KILLERS: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This 437 page document forms part of my initial response to legal challenges made
by Hand In Hand for Syria, an opaque charity working in league with several other
equally opaque groups ostensibly to bring humanitarian aid to Syria on a nonpartisan and non-sectarian basis. It also forms the basis of my talk at Syria’s
Damascus University on Friday 24th April 2015 as part of their 100th commemoration
of the Armenian genocide and of those more recent massacres currently being
visited upon the peoples of Syria and Iraq. Though current as of 9 April 2015, it will
be periodically updated as new information to clarify the various points it makes
comes to hand.
The document uses Hand in Hand for Syria’s charges against my earlier work as the
bedrock not only to dismiss their arguably frivolous, if not downright mischievous,
charges but to outline in some considerable detail the soft power forces, medics and
media personnel in particular, arrayed against the peoples of the Syrian Arab
Republic. In asking well over one hundred serious questions of Hand in Hand for
Syria and of their accounts (those latter primarily in appendix 2a), it seeks to unpeel
the opaqueness and secrecy which are so much an apparent hallmark not only of
Hand in Hand for Syria but also of more sinister groups, such as the Syrian Muslim
Brotherhood, which lie at the heart of today’s sectarian terrorist campaigns against
the peoples of Syria. In highlighting the direct threat to life and limb Syria’s terrorist
groupings pose to us all – as evidenced by such events as the abduction and brutal
murder of British aid workers and British media personnel in Syria, the vicious
Cricklewood assaults on me, on Syrian toddlers, on a Nobel Prize winner and on a
Nobel Peace Prize nominee by Hand in Hand for Syria activists, the gangland-style
April 2015 killings by Syrian criminal mobsters on London streets as well as
countless other connected murders and threats – the importance of this document to
the general British and Irish public should be obvious. In questioning various
elements of the fund-raising and fund dispersal operations of Hand in Hand for Syria
and kindred groups, as well as the loyalties of many of the colourful characters
involved with them, the paper is of considerable national security and civil society
importance as well. The apparent failure of the Charity Commission and other
regulatory groups to stop Hand in Hand for Syria and kindred groups needlessly
risking the lives of their volunteers, many of whom have been murdered as a
consequence, must also be noted and acted upon.
This paper, the usual caveats notwithstanding, forms part of my attempts to make
amends to the men, women and children of the Syrian Arab Republic for the
unspeakable crimes committed against them, often in our name, by the barbarians of
the various terrorist rebel franchises, ravaging their land – a gang of demonic thugs
aided and abetted, as often as not, by our so-called betters, shamefully hiding, like
the Nazis before them, under a cloak of mundane respectability.
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“Dodgy” Syrian Charity Threatens Syrian Peace Activist
Hand in Hand for Syria Redux: Caveats, Disclaimers and Executive Summary
By Dr Declan Hayes
The Issue: Hand in Hand for Syria, through Nelson’s their solicitor, have made a
large number of claims against me and, as well as refuting all of their claims, I have
made a number of counter-claims against them, not only for my own sake but also
for the sake of the peoples of Syria, Britain and kindred countries.
Hand in Hand for Syria’s Claims: In a letter dated 27 February 2015, appended
herewith, Hand in Hand for Syria have made a large number of claims, summarised
below, concerning my appended letter of 23 July 2014. The dates, together with the
seven-month difference between them, are important when we consider, as
Nelson’s ask us to do, the nature of the damage allegedly done to their client as a
result of the earlier letter which Nelson’s say is a “29 page comprehensive
document.” This latter point concerning the size of the original document is also
relevant in determining if it and this much larger document were or are primarily
malicious and aimed at “placing the trustees and the volunteers at risk, not only in
the UK but also in Syria” or if their respective sizes were or are necessary to explore,
discuss and analyse the apparent opaqueness, governance shortcomings and
political biases of Hand in Hand for Syria, factors that are of the utmost importance
not only in the UK but also in Syria, where fifteen of Hand in Hand for Syria’s own
members have been needlessly murdered.
Hand in Hand’s for Syria’s Charges: Nelson’s letter on behalf of their client make a
number of charges. Some of these are stated in general terms, others in much more
specific terms and yet others are only hinted and more are inferred at. All of these
claims from Nelson’s letter are first summarised hereunder and are then explored,
together with my counter claims and supporting evidence, in the many pages which
follow.
Hand in Hand’s for Syria’s General and More Specific Charges: Nelsons’ letter
of 27 February 2015 say that my letter of 23 July 2014
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Is defamatory to their client.
Claims their client supports the armed Syrian army.
Claims their client is providing financial support to the armed Syrian
opposition.
Claims their client is funded by a notorious Saudi extremist.
Claims some of their client’s key leaders have long supported the
armed Syrian opposition.
Claims their client works mostly in rebel extremist areas.
Claims their clients are collaborators of the Syrian army.
Claims their client supports the extremists and the Syrian army.
Is defamatory as their client does not support Syrian army.
Is defamatory as their client does not support the extremists.
Infers their client supports the extremists and the Syrian army.
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Places their client and their families at serious risk as a result of these
untruths.
 Claims their client is open and transparent in the rebel controlled areas
of the Syrian Arab Republic.
 Claims their client’s operations are underhand and tokenistic in the
government controlled areas of the Syrian Arab Republic.
 Infers their clients are primarily supporters of the Syrian rebels which
Nelson’s says is untrue because government areas are too dangerous
for them to operate in.
 Claims Mr al Arête is a Hand in Hand for Syria benefactor.
 Falsely and dangerously say Ms Iman Mujahed is a trustee of Hand in
Hand for Syria.
 Highlights Dr Rola Hallam and therefore likewise endangers her.
 Groundlessly and maliciously questions Dr Hallam’s medical
competency as a doctor in a manner intended to damage her
reputation.
 Is guilty of not only all these charges but many others too numerous to
summarise for now that are likewise untrue and/or defamatory.
 Places the trustees and volunteers at risk, both in the UK and also in
Syria.
 Is so damaging that “a significant sum” will have to be paid to redress
them and the offending material must also be expunged from the
Internet.
My Partial Response: The above summary and the pages which follow are an
attempt by me to address the above charges as well as some others in the letter I
may have missed, to lay the basis for my own counter-claim, to provide relevant
context for the claims and counter-claims, to provide more relevant information on
the issues raised as well as others related to them and to help the relevant
authorities with their ongoing inquiries into these issues, which are very much of
public concern.
Matters of Concern: Before we proceed to the next level, Hand in Hand for Syria
must first address the following questions amongst others:
1. What specific agent instructed Nelson’s and who was consulted prior to
Nelson’s issuing their letter?
2. Will Hand in Hand for Syria explain the presence of the flag of the terrorist
Free Syrian Army on their logo?
3. Will Hand in Hand for Syria explain the input of Abdullah Alrachid, the Turkishbased designer, into their earliest poster designs and how that squares up
with them being a Leicester start-up?
4. Will Hand in Hand for Syria explain why they insisted to the British designers
that the original clasped hands and relating ideas linking them to the terrorist
Free Syrian Army had to be retained?
5. Will Hand in Hand for Syria explain the presence of the flag of the terrorist
Free Syrian Army at many of their events?
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6. Will Hand in Hand for Syria denounce the crimes, war crimes included, of the
self-styled Free Syrian Army and all other terrorist groups operating in Syria?
7. Will Hand in Hand for Syria or Nelson’s explain why “our client does not
support the Syrian army?” and how they manifest that lack of support?
8. Will Hand in Hand for Syria comment on the ongoing collaboration between
the Free Syrian Army terror gang and others Syrian death squads? Do they
approve of such joint ventures?
9. Will Hand in Hand for Syria take disciplinary action against Hand in Hand for
Syria leader Faddy Salhoul for displaying pro-terrorist messages on his
Facebook page and if not, why not?
10. Will Hand in Hand for Syria explain why they are headquartered in Rayhaniya,
which is where the Free Syrian Army terror gang are headquarted?
11. Will Hand confirm in Hand for Syria if ISIS allow them to operate in Raqqa and
if they treat victims of amputation by ISIS there?
12. Will Hand in Hand for Syria confirm if they still operate in Idlib and how Syrian
Arab Army reverses have changed the situation for them there?
13. Will Hand In Hand for Syria confirm whether they regard Sheikh Muhammed
al-Arafe as a dangerous fanatic?
14. Will Hand In Hand for Syria comment on whether they believe the British
Government were right or wrong to ban Sheikh Muhammed al-Arafe from
returning to England?
15. Will Hand In Hand for Syria explain how and why they secured Sheikh
Muhammed al-Arafe as a speaker so soon after their own incorporation and
who organised bringing that repulsive criminal to speak at Leicester to speak
on their behalf?
16. Will Hand in Hand for Syria denounce sex jihad, as well as all who preach and
practice it and will they also condemn the appalling sex crimes of the Syrian
terrorist rebels?
17. Will Hand In Hand for Syria apologise to British and Syrian rape victims for
show-casing child sex apologist Sheikh Muhammed al-Arafe at their Leicester
University rally?
18. What verifiable guarantees will Hand in Hand for Syria give that they will no
longer collaborate with jihad sex apologists like Sheikh Muhammed al-Arefe in
the future?
19. Will Hand in Hand for Syria surrender to the British police any and all records
they have of their University of Leicester 25 March 2012 rally and related
meetings with jihad recruitment sergeant Sheikh Muhammed al-Arefe?
20. Will Hand in Hand for Syria confirm the truth or otherwise of the following
statement?: “Neither the Syrian government nor the Free Syrian Army (or
other opposition groups) constrain our activity, which means we can work
across borders and behind front lines”.
21. In the light of the murder of Alan Henning and fifteen of their own members,
will Hand in Hand for Syria comment on the wisdom or otherwise of the advice
of the Charity Commission, the British Home Office and the EU regarding
doing voluntary work in Syria.
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22. Will Hand in Hand for Syria confirm why they feel entitled to disobey British
Government and EU rulings on working in Syria and will they confirm if
ignoring such advice contributed to the murder of fifteen of their members?
23. Will Hand in Hand for Syria confirm if and why they ignored the December
2012 warning of the Charity Commission to "assess the risks to any staff and
volunteers before deciding whether they travel to Syria”.
24. Will Hand in Hand for Syria release the names of their fifteen members who
were brutally murdered?
25. Will Hand in Hand for Syria confirm what governance changes they have
made in the light of those murders?
26. Taking the Nuremberg Trials, referred to below, into account, has Hand in
Hand for Syria a position on whether medics, media propagandists and other
non-combatants should face trial for their complicity in the war crimes of
others?
27. Will Hand in Hand for Syria come clean with what they know about the
operations, logistics, command structures and other crucial factors about the
rebel areas they operate in so that the Western special forces may better
launch rescue missions for British and other hostages held there?
28. Does Hand in Hand for Syria confirm the statements of rabid anti Assadist
propagandist Michael Weiss on page 193 in his “ISIS: Inside the Army of
Terror” that the ISIS criminal gang occupied Atareb? If so, in light of the
statements of Dr Omar Gabbar and others, will they confirm what precisely
was the relationship between the staff at their flagship Atareb hospital and the
ISIS criminals who ruled Atareb?
29. Does Hand in Hand for Syria agree with the genocidal views of the veiled
woman on one of their PR videos, cited below?
30. Will Hand in Hand for Syria confirm whether they have dealt with members of
the Free Syrian Army and other terrorist gangs in Syria?
31. Will Hand in Hand for Syria confirm whether members of the Free Syrian
Army and other terrorist and criminal gangs in Syria?
32. Does Hand in Hand for Syria agree with the statements of rabid anti Assadist
propagandist Michael Weiss on page 181 in his “ISIS: Inside the Army of
Terror” that the Free Syrian Army criminal gang “was financed by the Muslim
Brotherhood?”
33. Will Hand in Hand for Syria clarify their position on the Muslim Brotherhood in
general and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood terror gang in particular?
34. Will Hand in Hand for Syria confirm whether it is a secular or sectarian body?
35. Will Hand In Hand for Syria clarify its apparently close role with controversial
Muslim organisations and will it clarify how it expects non-Muslim or nonSunni supporters to view that apparently increasingly close relationship?
36. Will Hand in Hand for Syria clarify its position regarding the Syrian National
Council and other quasi representative bodies that have been linked with the
Free Syrian Army and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood terror gangs?
37. Can Hand in Hand for Syria clarify what it knows about such groups as Syria
Relief; Human Care Foundation and Muslim Charities and its relation with
them?
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38. Can Hand in Hand for Syria clarify why it works under the umbrella of the
Muslim Charities?
39. Can Hand in Hand for Syria issue a statement on the controversies
surrounding Syria Relief; Human Care Foundation and Muslim Charities?
40. Can Hand in Hand for Syria clarify if they had any involvement with the Hand
In Hand for a Free Syria rally, which was addressed by notorious mercenary
Matthew van Dyke?
41. Can Hand in Hand for Syria clarify if they had any involvement with any of the
sponsors of the Hand In Hand for a Free Syria rally, which was addressed by
notorious mercenary Matthew van Dyke?
42. Can Hand in Hand for Syria clarify who World for Libya are and what is the
extent of Hand in Hand for Syria’s involvement with them?
43. Will Hand in Hand for Syria give details about the relationships they claim to
have with Libyans in Leicester and elsewhere?
44. Can Hand in Hand for Syria explain the presence of the Libyan Red Crescent
on the Turkish/Syrian border and why the Libyan Red Crescent deliver
supplies in Syria?
45. Will Hand in Hand for Syria supply us with the names of the Libyan Red
Crescent personnel operating in Syria so that their names, ranks and status
can be verified?
46. Can Hand in Hand for Syria confirm if the presence of the Libyan Red
Crescent in the Syrian Arab Republic has been approved by the Syrian Red
Crescent and by The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent
Societies (IFRC)and, if not, why not?
47. Will Hand in Hand for Syria explain why they had a festival commemorating
the “Egyptian revolution?”
48. Will Hand in Hand for Syria comment on the inter-religious outreach
programme of the Muslim Brotherhood towards Copts and other minority
groups in Egypt?
49. Will Hand in Hand for Syria supply written proof of any Memos of
Understanding or other documents showing whether they have any working
relationship with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and, in
the absence of such proof, will they comment on whether they think their
videos of Dr Omar Gabbar in the vicinity of UNHCR tents might be
misleading?
50. What does Hand in Hand for Syria intend to do about the conflicting
information, a small sample of which is produced hereafter, on their trustees
that pepper the Internet, their own site included? How do they expect those
conflicting pieces of information, many emanating from themselves, to be
reconciled?
51. Will Hand in Hand for Syria confirm where Iman Mujahed was in Syria and, in
particular, if she travelled all over Syria on behalf of Hand in Hand for Syria? If
they cannot or will not supply evidence of her travels, will they admit that it is
reasonable to assume she confined her travels to areas contiguous to the
Turkish borders controlled by The Free Syrian Army and allied terrorist
murder gangs?
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52. Will Hand in Hand for Syria confirm what, if any, terrorist group they worked
with to get aid into Yarmouk camp on the outskirts of Damascus?
53. Can Hand in Hand for Syria confirm if they had dealings with the Golan
Turkmen, who are in control of parts of Yarmouk Palestinian camp and/or if
they had dealings with the Free Syrian Army terrorists the Golan Turkmen
arrested in Yarmouk?
54. Can Hand in Hand for Syria or their contacts in Yarmouk Camp explain the
English shop-front lettering on the Christine Gilmore photo from Yarmouk
camp?
55. Will Hand in Hand for Syria comment on why Dr Omar Gabbar speaks for
another group when he addresses Hand in Hand for Syria meetings?
56. Does Hand In Hand for Syria think British medics should join ISIS units
directly as long as they are not assigned to fighting units?
57. Will Hand in Hand for Syria instruct Dr Omar Gabbar to inform the British and
Syrian authorities on everything he knows about the activities of ISIS in
Atareb?
58. Will Hand in Hand for Syria clarify who its command, control and coordination
team are and what specific operating and/or governance supervision role
each person there has?
59. Does the command staff of Hand in Hand for Syria share the joy of Dr
Mahmoud al Akraa that the sinister Syrian Muslim Brotherhood terror gang
are making a comeback to Syria?
60. Does the command staff of Hand in Hand for Syria feel that the appearance of
Dr Mahmoud al Akraa with disgraced and discredited provocateur Danny
Abdel Dayyem lessens their own credibility?
61. Will Hand in Hand for Syria, as far as lies within their power, take disciplinary
and other action against Dr Mahmoud al Akraa and his ilk for their actions and
conduct, as alleged hereunder?
62. Will the command staff of Hand in Hand for Syria comment on the praise
controversial Irish expatriate, StandbySyria “activist” and apparent Hand in
Hand for Syria trustee Iman Muhahed/Murphy has heaped on disgraced and
discredited provocateur Danny Abdel Dayyem in her controversial
appearance on the controversial Islam Channel with the controversial Dr
Mousab Azzawi of the controversial Syrian Observatory for Human Rights?
63. Does the command staff of Hand in Hand for Syria agree with the comment of
Hand for Syria trustee Iman Mujahed/Murphy during her controversial
appearance on the controversial Islam Channel (shortly before the
controversial Dr Mousab Azzawi of the controversial Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights claims that 6,672 have lost their lives) that the Syrian
government is committing genocide?
64. Does the command staff of Hand in Hand for Syria agree with the comment of
Hand for Syria trustee Iman Mujahed/Mujahed during her controversial
appearance on the controversial Islam Channel that the West should arm the
cannibals and criminals of the Free Syrian Army?
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65. Will Hand in Hand for Syria, as far as lies within their power, take disciplinary
and other action against Irish expatriate Iman Murphy/Mujahed for bringing
them into disrepute, as alleged hereunder?
66. Will Hand in Hand for Syria tighten their governance structure and make it
sufficiently transparent and accountable so that independent researchers like
me and other concerned individuals will not be needlessly confused and then
threatened by them with legal action as a result of the confusion emanating,
as often as not, from them?
67. When will Hand in Hand for Syria release audited accounts and will they
submit their accounts to a forensic investigation and if not, why not?
68. Will Hand in Hand for Syria explain why they are so late having their accounts
audited and submitted to the Charity Commission?
69. Will Hand in Hand for Syria help clarify accounting issues raised in Appendix
two of this document?
70. Will Hand in Hand for Syria name the fifteen volunteers and operatives who
lost their lives in government-held Syria in the line of duty?
71. Will Hand in Hand for Syria sufficiently improve their governance structure so
that no more lives are needlessly lost?
72. Will Hand in Hand for Syria hand their operations in government-controlled
Syria over to reputable bodies in the manner I have suggested and, if not, why
not?
73. Can Hand in Hand for Syria clarify if they now operate in 90% or 70% of Syria
and, if the latter, when did this significant retreat happen, where did it happen
and were any more lives lost in the process?
74. Will Hand in Hand for Syria state precisely where they are operating in Kobani
and under whose auspices are they there?
75. Will Hand in Hand for Syria give details of their operations outside of areas
contiguous to the Turkish border?
76. Will Hand in Hand for Syria comment at length on the huge number of
apparent anomalies in in BBC’s controversial Saving Syria’s Children, only a
few of which are cited in the pages which follow?
77. Will Hand in Hand for Syria confirm what their opinion is of the crimes of
programme fixer/translator, Mr Al Mughira Al Sharif, who featured in BBC’s
controversial Saving Syria’s Children?
78. Will Hand In Hand for Syria comment on how the young teenagers shot in the
spine were evacuated to Jordanian hospitals? Given the grave nature of their
injuries, will they name them?
79. Will Hand in Hand for Syria make a financial donation to the family of my good
friend, the late Sunni Shiekh, Cheikh Mohammad Izzat Al Matroud, murdered
by the terrorists of the Free Syrian Army, whose flag forms part of their logo?
80. Will Hand in Hand for Syria explain why their leading members have shared
platforms with “humanitarian war” proponents such as Paul Conroy and
Gilbert Achar, both of whom played incendiary roles in the Cricklewood terror
attacks?
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81. Has Hand in Hand for Syria a view on the decision of the Swedish authorities
to prosecute members of the Free Syrian Army, whose flag formed part of
Hand in Hand for Syria’s logo, as war criminals?
82. Will Hand in Hand for Syria any and all monies denoted by people and
organisations, who now feel they were deceived into donating money to them
under false pretences?
83. Do the trustees of Hand in Hand for Syria feel they are personally liable for
any mismanagement or misinformation concerning Hand in Hand for Syria?
84. Will Hand in Hand for Syria supply full hard copy and electronic paper trails to
the relevant authorities in Libya, Britain, Syria and elsewhere so that all their
claims, relationships, partnerships and other matters of public interest and
safety may be verified?
More Questions: We ask many more important questions of Hand In Hand for Syria
and kindred groups in appendix 2a and in the pages which now follow. Although this
document will be amended accordingly when these questions are answered, the
hope is that, in the light of the most recent gangland hit, the police will start asking
these questions as part of their murder investigation as well as into sex jihad
recruitment and more general aspects of Syrian-related crime.
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Al Qaeda in Egypt Murder Anti-Muslim Brotherhood Supporters. Hand in Hand for
Syria celebrated the Egyptian “revolution”.
Graphic Warning: The next page as well as some of the appendices to this revised
document contains graphic pictures of the victims of the Free Syrian Army, Islamic
State and other terrorist groups operating in Syria. I believe including these
distressing pictures is necessary to drive home the nature of the threats, which the
peoples of Syria, Britain and kindred countries face, and which are integral to my
counter-claim against Hand in Hand for Syria, which had the flag of one of those
terrorist groups emblazoned on its logo.
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Hand in Hand for Syria Redux: Caveats, Disclaimers and Summary
Alan Henning: Brutally Murdered near the ISIS headquarters of Raqqa, where Hand
in Hand for Syria claim to operate.
My good friend, the late Shiekh, Cheikh Mohammad Izzat Al Matroud,
murdered by Free Syrian Army terrorists, late March 2015. This is a picture of
him brokering a peace deal which allowed thousands of human shields the Free
Syrian Army were using to be safely evacuated.
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More pictures I took of my late and good friend, the late Shiekh, Cheikh
Mohammad Izzat Al Matroud, murdered by Free Syrian Army terrorists, late
March 2015. I, and no doubt his widow, his children, his worldwide network of
friends, the peace-loving people of Syria and all others who met him, will remember
this Sunni tribal elder as the gentle, kind, compassionate, big-hearted, loving man
that he was and will find it difficult not to despise the twisted minds of his Free Syrian
Army assassins who lured him into a fatal ambush on the pretext of him brokering
another local peace deal, knowing that this simple soul would literally walk that extra
mile for peace or, in this case, into their fatal ambush in the hope of saving more
lives.
Dedication: This work is dedicated to all of those, Syrians and non-Syrians alike,
who have been murdered trying to bring peace, prosperity and happiness back to
Syria. These include the late Alan Henning, whose mutilated remains are
photographed above, and the fifteen volunteers, whose names I do not know, of
Hand in Hand for Syria, who were brutally tortured and murdered by person or
persons unknown. Any penalty that we have to pay for trying to bring peace and
transparency to Syria pales in comparison with their ultimate sacrifices.
Legal Purpose: Following complaints from Nelson’s, a firm of solicitors acting for
Hand in Hand for Syria, this document/letter has been extended from its original 29
pages to more than 380 to explore and, hopefully, satisfy their concerns. The extra
350 or so pages are to take on board Hand in Hand for Syria’s concerns by making
the purpose of the original document clearer by, inter alia, clarifying any ambiguities,
as far as is practicable, that may have existed in the former and to thereby elide the
need for any legal or other rash actions on their side.
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A Copy of Nelson’s Letter: Nelson’s appended letter may also be downloaded from
this folder here: www.taigs.com/Syria/home_beauty so that readers may check how
honest, open and transparent my treatment of their letter is. A large number of other
relevant documents are available in a separate folder inside that folder
Humanitarian Purpose: This document, like its much shorter predecessor, aims to
empower the Syrian peace process by critically examining some of the main players
in the conflict, Hand in Hand for Syria and its affiliates in this case.
Academic Purpose: The original document was an attempt to examine the
financials and related governance structure of a media-savvy, high-profile charity
operating in opaque circumstances and, as such, was a continuation of decades of
academic work I have done on other charities, football teams and sundry other
companies. Although those previous works can be produced if and when necessary,
I link here www.taigs.com/Syria/shelterbox.pdf as well as here
http://tinyurl.com/lpt2gdc , without comment or prejudice but only to cameo Hand in
Hand for Syria’s own governance-related issues, which we will address later, to a
lengthy relevant 551 page report on Shelterbox, a major international charity that has
been supplying dual-use material to Hand in Hand for Syria for quite some time now.
As the sheer size of both the Shelterbox report and this missive show, delving into
charities such as these is a time-consuming process not made any easier by their
apparent opaqueness and corporate governance shortcomings.
Legal Objectives: Hand in Hand for Syria, through their solicitors, have made it
widely known that they are most unhappy with the original letter/article. To try, in
part, to redress without prejudice all of their concerns, I have summarised and
addressed, at length, each and every one of the points of objections made in their
solicitor’s letter not only to avoid, if possible, costly and time-consuming litigation
from their side but to clarify the many issues raised so that Syria may be more
efficiently helped.
The Main Bones of Contention: Hand in Hand for Syria, through their solicitors,
allege I have defamed them, have told highly damaging untruths about them and
have thereby put their personnel and their families in grave risk. This much-extended
article allows for the truth or otherwise of their assertions to be more fully and
accurately ascertained.
Counter-Claim: I assert that it is I, along with many of their employees and
associates who have been put at risk, and I cite and/or include a necessarily
selective sample of evidence to that effect both in the main body of the article and in
the appendices.
Contents: This document is structured sequentially as follows:
1. Caveats, Disclaimers and Executive Summary.
2. Reply to Hand in Hand for Syria’s solicitors as well as a large number of
caveats, corrections, clarifications and apologies to show my good faith in this and to
further help propel the Syrian peace process forward by further empowering those
working for Syria’s most disadvantaged.
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3. Appendix 1: This is the original document, article or letter that caused Hand in
Hand for Syria to react as it did. Only the logo heading and some redundant contact
details have been changed or removed; other than that, the document retains its
original form, with nothing added, redacted or elided. This is to enable fair and
honest people to better judge if the allegations of Hand in Hand for Syria against it
can be sustained.
4. Appendix 2. My follow up document, which cursorily examined the unaudited
accounts of Hand in Hand for Syria. Because these unaudited accounts were
submitted very late, analysis of them could not be part of the original document to
which Hand in Hand for Syria so stridently objected. This section asks further serious
questions of Hand in Hand for Syria, which, one hopes, they will quickly answer to
the satisfaction of all people of good will. Though I have not revised it, I am happy to
do so once Hand in Hand for Syria or their agents supply me with relevant
information to clarify matters that may be in dispute. That said, I would hope this, my
submission, would form part of a fuller and more official investigation into the issues
raised.
Appendix 2a: This appendix examines the audited accounts for Hand in Hand for
Syria for the year ended 31 October 2013. As these accounts were only submitted
over the Easter 2015 weekend, it has not been possible to give the credit or time
they deserve. That said, this appendix asks many more serious questions of Hand In
Hand for Syria and it is hoped the police will now take over this examination in the
light of the most recent Syrian-related gangland hit.
5. Appendix 3: A selection of screengrabs concerning notorious Saudi extremist Mr
al-Arefe and his contacts with various charity and NGO groups Hand in Hand for
Syria should be very familiar with if, as the Charity Commission expect them to, they
did due diligence on him before showcasing this evil man to their supporters, friends
and other benefactors, many of whom were most probably radicalised into doing
(sex) jihad as a result of University of Leicester rally.
6. Appendix 4: The Fallen: Lest We Forget. The Crimes and Victims of the Free
Syrian Army and related murder gangs.
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6. Appendix 5: Other screengrabs, photos and comments which attempt to flesh
out Hand in Hand for Syria’s role in the Syrian crisis. These will probably be
expanded on receipt of Hand in Hand for Syria’s reply.
7. Appendix 6: An account of the violent demonstrators, many of them
prominent Hand in Hand for Syria activists and/or supporters, who disrupted the
Cricklewood meeting and who terrified the women and smaller children attending it in
the process.
8. Appendix 6: Addendum: My 30 November 2013 letter of complaint to
Hampshire police, concerning Christine Gilmore, Dr Mahmoud al Akraa and the
Cricklewood terror attacks.
9. Appendix 7: Syria’s Band of Muslim Brotherhoods. Current British government
investigations increasingly point to this shadowy, subversive organisation as the
power behind a whole range of interlinked charities and support groups for
questionable change across the Arab world. Though the original report on them is
included here in the appendices, they and their opaque ways feature in the main
body of this work as well.
10. Appendix 8: Short notes from Kessab, Saidnaya, Damascus and elsewhere
from my 2013 trips to Syria. These are important to show that I, in contrast to Hand
in Hand for Syria personnel, have been open and transparent in my movements in
Syria.
11. Appendix 8a: The Massacre of Armenians at Kassab, Syria under the support
of the Republic of Turkey, June 26, 2014. By Our Correspondent, Latakia and
Kassab, Syria. As we approach the April 24th 2015 100th anniversary of the Armenian
genocide, it is important to take note of our correspondent’s report on how Turkey,
through their proxies, continues the war of genocide against the Armenians the
criminals of the Young Turk movement initiated 100 years ago
12. Appendix 9: Some Closing Notes on our Embedded Media. Though these
short notes and comments could be expanded into a virtual library, these short notes
are important in assessing how groups like Hand in Hand for Syria have not only
been spared even the mildest criticisms but have been actively promoted at the
expense of the more established and less controversial ones. A forensic
examination of the media in the wars of the Orwellian-named Arab Spring would
indicate that Hand in Hand for Syria are most likely the tip of a rancid iceberg that will
poison our planet unless it is resolutely dealt with.
13. Appendix 10: A selection of correspondence from Nelson’s solicitors,
acting on behalf of Hand in Hand for Syria, and form the University of Southampton,
expressing their own concerns on this grave matter.
To summarise: The Syrian crisis is widely regarded as being amongst the world’s
largest humanitarian disaster since World War 2. For the surviving Syrian people to
emerge from this nightmare, it is essential that those groups, such as Hand in Hand
for Syria, which purport to help the Syrian people, adhere to the strictest and highest
levels of probity and transparency and that, in the case of Hand in Hand for Syria,
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more lives are not needlessly lost or, with regard to the wider family of fund-raising
groups, monies are not collected by unsavoury and/or unrepresentative characters
under false pretences. These my views, are shared by many, not least the Charity
Commission and Kent police, who have been charged with investigating, with a view
towards prosecutions, fraudulent charities connected with Syria. Although Hand in
Hand for Syria’s good name is, of course, vitally important to them, their good name
can best be maintained and enhanced by being open and transparent, rather than
being opaque and truculent. To paraphrase John 8:32, the Truth will set them and
Syria free.
Dr Declan Hayes, MA, MLItt, PhD, ASIA, April 2015
(Baptised according to the rites of the Catholic Church on 22 February, 1954 in the
Church of the Assumption, Howth, Co Dublin, Ireland).
The Mufti and I: This is a picture of me with my good friend, His Grace, Ahmad Badr
Al-Din Hassoun, the Grand Mufti of Syria, whose son was brutally murdered by the
Free Syrian Army terrorists for no other crime than for being his son. My own photo
is included so that radical Syrian extremists or their agents will not mistake someone
else for me should they decide to do a Lee Rigby on me. As this document later
explains, as a gesture of goodwill, when I again meet him in late April, I will urge His
Grace to use his good offices to enable Hand in Hand for Syria to transfer their
operations in government-controlled areas to religious, secular and/or international
charities of good standing who have been properly licenced to operate there and to
ensure that no-one is prosecuted as a result of Hand in Hand for Syria’s illegal
charitable activities. The fifteen Hand in Hand for Syria operatives who have already
been brutally tortured and murdered are fifteen too many.
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Background: On 23 July 2014, I sent a letter to a large number of interested MPs,
the Charity Commission, the London Metropolitan Police, the Hampshire Police, the
Kent Police and several other concerned bodies and people regarding my concerns
about Hand in Hand for Syria, an organisation that claims to be sending
humanitarian aid on a non-partisan and non-political basis to Syria. I attach the letter
as appendix 1, together with appendix 2, a follow-up I did analysing the unaudited
financial report they very belatedly submitted to the Charity Commission. Although
the Hampshire police informed me at the time the results of their enquiries would be
regarded as police intelligence and therefore would not be shared with me, I did hear
back on the grapevine that the Special Branch had interviewed people closely
associated with Hand in Hand for Syria, partly, I had imagined, as a result of my
work. Other than that, I got little or no feedback from my work and I began to forget
about Hand in Hand for Syria, but I was happy I had tried to play my part in
highlighting a matter of concern to the people of Britain, several of whom have
recently been brutally beheaded in areas of Syria Hand in Hand for Syria are most
active in.
Disclaimer: The above map, retrieved in April 2015 from the front page of Hand in
Hand for Syria’s website (http://www.handinhandforsyria.org.uk ) shows Hand in
Hand for Syria claiming to be operating in al Raqqa, where ISIS are headquartered
and where British citizens were recently beheaded; in Idleb where Jabhat al-Nusra
and the Khorasan Group, which the USA claims is infinitely more radical than even
the ISIS extremists, are both headquartered; in the terrorist enclaves of Aleppo,
which are now all but fully surrounded by the Syrian army; and even in the killing
fields of remote Deir ElZor, which is controlled on the one side by elite Republican
Guard units of the Syrian Arab Army and on the other by ISIS , which beheads nonpartisan British and other aid workers as a matter of course. Though Hand in Hand
for Syria have also repeatedly claimed to operate in Damascus without the
permission of the Syrian authorities, they simultaneously claim that neither the
Syrian Arab Army nor the various rebel terrorist groups terrorising the country
constrain their activities in any way. Those are incredible claims and truly amazing if
they are true and can be verified, and if Hand in Hand for Syria were to verify them
which, as a registered charity they should, no doubt millions more pounds in aid
would quickly replenish their coffers. Hand in Hand for Syria, through their websites,
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through their solicitors and through other channels have repeatedly declined to do
this, citing security fears, a not inconsequential fact given that they also claim fifteen
of their volunteers have been brutally murdered in the course of their clandestine
activities. Their safety concerns as well as the brutal murders of so many of their
staff does lead one to question if they adhere to basic Health, Safety and Welfare
standards and, if not, why not. No doubt, Nelson’s or Hand in Hand for Syria will
address this and other issues when the appropriate forum manifests itself. For my
part, as a gesture of goodwill, I am again bringing these apparent shortcomings to
the attention of the relevant authorities and the wider, concerned public so that they
may get both Hand in Hand for Syria and their solicitors to address them.
Hand in Hand for Syria Reacts: There I thought the matter had ended until I came
in possession on 12 March 2015 of a truculent letter dated 27 February 2015 Hand
in Hand for Syria’s solicitors had sent to my former employers, threatening to sue
them for substantial damages over my letter, a copy of which I had retained at
www.taigs.com/Hand-in_Glove.pdf where a copy of this amended version now sits,
together with a further copy inside the www.taigs.com/Syria folder. Though in a state
of profound shock as a result of this very robust letter from Hand in Hand for Syria’s
solicitors, I moved as quickly as I could to allay my former employer’s concerns by
removing the logo and address I had used when I posted my signed letter to the
relevant authorities, and I then moved to first consider the impact of the solicitor’s
letter, and what I could do to allay their concerns as well as those I harboured for my
own safety. I decided I first had to address Hand in Hand for Syria’s points, not only
to alleviate their concerns but to allay my own concerns about being potentially
bankrupted by the lawsuit, frivolous or otherwise, they had confronted my former
employer with. One result of these deliberations is this lengthy if necessarily
incomplete rebuttal of their charges as part of my counter-claim that I am the injured
party.
My Own Concerns and Actions: As appendix 8 in particular makes clear, I have
been a constant target of physical violent harassment by supporters of Hand in Hand
for Syria acting, it has to be said, in a personal capacity but in cahoots with more
sinister groupings the appendices explore. Some of Hand in Hand for Syria’s more
strident supporters even travelled from as far away as Leeds University to London’s
Cricklewood to physically and violently disrupt a public meeting I chaired with Nobel
Peace Prize Laureate Mairéad Maguire and Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Mother
Agnes Mariam of the Cross ( aka Fadia Laham) and they subsequently had the
police visit my house shortly after that on frivolous charges, which not only wasted
valuable Hampshire and West Yorkshire police time as well my own but lowered my
reputation with friends, work colleagues and neighbours who started to avoid me
immediately afterwards. As the appendices make clear, the London hall we had the
meeting at was subjected to sustained intimidation, as was an Irish TD, who hosted
us in the Irish Parliament. Importantly, even though my phone number was
prominently displayed on the promotional literature for the meeting, the violent thugs
who organised the intimidation, never contacted me but constantly phoned and
emailed the hall and the Irish politician’s office instead. Likewise, Hand in Hand for
Syria’s firm of solicitors never contacted me, even though my phone number and
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emails were prominently displayed on the letter, appended herewith, I sent to the
police and other bodies and which Hand in Hand for Syria retrieved online.
The result of this is that as I no longer feel safe even in my own house, I have put it
up for sale and I plan to flee the country before I am again physically assaulted
and/or my reputation, standing and esteem amongst my friends, neighbours and
acquaintances are damaged even more. My fears have, of course, been greatly
compounded by the way Hand in Hand for Syria communicated their concerns to my
former employers; because of the cast of characters, many very unsavoury, Hand in
Hand for Syria have been involved with, however tangentially, there is no knowing
what may happen next if legal action against me fails; as I type, I am watching
unmarked vans cruise by and I have to wonder if I will be bundled into one of them. I
feel my very life, as well as my reputation and good name, may now be in peril not
only in Britain and any other Western country where I could be “got” but also in in
Syria where I shall shortly return and where various groups Hand in Hand for Syria
have dealt with believe in torturing and murdering “Cross-worshippers” as they call
those born into the Catholic faith like me. So acute, in fact, is the danger, that my
local MP, with whom I am arranging another meeting and one of whose assistants
has just visited, has, amongst very many others, previously warned me about taking
on those with a vested interest in promoting Syria’s turmoil.
Public Enemies Number One: Syrian criminal mob preacher Abdul Hadi Arwani
(above left) was murdered in a gangland-style hit on a North London street on 8th
April 2015. Arwani, who was active during the bloody 1982 Syrian Muslim
Brotherhood massacres in Hama, preached at Acton’s notorious An-Noor Mosque,
which regularly hosted the son of fellow-radical preacher Abu Hamza aka Captain
Hook (above right), who is now serving life without the possibility of parole in an
American prison for his own war crimes. The Acton mosque was also the location for
the November 2013 escape of prominent terror suspect Mohammed Ahmed
Mohamed, who dressed himself as a woman to evade justice. Following this latest
hit, reports claim “a police source said the mosque had attracted a number of former
criminals who have turned to Islam and it was possible that a feud at the mosque
had turned violent”. The An-Noor Mosque has also hosted other extremist speakers
including Murtaza Khan, Shakeel Begg and Haitham Haddad and Arwani, who was
rabidly opposed to the secular government of his native Syria, was free to prowl the
streets of London until his fellow-gangsters stopped his gallop. As I spent all that day
in London myself researching another toxic Salafist preacher, I appreciate how
vulnerable we all are to these criminal sociopaths.
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Public Interest and Invasion of Privacy: Given that British subjects are being
beheaded in both London and Syria and given the role Hand in Hand for Syria claims
to have played in the Syrian conflict, as well as its very high public profile in the
British media, it is very much in the public interest to ask non-intrusive questions
about those who lead or who speak for groups like Hand in Hand for Syria. Likewise,
given the resources the British police have devoted to Syrian-centric bogus charities,
something Hand in Hand for Syria has also explicitly expressed concerns about, the
public interest necessitates that all such groups, Hand in Hand for Syria included,
are properly vetted. Given how over-stretched the Charity Commission, the police
and related bodies admit to being in areas like this, Hand in Hand for Syria should, I
feel, welcome rather than hinder such routine academic scrutiny and certainly should
not threaten and terrify neutral researchers like myself but should instead be
delighted that superficial contact details about them, which are already in the public
domain, are collated and disseminated; Hand in Hand for Syria should acknowledge
actions such as mine further enable them to clarify areas of serious public concern
and to thereby raise even more money after they are given a cleaner bill of health.
Their threats to sue and to otherwise punish those like me who disseminate contact
or other information that has already been widely disseminated is not in the public
interest and is not covered by the right to privacy. It is in the public interest that their
spokespeople explain their actions and, if they feel they are under threat in Britain,
they should, like me, report their genuine concerns to the police and other relevant
authorities and not try to bury independent, academic and other research.
Corrections and Disclaimers: In an effort to get to the truth, so that Syria may be
more effectively helped, corrections, clarifications and disclaimers will not only be
included but will also be highlighted in the paragraphs which follow to show my good
faith and to allow Hand in Hand for Syria to clarify matters rather than to further
obfuscate them. To facilitate that, the letter of Nelson’s solicitors, acting on behalf of
Hand in Hand for Syria, to the University of Southampton, dated 27 February 2015,
will now be given primary prominence so as to give priority, as far as is practicable,
to their concerns; their letter will be summarised and, for aid to digestion, will be
broken into sections, whilst ensuring nothing of note is lost. It is also available in its
entirety in the www.taigs.com/Syria/home_beauty folder as well as in the
appendices.
Nelson’s Letter, Part A: They inform the university that their client objects to a
letter, included here in the appendices, “published on the Internet, written by a Dr
Declan Hayes”…”on a Southampton University letterhead”. The university, in a letter
to me of 11 March 2015, politely and professionally asked me to remove all
references to Southampton University on my retained copy, which I now have done
so as not to unnecessarily complicate matters. The professional and measured tone
of the university’s letter stands in marked contrast to the very strident if not outright
bellicose tone of the person who drafted the letter from Nelson’s and I feel this
needless aggression is not helpful in this case or, indeed, for the cause of the people
of Syria and that Nelson’s should consider apologising for this seemingly needlessly
abrasive, unprofessional tone. I intend to ask the Solicitors Regulation Authority
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(SRA) to ask Nelson’s to reconsider their approach to elderly people like me in the
light of relevant recommendations from the Charity Commission and the SRA itself.
Nelson’s Letter, Part B: The letter then goes on to say that “the comments and
statements made…are defamatory of our client; in their natural and ordinary
meaning. Some of the statements made infer that our client:
1. “Is a supporter of the armed Syrian army.” Although this charge is repeated
and/or inferred several times, my article/letter nowhere says, implies or “infers” that
Hand in Hand for Syria supports the Syrian Arab Army, which is the official, legal and
only armed army of the Syrian Arab Republic. That statement is plainly wrong and so
is the implication that supporting the armed forces of an independent state of long
standing, which has an uncontested seat at the United Nations, is defamatory.
Further, to say, imply or “infer” that such a statement is defamatory puts me and
other people who enter Syria legally at risk both in Syria and in the UK and it also
lowers our standing in our respective communities and beyond. The fate of the late
Drummer Lee Rigby, referred to later, who was brutally murdered on a London
street, shows how dangerous and damning such statements can be.
2.”Is providing financial support to the armed Syrian opposition”. The
article/letter does not say, imply or “infer” this and nor do Nelson’s produce a quote
to substantiate that claim. The article/letter merely restates Hand in Hand for Syria’s
countless own statements that is has pumped dual-use supplies such as very
expensive satellite phones into areas controlled by the armed Syrian opposition,
areas where almost all their hospitals and depots are based and which, if their
tweets and Facebook pages are indicative, are exclusively their area of operations.
My letter/article makes the point, which is repeated in my analysis of their unaudited
accounts, that their financial dealings are opaque and open to question, just as are
those of any other charity, NGO or business. It is the job of financial analysis, work I
have competently conducted without controversy until now for over 30 years, to ask
questions on matters like this and that is precisely what I have done in this case and
it is up to those behind the accounts or to others analysing those accounts to
address the questions, to clarify ambiguities and not to bully, brow-beat and threaten
those like me asking these reasonable questions that are very much in the public
interest. Because all of that is bog-standard financial analysis practice, the fact that
both my professional integrity and professional competence have been drawn into
question and that this has been done through my former employers, has brought me
further into disrepute, and it has also led to offers of work being withdrawn, thus
further materially damaging me and damaging my imminent retirement prospects
and causing me further stress and more sleepless nights worrying about what is
going to become of me.
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No Safe Irish Haven: Irish like me are now “legitimate ISIS Targets” as their ISIS
operatives refine their Irish sleeper cells. Hand in Hand for Syria seem to admit they
treat these ISIS butchers in their hospitals and they cannot see why we should find
that problematic.
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Anjem Choudary: again tells his 28,000+ followers on Twitter that the Crossworshipping “Crusader Irish” like me are legitimate targets. He previously made
these threats in my alma mater, Trinity College, Dublin on 10 November 2005.
Although fleeing to a remote part of Ireland is one obvious fall back possibility,
articles such this recent report http://tinyurl.com/n5war8t where radical British jihadist
proponent Anjem Choudary once again says that the Cross-worshipping “Crusader
Irish” are legitimate targets for the Islamic head choppers means I could reasonably
expect to be chopped up in Ireland as well as here in Southampton where Choudary
studied at precisely the same Faculty of Southampton University where Hand in
Hand for Syria’s solicitors sent their threatening letter; given his prior connection with
the butchers of Drummer Lee Rigby, who followed the orders of Mr al-Arefe,
discussed later, to strike fear into the hearts of the “Cross-worshippers”, my own
fears are far from idle ones.
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The university angle is also important too as this link
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32059813 describing Home Secretary Theresa May’s
shows. Southampton University have not acted on dubious collections I have
reported to them, they seem unconcerned about staff members sporting terrorist
flags in their offices, they have recently banned academic conferences such as this
http://gu.com/p/475bp/stw at the same faculty, and other universities such as
Leicester, which have thrown their facilities open to the most extreme jihadist
elements, seem to be far worse. Not only that but academics and former students at
other universities have told me of the grooming process targeting vulnerable young
teenagers that is endemic in them. As the ISIS terror threats in both Britain and
Ireland mount, as the most extreme elements become more vociferous and much
better organised, the British people are supposed to lie back and not think of the fate
that awaits not only them but the Christians and other minorities of the Middle East.
The complicity of Britain’s universities is propelling us into the abyss.
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Islamic State Declare Open Season on British politicians: The Daily Telegraph of
25 March 2015 quotes Abu Abdullah Britani - believed to be Abu Rahin Aziz, a
former credit control operator from Luton imploring England’s Muslims to slaughter
British politicians. Aziz, who is linked to Hibernophobic hate preacher Anjem
Choudary, has previous form slicing up people. As leading members of the
Conservative Party have been particularly helpful to me, I have to also reasonably
expect to be a target of the more violent elements of the home-grown supporters of
the Syrian rebels. They have murdered others for less.
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Chlorine Gas Attack This 23 March 2015 report in the Independent tells the British
public to get ready for a no-warning chemical gas attack by the Syrian rebels. These
threats against both me and the British and Irish public are not idle ones.
3. “Is funded by a notorious Saudi extremist”. Hand in Hand for Syria must come
clean about their connection and that of their members with notorious Saudi
extremist Mohammad Al-Arefe and voluntarily or otherwise tell the police what, if
anything, they know about this evil man grooming youngsters, now-dead jihadists
included, in British mosques; as some of these impressionable young British citizens
groomed by al-Arefe have been killed while raping and murdering Christians in Syria
and, as hundreds more are reported to have returned to Britain to wage jihad against
their critics, me included, it is imperative for the public interest that Hand in Hand for
Syria immediately be made inform the press, the police, the Charity Commission and
the public at large what they know about al-Arefe and his extremist ring and what
they know about the extent of the danger Britain faces from these British-based
extremists al-Arefe has groomed and which Hand in Hand for Syria may have
facilitated, however inadvertently.
Hand in Hand for Syria must also explain why they gave a prominent platform to this
very violent man to spread his bile, an act which could ultimately bring them into
disrepute amongst British subjects and residents, whose inherent decency gets them
to unreservedly deplore the atrocities of The Free Syrian Army, al Nusra, ISIS and
the various other terrorist groups al-Arefe has lent succour to who are murdering,
torturing, raping and enslaving Syrians and in whose various slaughter houses Hand
in Hand for Syria claim to be able to work with, unimpeded.
Regarding funding, Hand in Hand for Syria should reveal who their earlier Gulf
sponsors were and if Saudi extremist fanatic al-Arefe, a key fund-raiser in the Arab
world for violent head-chopping child-raping jihadists, is one of them. Hand in Hand
for Syria should also reveal everything they know about al-Arefe and his associates
to the police, to the Charity Commission and to all others, myself included, who
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oppose the violent extremism al-Arefe typifies and the demonic caliphate he and his
allies work towards. All this should be done with a view to not only jailing al-Arefe
and neutralising his radicalising influences but undoing the very serious damage
Hand in Hand for Syria have wrought to the people of Syria by having al-Arefe as a
benefactor, an association Hand in Hand for Syria deny but one we shall return to
presently.
Clarification and Corrections: Although Hand in Hand for Syria’s solicitors have
stated Mr al-Arefe has not funded their organisation and has not been a benefactor
to them, Hand in Hand for Syria seem to now concede that that Mohammad al-Arefe,
who spoke at at least one of their meetings, is a notorious Saudi extremist but
categorically refute the allegation that he was one of their primary financial
supporters. The author unreservedly apologises for any undue hurt this may have
caused Hand in Hand for Syria and hopes they can clarify to the police, to the
Charity Commission, to the media and to all other interested bodies precise details of
their relationship with this notorious Saudi extremist, who is now banned from
entering Britain.
Mr al-Arefe is pictured above as a prominent speaker at a Hand in Hand for Syria
meeting. Hand in Hand for Syria should confirm whether the information contained in
these two (and other) links http://tinyurl.com/q5e8wyw & http://tinyurl.com/nv7m6n6
are true or false. They are archived copies at the Wayback Machine and they cite
"the Original Arabic article by London-based, award-winning journalist Nizar Nayouf"
and they list al-Arefe as a “shareholder and one of the sponsors” of Hand in Hand
for Syria. To facilitate the process of discovering whether, in fact, al-Arefe was one of
Hand in Hand for Syria’s primary sponsors or not, Hand in Hand for Syria must turn
their books over so that they can be forensically examined and their good name
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cleared; there is no other more practical way for Hand in Hand for Syria to clear their
good name than to come clean and open up their books to forensic examination. In
addition, Hand in Hand for Syria must also explain why, in innocence or otherwise,
they accepted al-Arefe as a benefactor to their meeting. In simple English: how, why
and to what purpose did they allow this fanatical hate monger speak at their meeting
and have they disciplined those who enabled him to bring Hand in Hand for Syria
into disrepute in this very serious way. Nayouf, who admittedly holds Dr Hallam in
low esteem and who refers to al-Arefe as the Mufti of "Jihad marriage" for reasons
we shall soon see, has opined that Hand to Hand for Syria is less than honest or
transparent in its financial dealings. Instead of filing a lawsuit against him, Hand in
Hand for Syria might be better employed first getting their financial and governance
houses in order, something the enigmatic Ms Iman Mujahed and others told us they
had done a long time ago, even down to the antiseptic, as she so eloquently put it.
In so far as Mr al-Arefe is not a financial supporter and/or a benefactor in any other
way to Hand in Hand for Syria, I unreservedly apologise but Hand in Hand for Syria
should understand that, failing certifiable evidence from them or others to the
contrary, researchers, journalists and others with the safety of their fellows at heart,
will continue to regard repeating statements about Hand in Hand for Syria’s
connections with the notorious Saudi extremist Mr al-Arefe as fair comment just as
they will continue to raise legitimate concerns about Hand in Hand for Syria’s funding
and original sponsors until they submit to a full, forensic audit. In my own case, I
have given and continue to give Hand in Hand for Syria ample room to refute any
charges or undo any untruths and I cannot be fairer than that.
Note: the www.syriatruth.org insert in the photo above may be roughly translated
as follows: This Wahhabi preacher, al Arefe, who is speaking at the function of Hand
in Hand for Syria, for whom Dr Rola works in London works, has advocated to his
followers doing sex jihad in Syria.
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Above: Screengrab of Nizar Nayouf’s Facebook page opining on al Arefe.
Sheikh Muhammed al-Arefe: A Quick Summary of Hand in Hand for Syria’s
Alleged Benefactor
The above photos show al-Arefe (sometimes called al Arifi or other derivations) on
various violent sectarian jihads and doing a meet and greet session in Fulham when
he addressed the fundraising dinner for “victims” of the war in Syria. Al-Arefe is the
go-to guy for those wishing to raise money for violent jihad or to overthrow secular
governments like that in Syria.
Notorious hate preacher Sheikh Muhammed Al Arifi is a professor (of sorts) at King
Saud University in Riyadh. He has continually called for a “jihad” in Syria “in every
possible way”, and, whether in this capacity as a jihadi recruiting sergeant or not, he
was, for example, billed as the star speaker at the two-day conference at the Al
Muntada mosque in Fulham, west London, in June 2013 and at the fundraising
dinner for “victims” of the war in Syria.
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Although quickly banned in Switzerland for calling for the total extermination of the
world’s 100 million Shi’ites, he was, at the time, freely welcomed in Britain. Despite
his genocidal views, Mohamad bin Abdul Rahman al-Arefe is the most popular
Sheikh in the entire Arab peninsula and, as Hand in Hand for Syria should know, it is
from that hotbed of jihadist extremism that most of the medical aid reaching the
Syrian terrorists emanates and that help make him the go-to guy for those wishing to
undermine the secular government of Syria by fair means or foul.
Al-Arefe, who holds the position of Imam of the Mosque of the King Fahd academy
of the Saudi Navy, has around 9 million largely fanatical followers on Twitter, a fact
which places his account in the top 100 worldwide, and #1 for the entire Middle East,
which is from where most Syrian jihadist mass murderers emanate. Given his high
profile and vast street cred in the jihadist world, Hand in Hand for Syria might
reasonably be expected to have done even the most cursory due diligence on him
before show-casing him at their meeting. Even at this late stage, Hand in Hand for
Syria seem reluctant to divorce themselves from him or to renounce him and
apologise for working together with him for a common cause. Unless Hand in Hand
for Syria change that dogged position, the relevant authorities must act to ensure
that Hand in Hand for Syria and allied groups never again give al-Arefe or similar
extremists room to spread their bile.
If Hand in Hand for Syria had done due diligence, they would have discovered that
Sheikh al-Arefe has in the past accused Shias of being responsible for kidnapping,
cooking and skinning children before placing their remains outside the family home
for their parents to find, and he has constantly called on Muslim women, young
British schoolgirls included, to do sex jihad, which is presumably the reason Nayouf
refers to al-Arefe as the Mufti of "Jihad marriage".
Saudi Arabia seemed to have done their own due diligence on Arafe very shortly
after, as this report http://tinyurl.com/obxc7ck shows. Shortly after he spoke at Hand
in Hand for Syria’s Leicester fund-raising gig, the Saudi secret police stopped him
raising money for Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and Free Syrian Army controlled
groups. As Arafe says: “We have formed a committee, because people are looking
for ways to send aid to Syria and the government is doing nothing. The number of
charitable aid secretly collecting grew, and we do not know about the reliability of
these people, that is why we have established a committee''. The Saudi secret
police were not buying it and, despite using his customary anti-Shia bile, “he was
forced to sign a paper promising to no longer collect financial support for the Syrian
Muslims.”
This Channel 4 report http://tinyurl.com/py3jh3z confirming his huge popularity says
he is a toxic Salafist and, if that is so, his need to adhere to Saudi Arabia’s antiMuslim Brotherhood line probably explains his current inability to raise funds for
those terrorist franchises his Saudi bosses now disapprove of.
Hand in Hand for Syria’s Leicester Meeting and the Saudi Salafists: Although
Hand in Hand for Syria were undoubtedly delighted to secure Moneybags al Arafe
for their Leicester fund-raiser, other Saudi Salafists were hitting the stumps at the
same time and all of them were preaching messages Syrians were to suffer and die
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from. Syrian Cleric Sheik Muhammad Badi' Moussa, with the flag of the terrorist
Free Syrian Army in the background, says here http://tinyurl.com/nhc9kzj after
informing us that “Our brothers in the Free Syrian Army sent queries to scholars in
exile, asking whether they were allowed to raid ‘Alawite villages” told the sectarian
Free Syrian Army butchers that it was, in fact, their religious duty to slaughter Alawite
women and children”; Dr. Saud Al-Fanisan, the former dean of Islamic Law at a
Saudi University, here http://tinyurl.com/ozmusfd told the warriors that Islamic law
permitted them to have and abuse slaves and Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti Sheikh
here http://tinyurl.com/qa2sgqa ordered the destruction of all churches. In such a
crowded market, Arafe had to find his niche so he plumped for children doing sex
jihad rather than enslaving Alawite children or torching churches and their
congregations.
Notorious Saudi extremist Sheikh Muhammed al-Arefe, who has spoken at Hand
in Hand for Syria meetings, has told British schoolgirls it is their religious duty to do
sex jihad in Syria.
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Bethnal Green Academy which the three youngster attended prior to going on sex
jihad. It is now at the centre of a major police investigation into Muslim Brotherhood
grooming. As this link http://tinyurl.com/nbml3mg shows, Hand in Hand for Syria had
an ongoing presence in Bethnal Green.
Nor is al-Arefe’s extremism confined to the disgusting practice of sex jihad. In a
widely publicised public address he delivered, which aired on Al-Nas TV on February
21, 2012, more than a full year before his now notorious Fulham appearance but
only a month before the newly-established Hand in Hand for Syria, complements of
the University of Leicester, hosted him, al Arefe said: “There is no doubt that one’s
devotion to Jihad for the sake of Allah and one’s will to shed blood, smash skulls,
and chop off body parts for the sake of Allah and in defence of His religion constitute
an honour for the believer.” The brute continues; “If the Muslims implemented the
words of Allah: Fight the infidels near you, and let them find harshness in you.”
February 13, 2012: Hand in Hand for Syria is incorporated.
February 21 2012: al-Arefe urges Muslims: Fight the infidels near you.
March 25, 2012: al-Arefe speaks at Hand in Hand for Syria function at the
University of Leicester.
These words are more than the incendiary rants of a demented psychopath. The first
sentence appear to be the battle orders for the rebel terrorists controlling the areas
of Syria Hand in Hand for Syria work primarily in and the second sentence to “fight
the infidels near you” is evocative of the inspiration behind Lee Rigby’s murderers.
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Drummer Lee Rigby who was butchered in Woolwich on 22 May 2013, less than 14
miles from the Fulham mosque where Sheikh Muhammed al-Arefe urged his
listeners to “fight the infidels near you.” Did al-Arefe, Hand in Hand for Syria’s star
turn at their University of Leicester rally, help spur his killers on to do their despicable
deed?
Radicalised Britons Reyaad Khan, Nasser Muthana and Abdul Rakib Amin in
Syria. Al-Arefe, pictured above taking a selfie, inspired them to kill Christians near
and far to them.
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Jihadist recruiting sergeant Al-Arefe, who spoke at the critical Hand in Hand for Syria
meeting in the University of Leicester, is widely credited with radicalising at least two
of these cut throats to go to Syria to murder and rape Christians and other Syrians.
Videos of al-Arefe preaching at Cardiff's Al Manar mosque, attended by Khan and
Muthana, as well as his brother Aseel, who also joined Islamic State, may be
watched by following the links this Daily Telegraph article provides here
http://tinyurl.com/mmeccgk .
Although al-Arefe is undoubtedly politically inspired, accusations abound that Hand
in Hand for Syria is as well. It was incorporated as a UK registered charity as
recently as 13 February 2012 and its web site was set up on 1 March 2012, with
Channel 4 reporting that it was "formed from within the Syrian diaspora [in 2012] in
response to a deteriorating humanitarian crisis in the region". The organisation came
to prominence through Dr Rola Hallam (whose own family, as we later discuss, are
very heavily involved with the Syrian rebels), who was working as a volunteer during
an alleged napalm or chemical gas attack on a school in the village of Orum Alkubra
in Aleppo on 26 August 2013 and she and that attack are both discussed later as
they are integral parts of Hand in Hand for Syria’s claim and my counter-claim.
Because the UK Charity Commission stipulates that an organisation cannot be a
charity if it has a 'political purpose', Hand in Hand for Syria is therefore explicitly
prohibited from "furthering the interests of a particular political party" or from
"securing or opposing any change in the law, whether in the UK or overseas". Yet
despite that, Hand in Hand for Syria use the flag of a sectarian terrorist murder gang
as the basis of their logo, something that seems to sit very easily with the expressed
political desires of many of their leaders, officers and supporters. Although in Spring
2014, when their website was updated, the logo was quietly modified to remove the
incriminating three red stars and the globe, the affiliation remains indisputable and
traces of their logo, complete with Free Syrian Army terrorist flag, still permeate all
pages of their website as well as this report.
As if that, along with my original report and its al-Arefe photos, were not enough to
convince a reasonable person of their compromised stance, we can look back to the
29 July 2011 founding statement of Free Syrian Army leader Colonel Riad al-Asaad,
when he said: “We announce the formation of the free Syrian army to work hand in
hand with the people to achieve freedom and dignity to bring this regime down,
protect the revolution and the country’s resources, and stand in the face of the
irresponsible military machine that protects the regime.”
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Is this congruence of name and FSA objectives just coincidence? Is the name's
similarity with World for Libya also just one more coincidence? To consider the
fairness or otherwise of my original document, let us reproduce the relevant part of
my original document/letter here:
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Figure 4: Mohammad Al-Arefe is honoured at a major jihadist fund-raising event.
The above photo was retrieved from this link http://tinyurl.com/arefex2 which
discusses Al-Nusra’s structure. The photo is from a jihadist fund-raising meeting and
Arefe is portrayed as one of their key fund-raisers.
The similarity between this jihadist “hand in hand” logo and that of Hand in Hand for
Syria is not accidental as they are both based on the original rebels’ emblem.
Further, this BBC report http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15563900
explains that the founding statement of the Free Syrian Army states they "work hand
in hand with the people to achieve freedom and dignity, topple the regime, protect
the revolution and the country's resources and stand up to the irresponsible military
machine which is protecting the regime." Hand in Hand for Syria, it seems is hand in
hand with some very unsavoury characters.
Figures 5a (Free Syrian Army Flag), 5b (Hand in Hand for Syria logo), 5c. (Flag
of the Syrian Arab Republic). It is apparent that the emblem of Hand in Hand for
Syria (5b), is modelled on the flag of the Free Syrian Army and is therefore aligned to
those Mr Al-Arefe used in Cairo. Not only do both Hand in Hand for Syria and Mr AlArefe, their extremist benefactor, use the flag of the Free Syrian Army as their
prototype but they both used clasped hands alluded to in the founding document of
the Free Syrian Army.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
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The reasonable observer may be forgiven for imagining that, given the similarities in
design, Hand in Hand for Syria was part of the terrorist Free Syrian Army’s plan “to
work hand in hand” with other vested interests to put the Syrian people literally to the
jihadist sword. That said, as the above screenshot, accessed here
http://tinyurl.com/kvluovp shows. Hand in Hand for Syria seem to have developed
their logo and allowed it to evolve through a paid, professional British design firm
which is proud of their work. That said, however, the screengrab makes plain “the
board of members” of Hand in Hand for Syria were adamant any modifications must
retain the initial logo’s “Free Syria” inspiration.
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Genesis: The above poster is of an even earlier and much more revealing logo from
Hand in Hand for Syria calling, inter alia, for revolution in Syria. Because of its
seminal importance, we will discuss this poster, its Turkish-based rather than Britishbased designer and its call for a revolutionary jihad in Syria later on. Though the
Hand in Hand for Syria poster also has the flag of the terrorist Free Syrian Army
emblazoned on it, it again appears that those controlling the organisation had yet to
decide on the logo’s final version – but were adamant the terrorist Free Syrian Army
flag had to be a part of it.
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The reasonable person might also wonder at the meteoric rise of Hand in Hand for
Syria over such a short time. Unless they had a prior organisation, such as the
Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and prior sponsors, such as notorious hate preacher and
jihadist recruiter al-Arefe to assist them, the reasonable person would not expect
such a hastily convened crew to have such spectacular successes – operating 5
different hospitals and supporting over 140 makeshift hospitals in far-away Syria
within a matter of months of being formed and having well-oiled and highly efficient
media and fund-raising teams in Britain to boot. In recent times, only the advances of
ISIS through Iraq have been more spectacular than the meteoric rise of Hand in
Hand for Syria and, in fairness to ISIS, in whose territory Hand in Hand for Syria
claim to operate freely, ISIS have been subject to some critical form of scrutiny by
books, by German journalists and by Vice News and, though token, cursory and very
controlled, it seems to far exceed the level of critical scrutiny Hand in Hand for Syria
have allowed.
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Colonel Riad al-Asaad (above), the founder of the terrorist Free Syrian Army,
whose flag was emblazoned on Hand in Hand for Syria’s logo, welcomes the capture
of Idlib by the child raping Al Nusra franchise.
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Free Syrian Army and Twin Tower Attack: The Free Syrian Army says that Jabhat
al Nusra, which is the Syrian wing of the Al Qaeda franchise, are now the best
representatives and torch-bearers of the Syrian people.
Free Syrian Army and A Free Syria: Following their March 2015 capture of
Idlib, The Free Syrian Army "freedom fighters" destroyed its statue of Ibrahim
Hanano who is shown above (seated, middle), with veteran revolutionaries from the
Syrian Revolt of 1925-1927. The statue of Hanano, who was the leader of the
Aleppo Revolt against the French Mandate (1919-1921), is an odd target for an
“army” wanting a “Free Syria” but not perhaps of one which loots churches and rapes
children as a matter of course.
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Free Syrian Army and A Free Syria: The Free Syrian Army says that Jabhat al
Nusra, which is the Syrian wing of the Al Qaeda franchise, are now the best
representatives and torch-bearers of the Syrian people. Although the gangster (top
left) unfurls a Free Syrian Army flag in “liberated” Idlib, the flag flying overhead
shows that al Nusra are the real power and that the Free Syrian Army are just
window-dressing. Nusra’s mass executions of women resisting rape and their
dragooning of toddlers into their death squads are further indications of their
perverted sense of freedom and morality.
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War criminal Sam Idriss of the Free Syrian Army, whose flag was emblazoned on
Hand in Hand for Syria’s logo, now says al Nusra (but later denied he said) was the
true representatives of the Syrian people. Hand in Hand for Syria which terrorist
franchise best represents their aspirations.
Riad Al-Asaad (right) , the founder of The Free Syrian Army murder franchise, swaps
torture tips with Syria Abu Omar Chechen (left), the leader of Taliban in Idleb.
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Although the Imaginary Office of Defense of the Imaginary Interim Syrian
Government clam the twitter account is fake, they miss the main points. Riad al
Asad, another one-time leader of the Free Syrian Army franchise, has gone on video
supporting al Nusra’s war crimes in Idlib; this is mostly likely because the capture of
Idlib showed that the Free Syrian Army is a largely ineffective fighting tool and that al
Nusra and ISIS do the heavy graft for these self-centred, self-styled leaders. Also,
Sam Idriss is a war criminal as he personally supervised the August 2013 atrocities
in Latakia and he has defended actual cannibals in his depleted ranks.
Suited and Jack-Booted: Free Syrian Army war criminals Ahmad “Kasab” Jarba
and Sam “Latakia “ Idriss now support the war criminals of al Nusra.
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Friends in High Places: Ahmad Jarba, former boss of bosses of the Free Syrian
Army franchise, who has now sworn fealty to al Nusra, is a serial war criminal, most
infamous for his rape of Kessab.
This 3 July 2012 Hansard screengrab http://tinyurl.com/qfrefot shows Bill Esterson,
the Labour MP for Sefton Central, asking for public funds to be given to Hand in
Hand for Syria, very shortly after they showcased arch bigot al Arafe.
This 18 December 2013 Hansard screengrab http://tinyurl.com/oa3qesd has Lord
Alton asking a similar question in the Lords. Quite why such a well-known Catholic
peer is shilling for Hand In Hand for Syria is currently not quite known.
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However, from his subsequent 10 January 2013 speech, screengrabbed above, it
seems Lord Alton has been repelled to discover that “a group of Jihadists beheaded
a Syrian Christian and literally fed him to the dogs” and he believes that Hand on
Hand for Syria can or will somehow protect recurrences of such atrocities. Lord Alton
does not explain quite why he expects Hand In Hand for Syria to help condemned or
tortured Christians.
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Coming Our Way: Daily Mirror reports on ISIS Rochdale death squad unit
running into problems on the Turkish/Syrian border which ISIS and Turkey jointly
control. The British public need to know who and what gave succour to ISIS’ British
tentacles. Labour Party heavyweight Shakil Ahmed said he was "shocked, worried
and extremely upset" to find out his son was one of those being held by Turkish
authorities. The Rochdale councillor said he thought his son had been in Birmingham
on a work placement not in Turkey trying to cross into the war-torn country. In a
statement he said: "My son is a good Muslim and his loyalties belong to Britain, so I
don't understand what he's doing there. If I thought for a second that he was in
danger of being radicalised I would have reported him to the authorities. He's
studying a degree in politics and sociology at Manchester University and has a good
future ahead of him."
However, as Dr Omar Gabbar of Hand in Hand for Syria has assured us there is no
need to fear returning ISIS jihadists if we cannot prove have actually slaughtered
anyone, we should probably take Shakil Ahmed’s word his son is a good kid, a credit
to Rochdale and to Manchester University, where he is enrolled.
The Guardian Does Rochdale: After some of Rochdale’s leading lights were
stopped entering the ISIS caliphate, the Guardian published this article:
http://tinyurl.com/l2e9pfw where we are told “It remains unclear what Waheed and
his travelling companions were doing on the Turkish-Syrian border and that “In an
interview with the Daily Mail on Thursday night, his father suggested his son had
perhaps gone on holiday but strayed too near to the border”. Though the article next
tells us “The holiday explanation was believed by very few people the Guardian
spoke to in Rochdale, though many believed the group may have been heading to
Syria to carry out humanitarian work,” it does not tell us what kind of “humanitarian
work” the pre-pubescent girls accompanying Rochdale’s finest may have been
expected to perform.
Although there are several more points defending the Rochdale ISIS group in this
article, it finishes on this very strange note: “But Yasmine Nahlawi, advocacy and
policy coordinator for Rethink Rebuild Society, a charity representing the Syrian
community in Greater Manchester, said she had not heard of a group from Rochdale
heading out recently to carry out humanitarian aid in Syria. She said: “Those who
want to help the Syrian people can do so by donating to registered charities that
have established and verifiable links to groups in need,” adding that Rethink Rebuild
Society maintains a list of such groups. “We do not recommend that people travel to
Syria given the increasing complexity of the conflict. With that said, we hope that this
incident will not place undue scrutiny upon humanitarian aid work carried out in
Syria.”
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No Undue Scrutiny Recap: When a group of Rochdale’s finest are caught joining
the Islamic State, the group whose English members beheaded Alan Henning,
Rethink Rebuild Society tells us not to do any “undue scrutiny” on potential head
hackers and child rapists but to instead consider “donating to registered charities that
have established and verifiable links to groups in need.” Clicking through on the
http://rrsoc.org/node/58 we land here:
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The Usual Suspects: Following the capture of the Rochdale ISIS death squad, The
Guardian sends us to this dubious link which recommends we give to Hand in Hand
for Syria as well as Human Care Syria and Syria Relief with which Hand in Hand for
Syria for very close links suggesting they are not independent of each other; with a
number of Muslim organisations, with Save the Children, with which Dr Rola Hallam,
Paul Conroy and Tony Blair all have strong relations and, oddly, with Oxfam.
The https://www.sktwelfare.org/stand4syria/ site, to take but one of these “Guardian
approved” examples, has a specific part of its web page
https://www.sktwelfare.org/stand4syria/ devoted to standbysyria with which many
Hand in Hand for Syria leaders are closely attached.
No Christians, Druze or Alawites Need Apply: This
https://www.sktwelfare.org/stand4syria/ page indicates that no minority or
independent, secular groups need apply.
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From their website, it looks like that would be fine with “Rethink Rebuild Society”
which also seems to have grown exponentially over the last two years. When we
examine their website, screengrabbed above, we see they too sport the flag of the
Free Syrian Army murder gang and they too seem to have a large number of
medical doctors supporting their blood-soaked “revolution”, leading us to a question
we later return to: just what is it with Syrian doctors that makes them support head
hackers, child rapists and cannibals?
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Paranoid British Muslims: Contrary to what the newly arrived Dr al-Hamwi may
thing, Britain’s Muslims are right to be paranoid as they see themselves being the
sea in which the parasites of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS spawn.
Although many British Muslims are rightly very angry about what is happening in
Syria, Iraq and elsewhere, they are equally very rightly concerned about being
manipulated by sex jihadist apologists like al Arafe or his more suave and urbane
Syrian Muslim Brotherhood counterparts. As the vast majority of Britain’s Muslims,
like comparable groups, still have very strong family and other roots in the countries
from which they emanated and as there are glaring generational, educational and
other discriminants which open Britain’s Muslim community to possible fracture,
exploitation and attack, they have to be very wary of wolves in sheep’s clothing
presenting al Arafe and other Pied Pipers to them. They are right to be wary of all
that the thugs of the Free Syrian Army represent.
Al-Arefe, the Radical Al-Muntada Trust and Hand in Hand for Syria
Although the radical al-Muntada Trust received a lot of negative publicity because of
its links with al-Arefe, Boko Haram and other sectarian genocidal degenerates, little
scrutiny has been given to whatever links may exist between Hand in Hand for Syria,
the al-Muntada Trust and more sinister elements, such as Islamic State for Iraq and
Syria (ISIS), connected to them, however tenuously.
Some relevant media reports, which may be accessed here
http://tinyurl.com/kgdwrvb http://tinyurl.com/ptf64bg http://tinyurl.com/qy9xl4p tell us
that, with regards to concerns raised by Lord Alton, the Foreign Office Minister, Lord
Howell “can confirm that this has been shared with the Charity Commission and the
Metropolitan police." This further report http://tinyurl.com/nce7xxu which tells us that
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the al Muntada al Islami Trust flies covert, secret missions into Somalia, is of
relevance because, if true, it means we have another British-based charity group not
only operating opaquely but being in a position to ferry, with what effectively amounts
to their own air force, supplies into war-ravaged zones with, it seems, no great
transparency or accountability.
Whatever about the al Muntada al Islami Trust’s real or alleged links with subSaharan terrorist gangs, it did host the notorious al-Arefe, who not only is accused of
radicalising British youngsters but is an unrepentant supporter of the terrorists whose
flag adorned the logo of Hand in Hand for Syria, who also hosted al Arafe. That
much is clear.
Facebook pages like https://www.facebook.com/thepeopleofsyria which, as this
screengrab shows, are bedecked with terrorist logos and which call for financial aid
to Hand in Hand for Syria (centre top right of the above screen grab) and
simultaneously advertise hate preacher al-Arefe (bottom centre of the above screen
grab), seem to further underline and reinforce their “broad-front” connections, at least
before the more recent turf wars between the various criminal gangs operating in
Syria broke out.
Nelson’s Letter, Part B:
The next part of the letter then goes on to make five quotations from my letter/article
which they say are untrue and/or defamatory (and/or, though they omit to say it here,
an unwarranted intrusive invasion of privacy); they claim those quotes are but a
sample of a much larger array of such indefensible actions I made in the original
letter/article.
“..its key leaders have long supported the armed Syrian opposition and most,
if not all of their activities are in areas controlled by those extremists. This
makes them, in effect, collaborators of the Syrian army.”
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The above quote consists of part of a long sentence followed by a complete, short
sentence. To get the short sentence out of the way first: the article nowhere claims
or implies that Hand in Hand for Syria support the Syrian army and Hand in Hand for
Syria must immediately apologise for that mendacious remark, as it puts my life in
immediate danger when I visit Syria in late April. To imply, as the letter does, that it is
defamatory to say someone supports the legitimate army of Syria is not only a
nonsense but a dangerous nonsense as it puts the lives of the vast majority of Syrian
citizens and my own in immediate and imminent danger as some kind of
collaborators, a “crime” for which countless Syrian civilians have paid and continue
to pay with their lives at the hands of the terrorists who control the areas Hand in
Hand for Syria primarily operate in. Hand in Hand for Syria and their solicitors must
both immediately withdraw that incendiary statement and make the proper amends.
The above quote says Hand in Hand for Syria claim to work primarily in areas
controlled by the terrorist extremists. My supposedly offending article/letter gives
examples of other groups giving medical aid to Syrian-based terrorists and quotes a
Hand in Hand for Syria employee frivolously commenting on and thereby belittling in
the most disgusting manner the well-documented criminal rapacious tendencies and
sex assaults of the terrorists, some of whom were his patients. It is not my words
which put Hand in Hand for Syria’s staff and patients at risk; rather it is their own
collaboration, as shown in the photo below and others included in the appendices,
with terrorists, who routinely kidnap, rape and behead their prisoners, British citizens
included. These medical aid workers, who voluntarily treat the terrorists, are helping,
collaborating with, the extremists, whether or not they also believe in and approve of
their horrid and depraved war crimes or not. My original article/letter shows that,
given their proximity to the front line, the medics of Hand in Hand for Syria and other
groups are, by accident or design, critical cogs in the rebels’ illegal war machine. As
the next picture, the appendices and the “offending” article/letter all show, that is a
fact and one Hand in Hand for Syria could rectify by refusing to give priority to
treating terrorist criminals. Although such a clear declaration fully and unequivocally
denouncing the terrorists and refusing further collaboration with them would be
welcomed by the vast majority of the Syrian people, independent researcher Rinaldo
Francesca claims he has not been able to find one single instance where Hand in
Hand for Syria have condemned the Syrian rebel terrorists but that he has found
plenty where they have heavily criticised the Syrian government and its defence
forces. In so far as Rinaldo’s claims are true, Hand in Hand for Syria can rectify the
matter by denouncing and clearly distancing themselves from all Syria’s terrorist
gangs and telling the British and other authorities everything they know about these
murder gangs.
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Clarification and Corrections: Hand in Hand for Syria’s response claim they do not
help Syria’s terrorist extremists and that must be taken at face value. However, in the
first photo (left above), a female medic is seen giving aid to an underage soldier (it is
a war crime to use under-age fighters) and in the second photo, the same medic is
seen with Hand in Hand for Syria workers, with the terrorist flag of the Free Syrian
Army on their backs as part of the Hand in Hand for Syria logo. The pro-terrorist site
hosting the first photo boasts about the child's supposed killing prowess. The second
photo is a screen grab from Panorama’s controversial Saving Syria's Children
programme where the same medic is photographed alongside BBC presenter Dr
Saleyha Ahsan (checked shirt, holding baby) at Hand in Hand for Syria’s
controversial Atareb Hospital in 2013. [As a relevant aside, this nurse also appears
in these two videos, which were posted on the Facebook page of Atareb hospital
manager Abdulrahman Obied: http://tinyurl.com/qjemm5a (1 min 18 secs) and
http://tinyurl.com/qhzq6j6 (3 mins). In them she is wearing the logo of ASSL which
may be a French counterpart of Hand in Hand for Syria, with a Facebook page but
no live website.]
Double Jobbing: This nurse seem to work for both ASSL and Hand in Hand for
Syria. We will see many such instances of characters wearing more than one hat in
the pages which follow.
So that a fuller apology may be given, Hand in Hand for Syria must, as a matter of
urgency, clarify their relationship with this double-jobbing, compromised medic, who
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treats under-age child soldiers under the command of the extremist Free Syrian
Army which, as the following photo shows, not only beheads Syrians but roasts their
severed heads on pits.
Grub’s Up: A self-confessed member of the Free Syrian Army terror gang cooks the
severed head of a Syrian soldier before eating it. Hand in Hand for Syria work openly
in areas terrorists like him control and they have his flag’s design emblazoned on
their logo. Independent researcher Rinaldo Francesca claims he has not been able
to find one single instance where Hand in Hand for Syria have condemned the
Syrian rebel terrorists but that he has found plenty where they have severely
criticised the Syrian government and its defence forces.
Daraa, 2014: Members of the moderate Free Syrian Army murder gang make soup
from the heads of the two Syrian soldiers they butchered.
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Clarification and Corrections: My original letter/article, reproduced below as an
appendix, cites very disturbing testimony from Mahmoud Hussein, a Hand in Hand
for Syria activist, regarding sex jihad. So that a fuller and even more unreserved
apology may be given, Hand in Hand for Syria must, in the first instance, explain in
sufficient detail their relationship with Mr Hussein, their position regarding violent
rape in particular and sex jihad in general by the Islamic rebel extremists as well as
the health, safety and welfare safeguards they have in place to protect their
employees, their helpers, their patients, their clients and the general Syrian public
from these armed criminal rapists that frequent their hospitals. As the original
article/letter says: Hand in Hand for Syria should clarify who “the men with guns”
allow into Atareb Hospital, all the more so as the co-founder of the medical charity
Doctors Without Borders, Jacques Beres, had a similar experience with ”the men
with guns” when he treated Syrian rebels in the besieged city of Aleppo where he
claims here http://tinyurl.com/handchopw1 that 60 per cent of his patients were
rebels. Perhaps Hand in Hand for Syria could tell us if terrorists are more than or
less than 60 per cent of their clients or, as one of their apparent trustees seems to
later claim, the number of ISIS patients is only a modest 10% of the total they
treat and if the Free Syrian Army and Nusra terrorists comprise a similar proportion.
No matter whether 60% or “only” 10% of the money the British public give Dr Omar
Gabbar and Hand in Hand for Syria is used to nurse ISIS terror killers back to health,
it is an absolute outrage that Hand in hand for Syria find any such wilful collaboration
with ISIS acceptable and it is one for which they must be held accountable.
What is the Difference Between the Free Syrian Army and ISIS? A captured ISIS
war criminal says in this interview http://tinyurl.com/pgu78hf that there is no essential
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difference and that the Free Syrian Army, whose flag is central to the logo of Hand in
Hand for Syria is merely an ISIS gateway recruiting pool
“..its key leaders have long supported the armed Syrian opposition and most, if
not all of their activities are in areas controlled by those extremists.”
Clarification and Corrections: “..its key leaders have long supported the armed
Syrian opposition and most, if not all of their activities are in areas controlled by
those extremists.”
Although countless other incidences can be given, the first of the above
screengrabs, which are the first two pictures contained in the original letter/article
Hand in Hand for Syria now complain of, validate my point. The first of these pictures
was retrieved from the Facebook page of Faddy Salhoul, which the article/letter cites
as the co-founder and chairman of Hand in Hand for Syria. This incredible photo has
a poster from notorious rebel extremist sympathisers in a hard-line rebel town
saying, prophetically as it happens, that they will cause any amount of death and
commit any amount of atrocities to establish their caliphate. The photo also contains
a logo of the flag of the terrorist Free Syrian Army, whose acts, which include eating
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the entrails of captured Syrian soldiers, have been explicitly condemned by leading
USA senators, as widely disseminated documents in my possession show. So that a
fuller and more unreserved apology may be given, Mr Faddy Salhoul might, at the
very least, unreservedly condemn the Free Syrian Army, apologise for any past
material, medical or other help given, advertently or inadvertently, to them or their
agents, report what he knows about them and their support networks to the relevant
authorities, resign forthwith from Hand in Hand for Syria, promise not to have
anything more to do with them or any terrorist group connected with Syria, surrender
his passport and make material amends to me and others whose characters have
been called into question and whose lives have been put into danger.
The terrorists of the Free Syrian Army, whose flag Hand in Hand for Syria have
proudly used, have been guilty of wholesale sex crimes against women and young
girls and boys. As the original article/letter makes plain, these abuses have occurred
in and around hospitals Hand in Hand for Syria control and not only do Hand in Hand
for Syria seem to have no controls in place to combat them but Nelson’s do not
seem to have given them proper duty of care advice as to how to make amends in
this regard. This latter point should be of grave concern to the Solicitors Regulation
Authority (SRA) to whom this amended documented will be forwarded.
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Inter-faith Relations in Idlib, where Hand In Hand for Syria are embedded. The
various terrorist franchises are inter-changeable and rotate staff on a regular basis.
Now that the Free Syrian Army franchise is on the wane, attempts are made to
rebrand such cut throats as Islamic State/Islamic Army as moderates. There is
nothing moderate about any of them or any of their actions.
RAPING THE SYRIAN CHILDREN: THE VATICAN WRITES: This authoritative blog
http://tinyurl.com/psc6aod copies a report from the Vatican’s press agency about
Qusair, the first major town the Syrian Arab Army wrested back from the Free Syrian
Army murder gang. It tells the story of Mariam, a young Christian girl. To cut a
disgusting story short: “Mariam was raped by 15 different men. This
psychologically destabilized her and made her insane. Mariam, became mentally
unstable and was eventually killed”. The blog has many such stories from similarly
reputable sources, each story as disgusting and depraved as the Free Syrian Army
rebels who carried them out. Independent researcher Rinaldo Francesca claims he
has not found one instance of Hand in Hand for Syria condemning such activities,
even though he has found plenty of them condemning the Syrian government and its
officials.
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Tweet Time line of Yousef Mujahed: Yousef Muhahed gets off on tweeting about
hard-core pornography and sex jihadist preacher al-Arefe who spoke at a meeting
for Hand in Hand for Syria, whose logo includes the flag of the terrorist Free Syrian
Army, whose “soldiers”, our correspondent alleges, gang-raped the children of
Qusair.
Bring me to your Leader: The Charity Commission site lists the Sahlouls and Mr al
Dairi as their sole trustees, even though the submitted accounts, both the audited
and unaudited ones, also list Dr Omar Gabbar as a trustee. Their obsessive secrecy
notwithstanding, it seems reasonable to assume that that the three listed trustees
are not the main power brokers of Hand in Hand for Syria, which must come clean
about its internal and external command, control and coordination structures.
“..its key leaders..”
Our first problem is to decide who its key leaders are. Although the Charity
Commission list Razan Sahloul, Faddy Sahloul, Fadi al-Dairi as their three and only
trustees, others such as Iman Mujahed (nee Murphy) Drs Omar Gabbar and
Mahmoud al Akraa have long been described as Hand in Hand for Syria trustees for
them and Dr Rola Hallam, whose father is a self-confessed “soldier of the
revolution”, has also been pimped as a leader.
While noting Nelson’s concerns about highlighting two or more of these individuals,
we maintain that Hand in Hand for Syria’s governance system makes it needlessly
difficult and confusing to say who precisely are the leaders of Hand in Hand for Syria
at any particular point of time. That being so, this entire document, whilst aiming for
simplicity and transparency, must be viewed in its entirely because, as one area
appears to be clarified, another layer of opaqueness manifests itself. These onion
layers of opaqueness must be removed so that Hand in Hand for Syria’s true leader
and true agenda can be transparent and be above suspicion.
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“..its key leaders have long supported the armed Syrian opposition….”
In this 12 May 2013 Facebook post, Mr al-Dairi comments as follows on a
demonstration in Turkey’s Antakiya, Turkey: Pro-Assad demonstrations in the streets
of Antakya praising Assad and blaming those being slaughtered for causing the
destruction. I was amongst them pretending to be a British Journalist. Different
feeling
This post gives the impression that al-Dairi despises Syria’s legitimate government,
has thrown his hat in with those opposed to the Syrian government and is much
more at home with those opposing the Syrian government than with those supporting
it, that he is, in other words, a supporter of the organised Syrian opposition, which is
spearheaded by armed terrorist gangs, including the Free Syrian Army, whose flag is
part of the logo of Hand In Hand for Syria, of which Mr al-Dairi is, it seems, a rather
complacent trustee if his inability to remove the offensive terrorist emblem is
anything to go by
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This link http://tinyurl.com/qx92qwn tells us that entry no 5, Fadi al Dairi , is with the
Syrian NGO Alliance, whoever they are, whereas this July 2014 link
http://tinyurl.com/p4oe23e has Al-Dairi claiming Hand In Hand for Syria are training
both British and Syrian doctors in the Turkish town of Reyhanli, where Mr al Dairi is
based and which houses the headquarters of the terrorist Free Syrian Army.
Because the flag of the terrorist Free Syrian Army forms part of the logo of Hand in
Hand for Syria, it should be utterly inconceivable that Hand in Hand for Syria’s
leaders would have allowed that to happen and to remain unchecked unless some of
the key leaders of Hand In Hand for Syria were at the very least some way
sympathetic to the terrorist Free Syrian Army which are headquartered in the same
remote Turkish town that al Dairi has based his own command, control and
coordination units in.
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Clarification and Correction: These reports claim Hand in Hand for Syria have
four, rather than three trustees. The Charity Commission claim they have three
trustees. Both cannot be right as 3≠4. As 3≠4, not only do both “highlight individuals
who are part of the charity, but one or other “is providing false information.”
Three, Four or More Trustees? This 24 March 2012 entry http://tinyurl.com/ozjz46t
on Hand in Hand for Syria’s Facebook page, screengrabbed above, together with
this 22 March 2012 report http://tinyurl.com/laemdmg which reprints a story from
that day’s Leicester Mercury, tells us of a local family who are trying to “help out
refugees” together with other Syrians living around the paper’s catchment area. It
tells us that “Three of the four charity trustees live in Leicester and they are holding a
fund-raising meal on Sunday at the University of Leicester”. It quotes “Charity trustee
Fadi Al-Dairi” at some length speaking of Syria and of Hand in Hand for Syria about
which, he tells the reporter: "We are strictly humanitarian and want to protect and
save life." It reports on the charity’s formidable fund-raising successes and the ability
of this group of Leicester residents to illegally smuggle food and medical equipment
into Syria, after which Al-Dairi tells the reporter that “fund-raising is not the principle
aim of the event. We want to raise the plight of the refugees and the civilians
suffering in Syria."
After “one of the charity's supporters, a doctor from Leicester, who did not want to be
named for fear of reprisals”, tells the reporter of the help they get from Libyans who
“know what we are going through”, we are told who some of the speakers will be.
These speakers, we are told, include “one of the charity's trustees, Omar Abdul
Gubbar, who is an orthopaedic consultant for the University of Leicester Hospitals
Trust” but who, let us note, is not listed on the Charity Commission site as a trustee.
Because the report does not comment about any of the others speakers, the
notorious Mr Arefe in particular, we are left in ignorance as to why Gabbar and
others shared a platform with him to allow Arefe spread his venom and sully their
good name. We are now also left wondering why Dr Gabbar is listed as a trustee.
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Clarification: The Leicester Mercury report advertising the above meeting lists Dr
Omar Gabbar as a trustee of Hand in Hand for Syria, whose web address is given in
the bottom left hand corner of the above poster, which is festooned with the flags of
the terrorist Free Syrian Army. Nelson’s letter concerning Iman Mujahed/Murphy
would imply that the Leicester Mercury article should be amended because not only
does it highlight individuals who are part of the charity, it may be providing false
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information as Dr Gabbar is not listed with the Charity Commission as one of the
three (not four as the Leicester Mercury article suggests) trustees of the charity.
Clarification: This YouTube video http://tinyurl.com/ohpcgny has Dr Omar Gabbar
advertising himself as a trustee of Hand in Hand for Syria. Nelson’s letter
concerning Iman Mujahed/Murphy would imply that Dr Omar Gabbar should not be
saying he is a trustee of Hand in Hand for Syria as he is highlighting an individual
who is part of the charity, but may be providing false information as Dr Gabbar is not
listed with the Charity Commission as one of the three trustees of the charity.
Look Behind You: If Dr Gabbar should chance to look around in this YouTube
video http://tinyurl.com/ohpcgny, he would see a UNHCR tent and he might then
care to explain why British people should give to him and his assistant in a t shirt
emblazoned with the flag of the Free Syrian Army terrorist gang rather than to follow
the advice of the Charity Commission which is to ignore him and his ilk and to give to
larger, more respectable groups such as the UNSCR.
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Clarification: This http://www.camidc.org.uk/workshops.html link has Dr Omar
Gabbar being advertised as a trustee of Hand in Hand for Syria. Nelson’s letter
concerning Iman Mujahed/Murphy would imply that Dr Omar Gabbar should not be
highlighted as an individual who is a part of the charity, and this link may be
providing false information as Dr Gabbar is not listed with the Charity Commission as
one of the three trustees of the charity.
“…open and transparent in the rebel-controlled areas but so underhand and
tokenistic in the government-controlled areas, the inference must be that they
are primarily supporters of the Syrian rebels.”
Clarification and Corrections: The above quote claims Hand in Hand for Syria
operate openly and transparently in the terrorist-controlled parts of Syria and the
location of their controversial flag-ship in Atareb, discussed later, as well as their
various warehouses, would seem to indicate that is the case. That hospital came into
prominence when BBC’s Panorama programme aired Saving Syria’s Children with,
presumably, the permission of Hand in Hand for Syria, whose people were central to
it.
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The Leicester Mercury (top left) advertises the rally at which Dr Omar Gabbar and
terrorist recruiter Mohammad al Arafe both spoke. In the side-piece, the Leicester
Mercury tells us that the Syrians are the problem and the murder gangs are the
solution. Though the main piece tells us Hand in Hand for Syria is a small local
kitchen table type organisation, it does now explain how it managed to land such an
important and such a notorious speaker as arch-criminal al Arafe.
The Leicester Mercury (top right) mentions a Muslim Brotherhood suicide bombing
of Christians in Syria and “balances” it with a mention of a meaningless pro-Muslim
Brotherhood protest march
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The Leicester Mercity (bottom) is again pimping Hand in Hand for Syria and
justifying their actions by reference to the Syrian government’s reaction to Muslim
Brotherhood murder gangs.
Panorama’s controversial Saving Syria’s Children programme: As Dr Hallam
makes her points unchallenged, an underage unarmed rebel enters, as if on cue,
stage right and raises the flag of the terrorist Free Syrian Army, which forms the
central part of the Hand in Hand for Syria logo. This would be one more indication
that Hand in Hand for Syria are “open and transparent in the rebel-controlled areas.”
The above two screenshots are taken from the controversial BBC Panorama’s
Saving Syria’s Children. In the pictures on the left, the flag of the notorious Islamic
State terrorist organisation can clearly be seen and, in the photo on the right, the
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BBC crew can be seen going through an Islamic State checkpoint. Whilst the
cameras are rolling, the BBC reporter affirms they are sailing through the Islamic
State checkpoints with only cursory checks and that Hand in Hand for Syria
personnel have even greater freedom of movement in the areas Islamic State
control. A copy of this remarkable programme, which shows Hand in Hand for Syria
openly operating on ISIS’ turf, has been saved to produce to the appropriate
investigatory bodies.
Although, given the unspeakable fate other British aid workers and journalists have
suffered at their hands, Hand in Hand for Syria’s ability to travel unmolested through
Islamic State controlled territory is an extraordinary state of affairs, it may help to
explain why, as the above map which has been taken from the front page of their
website indicates, they can operate unmolested in the Islamic State capital of alRaqqa and why they are also in Deir el Zor where elite units of the Syrian Arab Army
are in fierce daily clashes with their Islamic State counterparts and, some militarily
inconsequential Sunni tribes allied to the Syrian Army excepted, no other forces are
present to offer protection to Hand in Hand for Syria’s personnel whose rise, it may
be recalled, was as spectacular as that of ISIS. Either way, Mr Faddy Salhoul and all
of Hand in Hand for Syria must recognise that a full disclosure of their activities here
must be given to the British and other authorities so that each and every terrorist
Hand in Hand for Syria have collaborated with, however innocently, can be brought
to justice.
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Further Caveat and Clarification: The above 18 March 2015 screenshot reports on
how the Syrian Arab Army shot down a US spy plane flying over Latakia, which has
been the site of countless massacres by the Islamic State, Free Syrian Army, Jabhat
al Nusra and their allies. Although the Daily Mail article is sympathetic to the
American spying mission, they comment that the Syrian government “is still fighting a
bitter civil war against Islamic State militants”. That being so, fast-growth charity
start-ups such as Hand in Hand for Syria pouring aid into the non-government side of
the lines may be reasonably construed as aiding the “Islamic State militants” against
the Syrian people. Given how much the people of Latakia and all of Syria have
suffered at the hands of the terrorists, the British authorities must place the onus
squarely on groups such as Hand in Hand for Syria to show this is not the case.
Once they do this, then, of course, all the further apologies they want will be
forthcoming.
“…open and transparent in the rebel-controlled areas ….”
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The “Saving Syria’s Children” programme shows both the BBC crew and the Hand in
Hand for Syria related doctors in cars and other places with armed gunmen who
presumably do not have the permission of the Syrian authorities to carry arms. In
addition, the programme’s fixer/translator, Mr Al Mughira Al Sharif, screen-grabbed
above from the Saving Syria’s Children programme, is a notorious supporter of the
extremist armed opposition in Syria and this probably explains why he could help
negotiate their way through the checkpoints of the Islamic State, the terrorist group,
which beheads British aid workers and journalists, but apparently allows the Hand in
Hand for Syria people unfettered access through the lands they control in Syria. To
restate: Mr Al Sharif is not just a fixer/translator but a very active supporter of the
extremist militarized opposition, with which Hand in Hand for Syria allege they have
no truck.
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Damsel in Distress: Dr Saleyha Ahsan, who co-starred with Dr Rola Hallam in BBC
Panorama’s controversial Saving Syria’s Children, hams it up as she struggles to
don a flak jacket. Ahsan, who formerly served in an elite British Army unit, would
have us believe she has forgotten the most basic lessons of Boot Camp 101. We
later discuss this very strange woman’s escapades in Libya.
Saving Syria’s Children action-packed 2.30 minute Video Clip: These
screenshots, along with the above clips of the terrorist flags of the Free Syrian Army
and ISIS, may be viewed in this short clip here www.taigs.com/Syria/ISIS_flag.mp4
which also shows Dr Hallam’s former colleague struggling to don a flak jacket, a
strange thing for a former officer in an elite British army unit to struggle with. One can
also hear the BBC reporter admitting that they are in the apparently very safe hands
of ISIS, the terrorist group which has beheaded other British journalists and aid
workers as a matter of routine. Because the BBC journalist was looking into the
camera, he seems to have missed the child soldiers he passes who have been
conscripted into the terrorist ranks. The fact that the individuals in this clip consort
with known, armed and extremely dangerous terrorists who kill “Cross-worshippers”
like me as a matter of course is a source of grave concern to me, as it should be to
all British, Irish, Syrian and other “Cross-worshippers”.
This is all the more so as the local moderate civilians, presumably armed or unarmed
supporters of the Syrian rebellion, can be heard shouting the Takbīr, which is the
term for the Arabic phrase Allāhu Akbar and which is the primary war cry of the
head-chopping rebels who allowed Dr Hallam and her consorts unfettered access to
their nascent caliphate. As an aside, YouTube removed this short clip within an hour
of me uploading it, indicating perhaps some support or anxiety within the BBC or
elsewhere to smother this incriminating episode.
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Fixed that: YouTube blocked the clip less than an hour after it was uploaded. It had
only been viewed once by then.
“…open and transparent in the rebel-controlled areas but so underhand and
tokenistic in the government-controlled areas, the inference must be that they
are primarily supporters of the Syrian rebels.”
Clarifications and Corrections: Although the evidence produced above seems to
indicate that Hand in Hand for Syria operate openly and transparently in the areas
controlled by Islamic State and other rebel terrorist groups, the solicitor’s letter
seems to refute the statement that their work is “underhand and tokenistic in the
government-controlled areas” for it says “This is untrue. Our client faces danger
when delivering aid to the Government controlled areas of Syria. Making statements
such as these is again putting the wellbeing and safety of our client in danger.”
The relevant part of the original letter/article reads as follows: Contrary to their
claims of impartiality, the Hand in Hand for Syria charity operates only in the areas
controlled by ISIS and the other Syrian rebels and their appeals, such as their
current ones for their flag-ship hospital at Atareb, are primarily to send aid to those
operatives in those areas. Although their logo, which originally had the flag of the
Syrian rebels embedded in it, indicates that they are politically partisan, many of their
leading members have umbilical links with the leaders of the Syrian rebel militias.
Because there is absolutely no way these people, given their allegiances, their track
record and their blanket displays of rebel logos, would be allowed to operate in
government-held areas, there is a very black cloud over them and their financial and
other claims.
Here http://tinyurl.com/rolax2 Hand in Hand for Syria claim: “Neither the Syrian
government nor the Free Syrian Army (or other opposition groups) constrain our
activity, which means we can work across borders and behind front lines. Therefore,
we deliver aid to both opposition-held and government-held areas, including
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besieged areas whenever possible. And since we don’t work through third parties,
we can monitor everything directly to ensure our aid reaches the right people, and
those who need it most”.
This is patently untrue and, as we shall see in the following paragraph, Hand in Hand
for Syria admit as much. The Syrian government would not and do not allow a group
with such obvious political links to rebel extremists to operate in their areas. Were
Hand in Hand for Syria operating in government-controlled areas, the Syrian
authorities could tell where precisely they are operating and how they are supplying
the centres they operate from. However, as there is no way Hand in Hand for Syria
could run and supply any medical facilities on the government side of the lines
without the cooperation of the Syrian authorities, grave doubts have to be cast not
only on Hand in Hand for Syria’s claims to be non-partisan and to operate in 90% of
Syria but on all of their other claims as well.
In answer to the charge that Hand in Hand for Syria only operate in rebel-controlled
areas, Mr al-Dairi, one of their (three only) trustees listed with the Charity
Commission, claims here http://tinyurl.com/Fadix1 that “[In the governmentcontrolled areas] you wouldn’t see Hand in Hand’s name; you would see a normal
name. We have two schools and a hospital, but these do not look like they are
associated with Hand in Hand, they would look entirely normal. This is to protect the
people on the ground and the people who attend.
We do it totally differently in the government-controlled areas. In these areas we
would do it in normal vehicles: small saloon cars or normal cars. In opposition held
areas we can travel openly, whereas in government-controlled areas, you cannot fill
a car with more than two food baskets – two is the maximum. Anyone seen with a lot
of aid is targeted, it is a criminal offence.”
Mr al-Dairi goes on to explain: “Due to the enormous risk that the volunteers and
workers from Hand in Hand run when they deliver aid into the government-controlled
areas of the country, the charity has suffered tragic losses in personnel. We have
lost 15 of our staff in Syria over the last two and a half years, which is why we are so
security-conscious. We believe that they were captured and then killed – tortured to
death. We do a lot of work inside Syria, but we don’t talk about it because nothing is
safe”.
So, although Hand in Hand for Syria has suffered 15 fatalities for some unexplained
reason in government-controlled areas where they continue to operate a token
supply of aid, in addition to the two schools and a hospital they claim to have there,
this and the fact “we don’t talk about it” does not seem credible for a number of
reasons. Given the relative tokenism of the aid to government-controlled areas, it is
not worth the risk. As for the two schools and hospital, there is no way, Mr al-Dairi’s
bizarre claims to the contrary, they could exist or function without the Syrian
government knowing about them. Because Mr al-Dairi does not address the question
as to why they can be so (seemingly relatively) open and transparent in the rebelcontrolled areas but so underhand and tokenistic in the government-controlled areas,
the inference must be that they are primarily supporters of the Syrian rebels.
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The above points/paragraphs may be succinctly summarised and commented
upon as follows:



Given how they freely operate in ISIS controlled Syria, there is no way the
Syrian government would allow them operate freely in areas the Syrian Arab
Army controls. On the face of it, that statement makes eminent sense and
Nelson’s seem to concede it.
The second paragraph has Hand in Hand for Syria saying the Syrian
government does not “constrain our activity, which means we can work across
borders and behind front lines” and that “we can monitor everything directly to
ensure our aid reaches the right people, and those who need it most”. This
cannot be true. The Syrian authorities monitor everything on their side of the
lines and there is absolutely no way they would allow or tolerate a British or
Turkish based group, with strong ties to the Islamic State side of the lines,
operate on their side of the lines without severely “constraining” them, to use
the word Hand in Hand for Syria uses. Yet Nelson’s seem to also concede
that point when they say “Our client faces danger when delivering aid to the
Government controlled areas of Syria”, a fact which is underlined by the brutal
abduction and death by torture of fifteen of their members.
Mr al-Dairi, one of Hand in Hand for Syria’s top bosses, admits that “In
opposition held areas we can travel openly” but that they have to operate
clandestinely in government controlled areas where, to quote him “it is a
criminal offence.” Mr al-Dairi says that Hand in Hand for Syria have only “two
schools and a hospital” in the government areas and that 15 of their staff have
been disappeared there, most likely “captured and then killed – tortured to
death”. Yet, despite those high fatalities, to run only “two schools and a
hospital”, “a relatively underhand and tokenistic effort in the governmentcontrolled areas” where both schools and hospitals are free, they continue
with this seemingly suicidal policy, which has, by their own admission, cost 15
of their members their lives. Given that is the case, it is Hand in Hand for
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Syria and their lack of basic health, safety and welfare standards rather than
me which endangers their personnel. It is therefore the duty of the British and
other authorities as well as Nelson’s to stop Hand in Hand for Syria embarking
on any further such suicidal missions. Failure to advise them of this is
arguably a serious breach of their duty of care and one we all must report to
the relevant authorities to prevent further needless loss of live of the brave
volunteers of Hand in Hand for Syria.
 Though Mr al-Dairi seems to admit as much when he states that “we don’t talk
about it because nothing is safe” that is not really good enough. Hand in Hand
for Syria cannot reasonably be expected to raise money in Britain and claim
that the areas they operate in are too dangerous for them to give verifiable
pictures or even the sketchiest verifiable details of their operations. It is also
amazing that they regard areas controlled by the Islamic State and other
terrorist groups as safer than areas controlled by the Syrian government,
whose officials are subject to some form of scrutiny and accountability,
however cursory or imperfect it may be.
 It is likewise incredible that Nelson’s have not told their Hand in Hand for Syria
client not only how foolhardy their stance is but how it contravenes all British
health, safety and welfare standards. Nelson’s should remedy that
shortcoming as a matter of urgency and confirm to all interested parties that
they have done so,
In addition to the above comments and clarification, for clarity of response, it
is best to divide this part of the letter into its three separate sentences.
“This is untrue.” Because Hand in Hand for Syria provide no visual, accounting or
other evidence to show that their work in government-controlled Syria is anything but
tokenistic and all the indications from the testimony they have given imply it is
tokenistic, the statement has to be taken as true until Hand in Hand for Syria are
good enough to provide documented evidence to prove the contrary.
“Our client faces danger when delivering aid to the Government controlled
areas of Syria.” This sentence seem to, in fact, concede that my contention is true
and this sentence merely tries to excuse their “white lie”. Further, given how they
confess to operating far outside the realms of the law and of the most normal and
basic health, safety and welfare standards, the dangers they needlessly run have not
been disputed. However, if anyone should be taken to task over this, it is surely
officers of Hand in Hand for Syria rather than me as none of the fifteen fatalities they
claim to have suffered can be laid at my door. Though Nelson’s are, of course,
working under instruction, it seems incredible that a reputable firm of British solicitors
do not seem to have drawn their client’s attention to the glaring fact that Hand in
Hand for Syria are running unjustifiable and totally unnecessary risks which, to date,
have cost at least fifteen of them their lives and which they and their client should
have been aware of, as our section on the Charity Commission will affirm.
No Registration, No Protection, No Visibility, No Credibility: Nor is that the end
of the matter. If Hand in Hand for Syria operate in Government controlled areas of
Syria, they need to be registered and approved for such by the Syrian Arab Red
Crescent, after which they could operate freely and openly. Although there are
exceptions with, for example, multiple Church related NGO's operating under the
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auspices of the various Churches in Syria, they are viewed as components of the
Churches themselves and thus do not need to have separate accreditation from the
Syrian Arab Red Crescent. However, that does not change the bottom line that if
Hand in Hand for Syria are operating in Government controlled Syria then they do
need SARC approval and the relevant authorities in Britain and Syria should ask
Hand in Hand for Syria to supply proof of same. If Hand in Hand for Syria cannot
furnish these documents, then they should be held to account not only for their own
actions but for the fate of their operatives in government-controlled areas.
As a further gesture of goodwill, I hereby direct Hand in Hand for Syria, their
solicitors and the relevant authorities to "E.U. HUMANITARIAN IMPLEMENTATION
PLAN (HIP) SYRIA CRISIS" (August 2012) page one paragraph 4 with reference to
NGOs requiring Syrian Arab Red Crescent approval to operate. In the same spirit of
collegiality and in an effort to ensure no more Hand in Hand for Syria lives are
needlessly lost, the Charity Commission must, for the most obvious Health and
Safety reasons, ensure that Hand in Hand for Syria adhere to these most reasonable
and sensible of EU directives or hand their operations over to an approved group; as
a further gesture of goodwill, I am prepared to help them in that regard or, if I am
unacceptable, I could get Caritas, His Beatitude Patriarch Laham or His Grace, the
Grand Mufti to do it and, as I am sure they would do all that free of charge, we
would be abiding by Hand in Hand for Syria’s maxims of minimising costs,
maximising aid expended and linking them up with reputable organisations and
people. Further, in so much as Nelson’s have an explicit duty of care to their client,
they must advise them to adhere to these minimal conditions so that no more of their
client’s employees are murdered or disappeared. As a further gesture of goodwill, I
also intend to contact the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) so that they may
impress on Nelson’s and other apparently errant law firms the need to exercise their
duties of care to clients engaged in suicidal activities such as those Hand in Hand for
Syria admit to engaging in.
Charity Commission, Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Concerns
As this 4 December 2012 report http://tinyurl.com/n8rsxxw makes plain, the Charity
Commission published guidance on its website warning charities to "assess the risks
to any staff and volunteers before deciding whether they travel to Syria to provide
humanitarian aid or support", and it reminds charities supporting humanitarian
organisations in Syria to undertake due diligence checks on individuals and
organisations they wish to support.
The Commission goes on reiterate the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's advice
against travelling to the Syrian Arab Republic and warns of the potential for terrorist
attacks and kidnapping. It adds: There is also a risk that UK nationals who set out to
travel for humanitarian reasons will come into contact with groups who are in Syria to
promote violence and extremism, and it might be very difficult to avoid involvement in
their agendas”. As we will soon see, Dr Omar Gabbar sees no problem with giving
injured ISIS killers a medical dig-out.
Regarding who the public should donate money to, the Commission comments as
follows: Given the complexities, our advice for the public and for charities and others
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raising funds is to give to well established charities which have experience of
providing humanitarian assistance in high risk, insecure and dangerous
environments and which have ongoing relief operations in Syria and/or surrounding
countries.
From the evidence accrued here, as well as from Nelson’s letter, it really seems
Hand in Hand for Syria did not get this Charity Commission memo because they
continue to enter Syria illegally, they solicit donations even though they had no
significant prior 4 December 2012 “experience of providing humanitarian assistance
in high risk, insecure and dangerous environments” and nor did they “have ongoing
relief operations in Syria and/or surrounding countries”, which probably helps
explains why at least fifteen of its members have, tragically, paid the ultimate
sacrifice which, at the very least, suggests monumental corporate governance
failures on the side of Hand in Hand for Syria.
“Our client faces danger when delivering aid to the Government controlled
areas of Syria.”
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Easter Sunday, 5 April 2015: St. Mary’s Church of the Holy Belt, Homs, Syrian
Arab Republic: Now that the terrorists of the Free Syrian Army and their supporters
have been driven out, the Christians and Muslims of Homs, unlike those in Idlib and
other areas the terrorists control, are free to again celebrate Easter Sunday. Hand In
Hand for Syria “faces danger when delivering aid to the Government controlled areas
of Syria”.
Charity Commission Investigations: Although, as this report explains
http://tinyurl.com/l4r9mg3 the Charity Commission has begun investigating a
number of Syria-related charities, Hand in Hand for Syria has, surprisingly given the
above, been working hand in hand with them in this regard. Surely, the best way
Hand in Hand for Syria can help the Charity Commission is not only to come clean
about their relationships with jihadist recruiting sergeants like al-Arefe and extremist,
sectarian murder gangs like the Free Syrian Army but also to follow the various
guidelines the Charity Commission propose and, even at this very late stage to
address the concerns the Charity Commission highlight.
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Hand in Hand for Syria & ISIS: Atareb’s Strange Bedfellows: As this report
http://tinyurl.com/mzgsc8e about Al Muntada’s sub-Sahara activities makes plain, the
Charity Commission intends to continue to prioritise issues that are most likely to
affect charities' reputations, including terrorism. In the section entitled 'Money trail' In
this further BBC report http://tinyurl.com/q275as4 “Omar Gabbar, a British doctor
who has worked at the hospital in Atareb” is quoted, presumably as a spokesperson
for “another charity, Hand-in-Hand for Syria,[which] says it is being forced to close a
hospital it runs near Aleppo, featured in the BBC Panorama documentary Saving
Syria's Children, because it cannot find a well-established, mainstream partner
agency through which foreign donors would be prepared to channel funding”
Although Gabbar goes on to reel off the hackneyed old party line that "It will be
devastating to the whole area, they will struggle to maintain care to about 500,000
people”, the report goes on to tell us that “the BBC understands [the NGO partnering
with Hand in Hand for Syria] also had concerns about the proportion of fighters being
treated at the hospital, though Dr Gabbar said these had not been raised directly
with his charity”. As Dr Gabbar explains "If you deprive a whole area on the excuse
that I'm worried about 10% of services going to this group, you're depriving 90%
innocent people. They didn't ask for Isis to come into this area."
ISIS is no Excuse to Stop Services: Prominent British resident and apparent Hand
in Hand for Syria leader Dr Omar Gabbar believes it is vital to keep treating injured
Syrian rebels, no matter what their affiliation as otherwise “innocent people” will be
deprived. ISIS, it seems, need Hand in Hand for Syria’s help.
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"Just follow the money trail": Baroness Amos draws attention to the money trail
leading to unsavoury connections between medics and mass murderers.
ISIS is no Excuse to Stop Services: Prominent British resident and apparent Hand
in Hand for Syria leader Dr Omar Gabbar believes it is vital to keep treating injured
Syrian rebels, no matter what their affiliation as otherwise “innocent people” will be
deprived.
Perhaps ISIS were not formally invited but, if we take Dr Gabbar’s words in their
natural and ordinary meaning, it seems that, in Atareb at least, the Syrian war has
thrown up some very strange bedfellows. We will later return to Dr Gabbar, Atareb
Hospital and their disgusting ISIS guests in the context of condoning sex jihad.
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Volunteer doctors operate in Kobani this month: So reads the caption for this
picture in this article http://tinyurl.com/of7c64z in the Independent of 22 March 2015
which tells us Dr Omar Gabbar is still fighting the good fight, that the hard-pressed
Syrian Army still shoot toddlers in the spine as a matter of course, that Hand in Hand
for Syria is neutral, that they have been given a whopping £10 million to use, that we
should still give them more and that there is a secular opposition waiting somewhere
in the wings to take over and rescue Syria from the barrel bombing Syrian President.
The only new thing we learn in this article is the following: “The coverage is never
enough for the magnitude of life lost,” he says, adding: “£10m sounds like a big
number but when you’re a charity delivering aid to 70 per cent of the whole country
it’s a drop in the ocean.”
90% or 70%?: As well as implying Hand in Hand for Syria’s coverage has fallen from
90% to 70% of Syria, we learn that Gabbar founded the charity in 2011” with a group
of his Syrian doctor friends” and that “Hand in Hand for Syria now has a team of 200
people”. Hand in Hand for Syria must clarify what percentage of Syria they cover and
if Gabbar is a trustee or if he is only pretending to be a trustee.
The Kobani photograph, incidentally, was by Halil Fidan/Anadolu Agency/Getty
Images) and, doing a reverse google search of the Independent image, we find
some more in the same series https://anadoluimages.com/p/4933391 all of which
make us marvel at how the Kobani hospital is so spick and span, how come they are
delivering babies (did the heavily pregnant mothers return home to have them?) and
how Hand in Hand for Syria, what with all their other commitments, got them up and
running there so quickly and how the YPG showed their gratitude to them?
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Caveat and Disclaimer: Dr Omar Gabbar, who is described here as one of the
founders of Hand in Hand for Syria and who has also been described as a trustee of
Hand in Hand for Syria, claims Hand in Hand for Syria are “delivering aid to 70 per
cent of the whole country”, a drop from the 90% they generally claim to service in
such places as their home page. Because I do not know which is the correct figure or
what his current or past status within Hand in Hand for Syria is, I am not trying to
spread false information about them or him.
Yet, as if to prove the old adage that success has many fathers, the rival Mirror
newspaper here http://tinyurl.com/oydcycn interviews “Faddy Sahloul, the chairman
and founder of Hand in Hand for Syria” who was a former fruit and vegetable seller
with Global Fresh Produce rather than a doctor. The Mirror’s counter-claim,
incidentally, is echoed by a local Nottingham report here http://tinyurl.com/nz5txbw
which claims Hand in Hand for Syria was “founded by husband and wife Razan
Zehrawi and Faddy Sahloul” who are listed by the Charity Commission as two of
Hand in Hand for Syria’s three trustees, along with Mr al-Dairi, another non-medic.
Hand in Hand for Syria must clarify all these apparent discrepancies and
contradictions.
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Doctors for Death Squads: Syrian doctors in Europe unite behind the Syrian death
squads. These dubious doctors include Dr Madrous al Soud (right), who has seen
active service in Syria on many occasions. This Manchester-based colourful
character features prominently in our appendices.
Doctors Differ: In the article (left), Dr Madrous al Soud criticises Dr al Assad, Syria’s
President, who is depicted waving a uniform. In the photograph (right), Dr al Soud
(seated, middle) is pictured surrounded by the uniformed mass murderers of the
Free Syrian Army franchise. This Manchester-based colourful character features
prominently in our appendices.
ISIS is no Excuse to Stop Services: Dr Madrous al Soud (left phot, 2nd from right)
and a gang of criminals pose under the flag of the Islamic State murder franchise
whilst (photo right) a gang of rapists and murderers wait under a terrorist poster for a
doctor to see to their needs.
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Waiting for the Dry Cleaners: In the above photos, Dr Madrous al Soud dons
civvies and a collection of humanitarian hats as he waits for his fatiques to be
returned from the dry cleaners. Note the battle fatigues the thug with the Syria Relief
top wears (bottom, centre). This Manchester-based colourful character features
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Still in Civvies: Dr Madrous al Soud remains in civvies as he attends a number of
“humanitarian” functions of Hand in Hand for Syria and other groups and as he
inspects “humanitaran fortifications” in terrorist-controlled Syria. This Manchesterbased colourful character features prominently in our appendices.
“the inference must be that they are primarily supporters of the Syrian rebels.”
Dr Madrous al Soud certainly likes to give that impression when he dons his finely
pressed military fatigues and when he poses for pictures in ruined churches with
armed sectarian murderers. This Manchester-based colourful character features
“the inference must be that they are primarily supporters of the Syrian
rebels.”
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“Figures 1 and 2: Pro-rebel screenshots of the Facebook page of Faddy Salhoul.
More screenshots are in Appendix 1. The actual photo is one of a very large number
of staged photos rebel extremists in Kafranbel flood the Internet with.”
That statement stands until Hand in Hand for Syria convince us otherwise. It seems
that both Nelson’s and their client are confused on this matter and cannot
differentiate between: Syrian rebels; unarmed Syrian rebels such as the unarmed but
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highly provocative Kafranbel rebels who promote extreme terrorist violence and who
Hand in Hand for Syria boss Faddy Sahloul has promoted on his Facebook page, as
well as the (generally) unarmed Mr al-Arefe who Hand in Hand for Syria have also
facilitated; and armed Syrian rebels which those of us relying primarily on the
Western media and elementary set theory seem able enough to do. If they still
cannot understand this simple English, I can furnish plenty more relevant examples
from Ireland and elsewhere to further clarify the point.
But this is not just a matter of kindergarten set theory, Venn diagrams or employing
further examples to clarify what should be a crystal-clear point. It is also a matter of
life and death and the strange logic Nelson’s and Hand in Hand for Syria employ
does not change that. We are, for example, all too aware of the public executions in
rebel-held areas of Syria.
August Landmesser was not one of Hitler’s Willing Executioners. The inference
from the picture must be that many of the others were active or passive supporters of
Hitler’s crimes.
Degenerate Syrian rebels throw a man off a roof (left) and stone another to death
(right) on spurious trumped-up charges. Regarding many of the passive, non-stone
throwing onlookers, “the inference must be that they are primarily supporters of the
Syrian rebels.”
But let us for now return to the terrorist side of the lines where Hand in Hand for
Syria are allowed operate so freely. The narrative Hand in Hand for Syria and other
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groups have fed us is that there was a popular unarmed revolt by unarmed Syrian
rebels against the Syrian government and that that enmity still exists and manifests
itself most clearly in the rebel zones, the areas outside the control of the Syrian Arab
Army, to be precise. That, their claim, can only be false in the logically bizarre case
that those non-combatant rebels in rebel areas actually support the Syrian Arab
Army (something Nelson’s letter may, in fact, imply) and the central Syrian
government, but do not militarily oppose the armed opposition. Perhaps Hand in
Hand for Syria, with their networks all over Syria can tell us if that is, in fact, the
case, in which case I will profusely and publically apologise for any hurt feelings they
may harbour as a consequence of my words which, reverting to kindergarten set
theory and Venn diagrams makes the following contrary but infinitely more logical
claims: the rebel sides of the lines contain armed rebels, unarmed rebels, their fellow
travellers, very many Syrians who want nothing to do with the violence and silent and
cowed supporters of the Syrian authorities; and that it is the armed and the unarmed
rebels who call the shots and who control the shows in their respective caliphates.
Let me further clarify: those living on the rebel side of the lines, if they wish to survive
let alone thrive, must be, at the very least, passive supporters of the rebels or be
astute or lucky enough to maintain a semblance of benign neutrality to save them
from the wrath of their armed and unarmed rebel overlords. Those, like Hand in
Hand for Syria, coming from the outside, would not logically be allowed to hide
behind such a Buddha-like facade as the rebels would be suspicious of them and
their motives or would just regard them as fair game for kidnapping or shakedowns,
something Hand in Hand for Syria seem to have so far been spared.
The facts of the matter are these: large swathes of Syrian territory remain under the
control of the various rebel terrorist groups thanks in no small measure because of
logistical back-up from Turkey. Because many of the non-combatants in rebelcontrolled Syria, like their counter parts on the government side of the lines, want to
only live in peace and provide for their families, they will collaborate with the rebels
and their various war machines. However, any colourful start-up outside group such
as Hand in Hand for Syria not stuck there because of poverty, old age or other such
mundane circumstances, can reasonably be suspected of being a part of the rebel
war machine or its support services and, if not, they should expect to be shaken
down, kidnapped, raped and robbed, crimes which so far seem to have passed the
Hand in Hand for Syria operatives by.
That said, that should not make them targets for the Syrian Arab Army who are hardpressed defending their own lives and that of their families by neutralising the armed
fighters they are pitted against. It makes no sense for the over-stretched Syrian Arab
Army to target the entire war economy on the terrorist side of the lines, the medical
teams in particular, and the proportionately very high survival rates of German
Wehrmacht doctors in Soviet prison camps, of the French medics who surrendered
at Dien Bien Phu or of the Japanese medics caught up in the Red Army’s 1945
swoop into Manchuria would verify my contention and negate Hand in Hand for
Syria’s preposterous allegation that medics are the prime targets of the Syrian Arab
Army.
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Hand in Hand’s Facebook time line certainly indicate that there may be no smoke
without fire in this particular instance as the following photos and screengrabs show:
Flag of our Brothers: Hand in Hand for Syria’s Facebook page highlight one of their
aid convoys with Turkish symbols and the actual flag of the terrorist Free Syrian
Army murder gang prominently displayed in these selfies. It is not currently known
whether the posers in these pictures actively or passively (?) support the armed or
unarmed wings of the Syrian rebels but supporters of the Syrian rebels these
apparent Hand in Hand for Syria volunteers definitely are.
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Blood of the Terrorist Martyrs: This Hand in Hand for Syria Facebook entry reads:
“Breakfast in the city of collective Yabroud Syrian families of the martyrs of
Displacement and number of guests to 150 people, including children and women
under the auspices of Hand in Hand”. As the flag of the Free Syrian Army terrorist
group is prominently displayed in the background, the “martyrs” referred to are
undoubtedly from the ranks of the terrorist groups who control the areas Hand in
Hand for Syria primarily help. This “martyrs’ meal” was held, remember “under the
auspices of Hand in Hand” for Syria and, as we can see, under the flag of the Muslim
Brotherhood linked Free Syrian Army.
This Hand in Hand for Syria post informs its readers: “This is the School of Oriental
and African studies in London. We are holding a week for Syria this week for the one
year anniversary of the Revolution and are aiming to raise £1000 for Hand in Hand
for Syria to be sent to help the women suffering”.
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So, here we have Hand in Hand for Syria compromising yet another university by
openly displaying a terrorist flag to commemorate “the one year anniversary of the
Revolution,” a strange thing for an august charity to so ostentatiously commemorate.
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The above, which was posted on Hand in Hand for Syria’s Facebook page on 15
March 2012, would indicate that Hand in Hand for Syria are primarily supporters of
the Syrian terrorist murder gangs. This is because it not only contains the terrorist
flag firmly embedded in their logo, but it also has the same actual terrorist flag in the
top right hand corner, as well as the flag emblazoned on an impressionable young
boy’s face and a further copy of the flag in the bottom centre part of the poster.
Though the writing on the bottom left hand corner of the poster as well as the huge
logo in the top left hand corner both indicate that the Hand in Hand for Syria Central
Command authorised this poster, it does not explain quite whose souls they hoped
to save and why Leicester University hosted such a sectarian gathering.
February 13, 2012: Hand in Hand for Syria is incorporated.
February 21 2012: al-Arefe urges Muslims: Fight the infidels near you.
March 25, 2012: al-Arefe speaks at Hand in Hand for Syria function at the University
of Leicester.
Either way, any reasonable – or unreasonable man like Mr al Arefe – seeing the
above poster could be in no possible doubt where the sympathies of Hand in Hand
for Syria and of the meeting’s organisers lay and would speculate as to why the
notorious al-Arefe decided to speak at this key meeting of the recently newly
incorporated Hand in Hand for Syria.
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This Hand in Hand for Syria Facebook entry http://tinyurl.com/kjbwkfy of 21 March
2012 advertises the event as “Our Charity program” and refers to “Guest speakers
(Including Sheikh Mohammad ALAREEFI)” and that entry is £15,and £10 for children
under 12. This further 15 August 2012 Facebook post http://tinyurl.com/q9mgdfh tells
us of related money-raising exercises and gives us a number of mobile phones with
names to phone. These names include, for Nottingham, Noor Al-Dairi, and, for
Leicester, Haneen Rahbi, for whom we get both an email and a phone number, the
same phone number In fact, which is on the Save Syria Souls poster, which is
festooned with the flag of the terrorist Free Syrian Army and which advertises the
“charity” meeting with “live witnesses from Syria” at which “Sheikh Mohammad
ALAREEFI” spoke to the assembled punters.
Hand in Hand for Syria’s Mr Omar Gabbar of Leicester: He shared a platform
with notorious child sex jihadist proponent al Arafe. Mr Gabbar will fix your spine, for
a price, when he is not helping Hand in Hand for Syria or sharing platforms with sex
pervert al Arafe.
This 15 August 2012 http://tinyurl.com/q9mgdfh Facebook entry goes on to tell us:
“All the money raised will reach those in need in Syria via 3 charities: Hand in Hand
for Syria - Charity No: 1145862; Syria Relief - Charity No: 1143797; Human Care
Foundation - Charity No: 1145092”. The interesting this about that latter piece of
information is it now looks as if all three of those groups, some very controversial in
their own right, are now, several years later, amalgamating under the same Muslim
Charities umbrella, a very strange thing for apparently independent groups that
sound secular and one that makes us ask if there was a secret deal or plan to
amalgamate those apparently disparate groups. Hand in Hand for Syria and the
other named charities and personnel must come clean to the British authorities about
all of this before more British and Syria lives are lost.
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Dr Halla Diyab: Pictured here with Foreign Secretary, William Hague. Why did Hand
in Hand for Syria not invite her to speak at the University of Leicester with al Arefe,
their star turn?
Why bar Dr Halla Diyab? There is, therefore, a distinct impression that non-secular
forces or indeed, anti-secular forces, were at work here. This is all the more so when
we consider that Syrian native, Dr Halla Diyab, who is an excellent bilingual TV
performer and, as it happens, an outspoken non-violent opponent of the Syrian
government, also resides in Leicester. Why, one wonders, was she not invited to
speak? To begin to answer this question, let us see what her Liberty Media
Productions company says about her on their website: “She is an advocate of liberal
Islam and she has made regular appearances in Middle East media on several
debates on Islam and women. Her latest debate was with Shaykh Habib Ali al-Jifri on
CBC TV, where she appears with hijab out of Aljifri’s request”.
On the face of it, she would have made an excellent guest and would have most
probably been a success with most Arabs, British and other people attending, even if
homophobic sex jihadist proponent, Al Arefe might have had predictable problems
with her, as he would with any independent-minded, non-servile Sunni woman, who
regarded herself as something more than a door mat fit only for sex jihad by al Arefe
and his cronies? How come, one might ask, was she not invited there or as a
speaker to any other of their events? Why was Dr Diyab excluded? Why the noninclusive policy?
The moderate, urbane ideas Dr Diyab propounds in this interview
http://tinyurl.com/o9c7kgu would not have endeared her to al Arefe or, presumably
her neighbours amongst al Arefe’s Leicester admirers. In the article, she links the
Syrian rebels to their fellow terrorists in Libya and states that “The rise of the
Brotherhood in Egypt boosted the presence of Brotherhood fighters in Syria, but they
were soon discredited after the fall of Mohamed Mursi. During his presidency, clerics
led by Saudi Mohammed al-Arifi who called for jihad in Syria from Egypt”.
So, based on that, Leicester resident Dr Hala Diyab, who is an eloquent and
outspoken critic of the Syrian government, would not be easily given a platform by
supporters of “Brotherhood fighters in Syria” or by those, like “Saudi Mohammed al94
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Arifi who called for jihad in Syria from Egypt”. Regarding al-Arifi, she goes on to say:
“Arifi, who is known for his sectarian sermons, was one of the clerics who legitimized
jihad in Syria”.
Dr Diyab, then, is no recruiting sergeant for the Muslim Brotherhood, for armed
jihadists or for supporters of sex jihadist proponent al-Arifi, who would no doubt be
appalled at her moderate, civilised, urbane feminist views. Her face, in other words,
does not fit the picture or the narrative they would wish to paint. Hand in Hand for
Syria must explain if their narrative is the same one the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood
are writing with the blood of Syria’s innocents.
The written narrative of Hand in Hand for Syria’s Facebook timeline is also one
consistent with that of the rebels. We learn of “Ibrahim Shayban, a 9-year-old child,
shot dead by the security forces on 14 Oct 2011 in Al-Midan”; we are asked to
“Please share this tragic story of the young martyr Zainab Al-Husni, whose head,
arms & legs were cut off by the Assad regime” and we learn that “Zainab's brother,
Muhammad, was a well-known anti-Assad activist in Homs. While Muhammad was
in hiding, his sister Zainab would go purchase groceries for the family, and on
August 2, Zainab was abducted. Five days later, the family received a call that she
would be returned only if her wanted brother surrendered. The family did not agree
on the exchange location, and then the callers hung up the phone. A month later, on
September 13, the family received news that Muhammad was killed by security
forces, and his body was at the Military Hospital in Homs, and also that an
unidentified 19 year-old young woman was at the morgue. At first, the family did not
recognize Zainab. Her head was separated from her body, her face burned, her
arms cut off at the shoulders, burns and bruises all over her body. The family was
not allowed to receive Zainab's body unless they signed that they would not post
video of her body and that they would not hold a funeral procession. If this story
makes your blood boil with anger, then you will understand why the Syrian people
have been literally dying to end this oppression”.
So, the story from Hand in Hand for Syria’s time line seems quite straight forward.
Because the Syrian government forces slaughter all round them for their own
demented reasons, we all must, in conscience, be “supporters of the Syrian rebels”
and help the cause in any way we can. Their flag must be our flag, their cause, our
cause.
This is the same line that Hand in Hand for Syria’s own webpage parrots here
http://tinyurl.com/n9u7j8m as follows: “The Syrian conflict began on 15 March, 2011
as part of the wider regional protest movement known as the Arab Spring, when
people took to the streets to demonstrate for democratic change. The following
month, the 400,000-strong Syrian Army began firing on demonstrators, and the
conflict began”.
So, there you have it. It is all the fault of the Syrian government which leads to no
other moral choice than for us to be “supporters of the Syrian rebels” which not only
probably helps explain why Hand in Hand for Syria’s Facebook page allowed the
terrorist Free Syrian Army flag to be displayed in the fund raising poster on the
screengrab below but why it could reasonably be construed that Hand in Hand for
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Syria is pro-actively sympathetic to the rebels, under whose protection they primarily
work.
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Children of the Revolution: The above very revealing poster, in an inferior
resolution, was posted by the interestingly-named “The Syrian Revolution” on Hand
in Hand for Syria’s timeline on 23 October 2011, some months before Hand in Hand
for Syria incorporated. Because of that, it is one of several very important seminal
documents alluding to the genesis of Hand in Hand for Syria. The poster advertises
a banquet and related events to raise money for “the suffering children of Syria”.
Among the key points:
 The better resolution was retrieved here http://tinyurl.com/prznona This is a
website advertising the designs of the Turkish-domiciled Arab speaker who
designed this poster. A perusal of his other posters on his site shows he
works mainly for the terrorist Free Syrian Army, which is generally regarded
as the armed wing of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.
 We are told, in Arabic, that this is a “Demonstrations of Syria's Communities in
support of the Revolution” which is, presumably spearheaded by the gunmen
of the Free Syrian Army.
 We are asked, in Arabic, to “extend a generous hand to them...in collaboration
with the administration of the web-pages of both Hand in Hand for Syria and
the Demonstrations of Syria's Communities in support of the Revolution, and
to work “Hand in hand for rebuilding Syria”.
 The upper left hand side logo is a red globe, encircled with a continuous flag,
which has the Syrian Arab Republic flag 2 stars, and then goes into the FSA 3
star flag. Because this was in the early days of the Syrian Holocaust, we can
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




assume that the Turkish-based designers were, with their clients, working
hand in hand to come up with the appropriate design to fit their narrative and,
without casting any professional or other aspersions on them, that the later
British designers, referred to earlier, were secondary contractors.
In English the organisers call themselves “Demonstrations of Syrian
Communities”; however the several different Arabs I got to independently
translate the Arabic equivalent just below it says it translates to English as:
“Syrian people living abroad demonstrating for the REVOLUTION”.
One of these Arabs sums up their collective feelings on the matter as follows:
Note: they never use the word REVOLUTION in English, but use it in Arabic.
An English speaker would not know this. It is deceptive. This poster is
definitely for armed revolution in Syria, not peaceful hand-outs to needy
people.
The upper right hand corner is the English words “Hand in Hand for Syria”;
however they translated that in the Arabic words of: “Hand in Hand to BUILD
Syria”. This, of course, leads to the question as to who the builders are and
who the architects are. If either are the Free Syrian Army or the Syrian Muslim
Brotherhood, this would reinforce the idea that peace, love and mutual
understanding were not at the core of their blueprints. The involvement of the
Turkish-based Free Syrian Army connected designers so early in the
evolution of Hand in Hand for Syria points in the same sinister direction.
The poster states in English: “Demonstration of Syrian Communities”;
however, the equivalent Arabic words directly below translate as follows:
“people living abroad to support the revolution”. My Arab friends comment as
follows: they chose not to use the Arabic word for Communities, or Society,
even though in English they stated that. It would appear to be a direct attempt
to say one thing in English, while saying another thing in Arabic. Whoever
read this poster in Arabic, would immediately identify that this group is a
REVOLUTIONARY group, and thus supporting the armed overthrown of the
Syrian government.
The nascent logo of Hand in Hand for Syria is also of interest as we get
further insights into its evolution. In this particular version, we see they are still
using the flag of the Syrian Arab Republic and that they seem to be trying to
incorporate the image of differently coloured and shaped hands into it as well.
Although finished designs are matters for the designers and their clients, the
point to make here is as follows: Hand in Hand for Syria and its controlling
officers found themselves in a rapidly evolving situation and they were quite
naturally trying to capture the Zeitgeist and shoehorn it to their own ends
which, the Arabic version of the poster implies, was to help rebuild Syria
according to be evolving blueprints of the revolution’s godfathers. Their
insistence to the British designers that the core “hand in hand” concepts, with
all its sinister Muslim Brotherhood connotations, had to be retained, is a
further indication that there was a guiding hand from above and, perhaps from
afar in Turkey, Qatar or somewhere else to this entire process.
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Abdullah Alrachid, the Turkish-based designer of the poster, also works for the
extremist Syrian National Council in Canada from his Turkish bolthole, indicating a
hidden transnational dimension to Hand in Hand for Syria from its gestation. His
involvement leads us to ask if the Canadians and British are the monkeys to a
Turkish-based, Muslim Brotherhood-connected organ grinder.
An earlier December 2012 Hand in Hand for Syria Appeal with a supplied
address in Nottingham: As well as the infamous logo on the top right hand corner,
note the three stars resembling the flag of the terrorist Free Syrian Army in the top
left hand side. This is just further evidence indicating Hand in Hand for Syria’s true
allegiances must be subjected to rigorous questioning.
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The Yanks are Coming: As well as noting the terrorist Free Syrian Army flag and
the “Hand in Hand for (a Free) Syria invocation, note that this poster was
downloaded from the website (below) of notorious terrorist, mercenary and selfstyled “Freedom Fighter Matthew van Dyke” who spoke at this rally and who we
meet elsewhere in this letter/article and who is generally regarded as an unprincipled
mercenary with the blood of dead Libyans and Syrians on his hands. Will Hand in
Hand for Syria explain all these further cross-Atlantic coincidences?
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Egyptian and Syrian “Revolutions”: In this poster, Hand in Hand for Syria are to
get the proceeds of a concert saluting the seizure and sectarian abuse of power by
the outlawed Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Will Hand in Hand for Syria explain why
they are celebrating a Muslim Brotherhood Egyptian “revolution” and if they believe
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Syrian nuns should be paraded around as war criminals as the Muslim Brotherhood
thugs did to their Egyptian confreres?
Stand by Syria’s Timeline
Should Old Acquaintance be forgot: This is a screenshot from this
http://bit.ly/19j6fr9 Hand in Hand for Syria YouTube video uploaded on July 12 2012
with the extras advertising their StandbySyria gear. As this indicates that these two
groups have worked almost as one for a long time, it may also indicate a form of
conspiracy on their part for an equally long time.
Destroy them all: This is from the same http://bit.ly/19j6fr9 Hand in Hand for Syria
clip and probably helps explain why Rinaldo Francesca cannot find Hand in Hand for
Syria condemning terrorist violence. It does not explain why a British-based charity
disseminates such partisan, dangerous and incendiary propaganda. Perhaps Hand
in Hand for Syria can explain why they have not disowned this partisan extremism.
Many of those most active in Hand in Hand for Syria, such as the enigmatic Ms Iman
Mujahed seemed to have been previously active in the Stand by Syria (and similar)
group(s) which we will now briefly examine without prejudice to Hand in Hand for
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Syria or any of their officers or supporters. Given how sudden the Syrian crisis came
upon all of us not in the loop, it is, of course, understandable that those opposed to
the Syrian status quo and enraged with inflammatory reporting emanating from Syria
would check out various armed and unarmed rebel groups to see which best suited
their own goals and skill sets. Stand by Syria was one such group. Stand by Syria’s
Facebook timeline shows an equally strong support for the rebel cause as the
following screengrabs with their terrorist flags indicate:
The fact that they highlight the “soundtrack of the Syrian Resistance” and that
Manchester BUPA are happy to display a terrorist flag shows just how dangerously
embedded seems to be professional British support for the Syrian murder gangs and
why Britain has been and continues to be such fertile soil for Syria’s ISIS rebels. It
also indicates a very early but reasonably widespread support in the British medical
profession for the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and the Free Syrian Army which it
purportedly controls and that active and passive support within the British medical
community has much to answer and atone for.
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Alawites to the Tomb; Christians to Beirut: Though the above poster and
Facebook post above again urge us to support the Syrian people by joining or
otherwise helping the armed or the unarmed sections of the rebel movement, there
are further secondary points that must be noted. The first of these is that Clara
Connolly liked this metaphorical call to arms, which is probably what inspired her to
help smash up the Cricklewood meeting, as discussed in the appendices, with the
aid of some very unsavoury characters.
Although peaceful events like this probably helped politically radicalise Connolly,
Murphy/Mujahed and many others to varying degrees, their Facebook timeline tells
us that, not unlike Hand in Hand for Syria: “Stand by Syria is a group of non-political
activists in the UK working to help the Syria revolution”.
Charities, Politics and British Law: It does not explain to the more dim-witted
amongst us however quite how activists can be non-political, an important point
when we consider Hand in Hand for Syria’s charity status where being seen to be
political or to be advocating for political change, as others are doing under the Free
Syrian Army banner, would be in violation of their charity status.
As against that and, as it were, to take up the metaphorical cudgels on behalf of
Hand in Hand for Syria and their agents, the British and other authorities have long
struggled with divorcing charities from politically motivated groups using charities for
nefarious purposes. Although they are currently pre-occupied with how this affects
the sinister Muslim Brotherhood and its charity satellites, there are centuries of case
law on this topic which Nelson’s should be familiar with to be fully on top of their
brief. As a further gesture of goodwill, I include this link http://tinyurl.com/m2cdy4w
where respected journalist Peter Oborne gives some relevant pointers on this critical
matter.
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Masonic Madness: Although the terrorist Free Syrian Army clasped hands logos
resemble those associated with various Masonic lodges, there is no suggestion or
inference Freemasons are involved with the Syrian terrorist rebels. However, as we
will comment with respect to Syrian terrorist flags being with Israeli flags at
demonstrations, conspiracy theories, no matter how ridiculous, find fertile soil in the
twilight worlds the opaqueness of Hand in Hand for Syria encourages. That may not
be an accident as it would tend to emasculate critics by penning them in with the
dead weight of the tin foil brigade.
One other point that must be commented upon before we move on is the ubiquitous
clasped hand logo in the poster’s bottom left hand corner which presumably means
we and our brothers-in-arms should walk hand in hand with the Syrian (rebel) people
against the Syrian authorities, an idea that would sit easily with Hand in Hand for
Syria and, as we have seen, with Mr al-Arefe and the founders of the terrorist Free
Syrian Army.
The important point here is that the British and other peoples have been subjected to
a form of double-speak ever since these code-coloured, multi-pronged insurgencies
began – in the Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square rallies mentioned above, attendees
were asked to wear pink, an unfortunate choice of colour given the well-documented
homophobia of ISIS, al-Arefe and the conservative Sunni Muslims who are the
natural constituency of whatever remnants of popular support the terrorists still
enjoy. Although the roots of Syria’s insurgency are many, the role and prior form of
the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood must be kept in mind as must the original genocidal
slogan of the Free Syrian Army to exterminate the Alawites and ethnically cleanse
Syria of Christians, moderate Sunnis, Druze, Shias and other minorities. Like it or
not, revolts can only be instituted and maintained with an organisation to give them
their backbone and their brain. The only pre-existing such Syrian organisation is the
Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, which is congealed around a number of families which
have a fanatical personal hatred, justified or not, for the Syrian Arab Republic and all
who serve it.
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Regarding the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and “the inference must be that they are
primarily supporters of the Syrian rebels,” no such inferences are made. The Muslim
Brotherhood were the brains and the initial trigger men of the Syrian revolt and they
congealed around the Free Syrian Army, the terrorist group whose flag is at the heart
of the Hand in Hand for Syria logo. That much is undeniable. Nor is the fact that,
once terrorists are armed and given autonomy, there is no knowing which layer of
Dante’s Inferno they will bring us to. So it was with the Nazis and so it is with the
terrorist Free Syrian Army, whose flag was emblazoned into the logo of Hand in
Hand for Syria.
“Not only do both Hand in Hand for Syria and Mr al-Arefe, their extremist
benefactor”, use the flag of the Free Syrian Army as their prototype but they
both used clasped hands alluded to in the founding document of the Free
Syrian Army”.
With regard to the above quote from the original article/letter, Nelson’s comment that
“Making statements such as these is again putting the wellbeing and safety of our
client in danger.” They make this claim even though both Hand in Hand for Syria and
Mr al-Arefe both clearly use the same terrorist flag as their prototype, something
Nelson’s appear to implicitly admit, whilst also saying that stating this apparently
obvious truth “is again putting the wellbeing and safety of our client in danger.”
Given that Nelson’s and Hand in Hand for Syria, their client, both now admit that the
flag of the terrorist Free Syrian Army puts their wellbeing and safety in danger, to
alleviate that threat, Hand in Hand for Syria should fully dissociate themselves from
the Free Syrian Army terrorists and disavow them, their symbols, their flags and their
actions. In so much as their wellbeing and safety are at stake, it is their associations
with terrorists, their symbols and their apologists that put them at risk, rather than my
civil-minded actions in pointing out those ill-judged associations. Hand in Hand for
Syria can easily rectify the situation by telling the British and Syrian authorities
everything they know about Mr al-Arefe and the Free Syrian Army and other
terrorists. They should, of course, also publicly dissociate themselves and their
symbols from those Mr al-Arefe and his ilk use and who they now belatedly seem to
regard as dangerous fanatics, extremists, jihadist recruiters and enablers.
“Mr al-Arefe is not a benefactor of our client. He has never funded anything in
relation to our client”.
Nelson’s quote seems to concede that Mr al-Arefe is an extremist but deny he is a
benefactor. Although Hand in Hand for Syria deny Mr al-Arefe benefacted them, the
apparent fact is this Saudi extremist did speak at least one of their very earliest
major fund-raising and morale-lifting events where the flag of the terrorist Free
Syrian Army was clearly displayed as an integral part of the logo of Hand in Hand for
Syria. If it is a case that those “incriminating” photos and logos are forged or
photoshopped, then of course I do unreservedly apologise, though I would
respectfully again point out in mitigation that the logo of the terrorist Free Syrian
Army is still prominently displayed on Hand in Hand for Syria’s home and Facebook
pages, indicating a degree of inertia, if not passive or even active support for these
flesh-eating terrorists.
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As has already been stated, previously published reports have stated that Mr alArefe was one of the original funders of Hand in Hand for Syria. If that is not the
case, it can be easily shown by Hand in Hand for Syria opening their accounts for a
forensic investigation to relevant authorities and researchers. If it can be
demonstrated that Hand in Hand for Syria have had no previous dealings, financial
or otherwise, with Mr al-Arefe, then, of course, I unreservedly apologise and promise
to print a full retraction.
Figure 6: Ms Iman Mujahed, who is listed here, but not on the Charity Commission
website, as a trustee of Hand in Hand for Syria. Note the Free Syrian Army emblem
on the Hand in Hand for Syria logo on this poster by the Leeds Friends of Syria
Group.
Corrections and Clarifications: Ms Iman Mujahed is NOT a trustee of Hand in
Hand for Syria. The information on this poster, highlighting that Ms Iman Mujahed is
a trustee is false and, according to the solicitors acting for Hand in Hand for Syria,
“Not only does this statement highlight individuals who are part of the charity, it is
providing false information as Ms Mujahed is not a trustee of the charity”.
“Ms Iman Mujahed, who is listed here, but not on the Charity Commission
website, as a trustee of Hand in Hand for Syria. Note the Free Syrian Army
emblem on the Hand in Hand for Syria logo on this poster by the Leeds
Friends of Syria Group”.
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With regard to this quotation, Nelson’s state: Not only does this statement highlight
individuals who are part of the charity, it is providing false information as Ms Mujahed
is not a trustee of the charity.
With regard to that statement, it can best be answered by first referring to the
relevant Wikispooks entry which reads, simply, in part: “Various non-trustees have
claimed trustee status”. They go on to refer specifically to Ms Mujahed as one of
those non-trustees claiming trustee status. Given that is the case, Hand in Hand for
Syria should take this matter up with the enigmatic Ms Mujahed and the extremist
Leeds Friends of Syria group, not with me, as I am just drawing attention to this
anomaly, real or otherwise.
With regard to my comments, it should be said that supporters of Hand in Hand for
Syria have publicised her in the offending poster as a trustee of Hand in Hand for
Syria whose logo has the Free Syrian Army terrorist flag firmly embedded in it and I
merely queried how that could be reconciled with her not being listed on the Charity
Commission website as a trustee; it is, in other words, the supporters of Hand in
Hand for Syria who have published the false information and I, in my aged
innocence, who have helped both Hand in Hand for Syria and Nelson’s by drawing
their attention to this false and, as they somewhat surprisingly claim, potentially
damaging information. If monies have been raised as a result of donors thinking Ms
Mujahed was a trustee when she was not, then clearly, Hand in Hand for Syria
should immediately refund those monies with interest and issue a statement to that
effect in their audited accounts as well as in an immediate press release. I, for my
part, have rectified my “error” by highlighting, as best I can, the confusion over Ms
Mujahed. It should now be up to Hand in Hand for Syria to rectify their part by
refunding the monies with interest they have collected and, of course, for Nelson’s to
advise them accordingly in accordance with relevant governance guidelines. If
repeating the false claim that Ms Mujahed is a trustee of Hand in Hand for Syria
endangers her, then clearly there are severe risks, over which I have no control, of
being more heavily associated with Hand in Hand for Syria than Ms Mujahed already
is/was and Nelson’s or some other advisors should advise Hand in Hand for Syria
how to handle their bruised reputation to mitigate that risk. Further and, as many can
and will attest, as I am a frequent visitor to Kilburn, where Ms Mujahed operated from
on behalf of Hand in Hand for Syria, Nelson’s and Hand in Hand for Syria should
consider the further damage their words and actions have done me amongst
members of the Irish and Muslim communities I fraternise with there and how they
can recompense me for same.
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Hand for Syria. The information in the Irish Independent, highlighting that Ms Iman
Mujahed “is a trustee of Hand in Hand for Syria (HIHS) - a London-based charity”, is
false and, according to the solicitors acting for Hand in Hand for Syria, “Not only
does this statement highlight individuals who are part of the charity, it is providing
false information as Ms Mujahed is not a trustee of the charity”.
So too is this notice http://tinyurl.com/l35ofjv concerning a Sheffield University
Islamic Circle meeting addressed by “a trustee of the charity Hand in Hand for Syria,
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Iman Mujahed, who has recently travelled inside Syria to hand deliver humanitarian
and medical aid”. This Sheffield meeting seems to have been organised by Bradford
“activist” Noor Barotochi, who, as the appendix shows, was instrumental in disrupting
the visit of Christian nun Mother Agnes to London.
Hand for Syria. The information on this “Inside the Revolution” website, which may
be affiliated with Hand in Hand for Syria, highlighting that Ms Iman Mujahed is a
trustee, is false and, according to the solicitors acting for Hand in Hand for Syria,
“Not only does this statement highlight individuals who are part of the charity, it is
providing false information as Ms Mujahed is not a trustee of the charity”. As Hand in
Hand for Syria have yet to fully clarify their position on the “Revolution”, the role of
Iman Mujahed/Murphy speaking on their apparent behalf with supporters of that
“Revolution” will be commented on when sufficient information is available.
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Murphy’s Law: The above December 19 2013 screengrab from Hand in Hand for
Syria’s home website http://tinyurl.com/l98yj7l tells us of a fantastic unnamed 92year old Swindon who knitted 400 jumpers for Hand in Hand for Syria. In its third
paragraph, Hand in Hand for Syria describes Iman Mujahed/Murphy as “a trustee of
the charity”.
Hand for Syria. The information on this Hand in Hand for Syria website, highlighting
that Ms Iman Mujahed is a trustee of Hand in Hand for Syria, is false and, according
to the solicitors acting for Hand in Hand for Syria, “Not only does this statement
highlight individuals who are part of the charity, it is providing false information as Ms
Mujahed is not a trustee of the charity”.
Video and Iman Star: Watching the video here http://bit.ly/18Y9Tqt of her TED talk,
in between all her soft-soaping, soft-selling blarney, Iman Murphy/Mujahed tells us
as 1:40 that towards the end of 2011: "I researched a charity and I found Hand in
Hand for Syria and understood that they delivered aid directly into Syria”. Iman
Mujahed/Murphy, this Irish/British woman, omits to tell them of her prior involvement
on behalf of “my beloved Syria.”
In this October 2012 article http://tinyurl.com/k5828kn we learn about a Stand by
Syria “hearts and minds” protest and “Iman Murphy, the organization’s leader.” Iman
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Murphy/Mujahed also tells us: “We actually don’t work alone, they corporate with
different charities to raise funds. Since the harsh winter is coming soon, refugees do
need food, coats and sanction equipment. The packaging will be finished on
Tuesday. Then we will drive them to Syria in order to ensure they are used in the
need.”
So we learn that British and Irish sympathisers have already the logistics in place to
drive goods from London to Syria and that StandbySyria cooperate with other
charities, Hand in Hand for Syria, probably being one of them and more established
ones like Caritas or Oxfam not making their cut for reasons we can only speculate on
for now but which seem to follow an established pattern of marginalising the
mainstream charities and promulgating the causes of the same opaque and less
established ones.
Irish expatriate Iman Murphy/Mujahed, wearing her StandbySyria rather than
her Hand in Hand for Syria hijab, calls for the destruction of the Syrian Arab
Republic based on her “evidence”: In this Islam Channel production
http://tinyurl.com/my4nlkr controversial Irish expatriate, StandbySyria “activist” and
apparent Hand in Hand for Syria trustee Iman Muhahed/Murphy heaps praise on
disgraced and discredited provocateur Danny Abdel Dayyem and, together with the
controversial Dr Mousab Azzawi of the controversial Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights, calls for no-fly zones, human corridors to allow Turkish troops invade and for
the West to arm the cannibals and criminals of the Free Syrian Army. This was the
game plan of the Muslim Brotherhood, of the Syrian National Council and of the
NATO war hawks who supported them. The death toll when this propaganda piece
was made stood at less than 7,000. It is now in excess of 200,000 thanks, in no
small part to disgraced and discredited provocateur like Danny Abdel Dayyem, who
Murphy lauds for reasons she should explain.
The paid were “interviewed” by John Rees who, as the screengrab (above right)
shows, is a leading officer in the Stop the War Coalition, which bowed to the
pressure of online thugs affiliated with Hand in Hand for Syria and forced Syrian Stop
the War activist Mother Agnes Mariam to withdraw from their meeting. Note here that
John Reese of Stop the War Coalition gives an uncritical platform to an
unrepresentative pair who are calling to start war not to stop it.
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In this March 19th, 2013 article http://tinyurl.com/p9raura we learn from “Iman
Mujahed, a trustee of the charity” that “Hand in Hand for Syria has opened a
children’s hospital in the Atmeh border town in Idlib province, which hosts the largest
number of refugees in Syria. There is also a new maternity unit nearby, established
for an obstetrician previously delivering babies on her kitchen floor, highlighting the
fortitude with which many women are dealing with the crisis”. So in between all the
usual stuff about babies we see that, for all the blarney, Hand in Hand for Syria seem
to be based near the rebel-held (Turkish border) Syrian town of Idlib rather than the
length and breadth of Syria. That fits neatly into our prior suppositions.
Trustee Murphy: In this 16 April 2013 screengrab from the twitter feed of the
extremist Leeds Friends of Syria, we see that Iman Murphy was scheduled to speak
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at their event that very day. As the announcement was tweeted to @hands4Syr and
@LUUAmnesty one is left wondering why neither of them drew the attention of the
organisers to the fact that Iman Murphy is not a trustee of Hand for Syria. As
@hands4Syr which is marked as being the Twitter feed of Hand in Hand for Syria,
was included in the correspondence, one wonders why Hand in Hand for Syria did
not upbraid Hand in Hand for Syria because, to quote the words Nelson’s used
regarding my own apparent faux pas: “Not only does this statement highlight
individuals who are part of the charity, it is providing false information as Ms Mujahed
is not a trustee of the charity”.
Whether she is a Hand in Hand trustee or not, there is no doubting Iman Mujahed
nee Murphy’s devotion and service to the cause. In this 15 February 2014 “Socialist
Resistance” link http://tinyurl.com/odrevkl , “Iman Murphy” is listed as a speaker
along with such luminaries as Yasser Munif, Razan Ghazzawi and Gilbert Achcar, all
of whom are mentioned in our appendix about the Cricklewood attack by pro-terrorist
thugs. As Rola Halam, a “British Syrian Doctor with Hand in Hand for Syria” was also
listed as a speaker, one wonders just how inter-linked and inter-woven might this
extended group of “the usual suspects” be.
Some of these characters, Achcar being perhaps the most outspoken of them with
his sick belief in humanitarian air bombing, have nailed their pro-war colours very
firmly to their metaphorical mast. In as much as Syria is concerned,
Murphy/Mujahed, the on again off again trustee of Hand in Hand or Syria seems to
have been cut from much the same revolutionary cloth as these supposedly left-wing
“Inside the Syrian Revolution” supporters of NATO interventionist ground and air
wars.
Bear the Scarlet Standard High: In this 27 November 2011 Facebook screengrab
http://tinyurl.com/qyvt5rv Iman Murphy of the interestingly-named “British Syrians &
Friends in Solidarity with the Syrian Revolution” urges the Facebook masses to
attend a protest “in support of our Syrian family” which probably excludes Alawite,
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Christian , Druze, Shia and moderate Sunni black sheep, who have been
slaughtered by the Free Syrian Army and other terrorists in huge numbers. Although
it is possible Iman Mujahed Murphy got a Damascene moment later on and forsook
the “Syrian Revolution” for the less contentious cause Hand in Hand for Syria
espouses, Hand in Hand for Syria must explain their general policy towards those
who revert from supporting the flesh-eating, head-chopping psychopaths of the Free
Syrian Army to being their grafters and spokespeople and, if they expect Cross
worshippers, Druze and other embattled minorities to continue to support them.
In this February 2013 report http://tinyurl.com/k2yrjtk Iman Murphy, “a business
woman, mother and an aid worker for the charity “Hand in Hand Syria” pops up,
together with “Dr. Mahmoud Akraa, a medical doctor who has treated injured people
in Syria” where they opine on why students at Imperial College should help Hand in
Hand for Syria. The report did not state if Dr al Akraa had any connection with Hand
in Hand for Syria and, if he had, whether the audience were informed of that. All this
is more circumstantial evidence of their opaque, underhand ways.
We Will Fight Them on the Beaches with a Novel: In this 5 February 2012 post,
Iman Murphy says she has “so much to say about my beloved Syria, Maybe write
a novel about this when we finish fighting for a free Syria InshAllah. Thank you all x”
So we are fighting for a free Syria? Who are we? Surely not her non-political
comrades in Hand in Hand for Syria? Also why, except perhaps for practicing her
chic lit style, does this Dublin woman, who is a long-term English resident, speak of
“my beloved Syria?” What is her agenda?
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I Think. Therefore Iman: In this 12 March 2012 post, Irish “revert” Iman Murphy
claims Palestinians, who are fighting for the Syrian Arab Republic, oppose it. She
should also explain who precisely is coming to Damascus, her on her secretive and
implausible grand tour with aid, or the terrorists of the Free Syrian Army.
A 20 December 2011 facebook screengrab from Iman Murphy: Note the clasped
hands, the Free Syran army terrorst flag and the FSA graffiti. No doubt this was a
reflection of the “clasped hands” evolution and word had yet to pass down the line as
to what the final version would be.
London Screengrab: This is a screengrab of where various businesses connected
with Iman Mujahed/Murphy are registered. The screengrab on the right shows a
certain Theresa Murphy, amongst others, has a registered business there too.
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Hand in Hand for Syria Break the Siege of Yarmouk Camp: According this post
on Iman Mujahed’s Facebook time line, that is. Not only that but they managed to do
it twice in a month. Although Hand in Hand for Syria do not provide any corroborating
evidence by way of photos, statements or anything else, I guess, as always, we will
have to take them at their word.
Iman Mujahed/Murphy does a Meet and Greet: Iman Mujahed uploaded this
picture on 9 December 2013. Although neither Hand in Hand for Syria nor Murphy
provided any corroborating evidence by way of photos, statements or anything else, I
guess, as always, we will have to take them at their word that this was where they
said it was.
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Iman Mujahed, Trustee?: This website http://www.21cc-oxford.com/speakers.html
which seems to believe that Iman Mujahed is a trustee of Hand in Hand for Syria,
has it making even fresher claims, all again with no supporting evidence. Enough!
Further Trustee and Governance Complications
Hand for Syria and nor, apparently, are the women appearing on a controversial TV
channel displayed in this screen grab from Hand in Hand for Syria’s own Facebook
timeline. As the information on this post highlighting that these women are trustees
may be false according to the solicitors acting for Hand in Hand for Syria, it may be
“providing false information” which may or may not lead to legal action.
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Is Dr Mahmoud al Akraa a trustee of Hand in Hand for Syria: This Google
screengrab suggests that Dr Mahmoud al Akraa, who we have just encountered and
who we discuss later regarding his role in smashing up the Cricklewood meeting, is a
trustee of Hand in Hand for Syria, Instead of threatening lawsuits against either
Google or me, Hand in Hand for Syria should confirm whether this is the case.
Corrections and Clarifications: Dr Mahmoud al Akraa may NOT be a trustee of
Hand in Hand for Syria. As the information on this Google search highlighting that Dr
Mahmoud al Akraa is a trustee may be false, according to the solicitors acting for
Hand in Hand for Syria, it may be “providing false information” which may or may not
lead to legal action.
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Omar Gabbar, one of Hand in Hand for Syria’s top officers, is, in the above screen
grabs, claimed to be a representative of a different organisation at a Hand in Hand
for Syria event for some opaque reason Hand in Hand for Syria should no doubt
explain in the interests of transparency. His precise status in Hand in Hand for Syria
is further queried in the appendices.
That, however, is not the end of the matter as the above screengrabs from their
website show. In the last of these Omar Abdul Gabbar is listed as one of their
“executive team” and in the first and third of them, he is shown speaking at one of
their events as a representative of yet another organisation. Hand in Hand for Syria
should clearly and precisely explain how Mr Gabbar and others fit into their
governance structure, what, if anything, is the relationship between Hand in Hand for
Syria, of which Mr Gabbar, just like Ms Mujahed before him, is listed as a leading
member and sometime trustee, and the other organisation Hand in Hand for Syria
say Mr Gabbar represents when he speaks at Hand in Hand for Syria functions. At a
bare minimum, both Nelson’s and their Hand in Hand for Syria client should admit
that, as in the case with the widely publicised but somewhat enigmatic Ms Mujahed,
this is confusing at best and downright misleading at worst.
http://www.helpforsyria.org.uk/about/ and the Case of Omar Gabbar Because
Omar Gabbar, one of Hand in Hand for Syria’s top officers, associates himself in
such strange circumstances with a (friendly) rival organisation, this again raises a
host of corporate governance related questions. These questions may best be
examined by looking at http://www.helpforsyria.org.uk/about/ which, though it has
few followers, is currently advertising heavily on Twitter. Although it too seems to be
opaque, their website link tells us that “Help for Syria was launched by the
Humanitarian Group for Syria in May 2013 after being set up by three British
Syrian charities: Hand in Hand for Syria, Syria Relief and Human Care Syria”,
the very three organisations we saw linked together some years earlier. This
leads to the immediate question as to why there is so much duplication, opaqueness
and apparent duplicity in these organisations, a topic I explored when considering
the opaque operations of the sinister Syrian Muslim Brotherhood crew in Britain and
Ireland and which is now appended as a further appendix to further highlight not only
the immediate and imminent danger British and Irish citizens may now share with
their Syrian counterparts but to again impress on Hand in Hand for Syria, their
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solicitors and the various regulatory and policing bodies the need for transparency
and accountability in this whole sordid business.
In mitigation, I am not trying to link Dr Gabbar, Hand in Hand for Syria or its affiliates
with the sinister Syrian Muslim Brotherhood but to clearly say that the safety, security
and well-being of the British, Irish and Syrian people demands that all these layers of
opaqueness be peeled back because “The Truth will set you free”.
Hand in Hand for Syria, Syria Relief and the Said Foundation: This document
http://tinyurl.com/o9vm8f9 tells us that “The Foundation supported UK-registered
charities Hand in Hand for Syria and Syria Relief to supply medicines, medical
equipment and consumables to hospitals and clinics in North Syria in support of a
range of health care services including trauma operations and basic treatments
reaching thousands of patients”.
Although it makes no comments on any links that may exist between the two groups,
it goes on to say that: “Hand in Hand for Syria was able to purchase blood bags and
transfusion sets for 2,000 patients at hospitals in Aleppo as well as three incubators,
a generator and medication for a maternity hospital located in Idlib province. Syria
Relief provided Bab Al-Hawa hospital, located in Syria close to the border with
Turkey, with medical consumables and surgical sets”.
Although the Said Foundation should demand verifiable receipts for all this, they
might also query why all of this aid they paid for is going into terrorist-controlled
areas and why none is going into the government-controlled areas where most
internally displaced Syrians reside.
North Syria: While they are at it, the Said Foundation might ask why the only
semblance of tangible presence Hand in Hand for Syria presents is in the terroristcontrolled areas contiguous to the Turkish border.
Muslim Charities are Hiring: This site http://unjobs.org/vacancies/1342494650448
tell us The Muslim Charities Forum is looking for a coordinator to support the
Humanitarian Group for Syria (HG4S), a coalition of UK-based Syrian Charities,
namely Syria Relief, Hand in Hand for Syria and Human Care Foundation
Worldwide.
Because it does not tell us why Hand in Hand for Syria are under the umbrella of this
decidedly non-Christian and non-secular Muslim group, we must ask why that might
be so and, if it is so, why should Christians, atheists, secularists and sundry others
continue to support it, especially as the British government’s own advice is for us all
to support more established and less controversial groups.
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Before Hand in Hand for Syria flippantly fob us off with the party line of the access
they enjoy to Syrian terrorist enclaves, they might want to peruse this Daily
Telegraph article http://tinyurl.com/osc3fnd which tells us that Hand in Hand for
Syria’s Muslim Charities brolly ”has been stripped of state funding in a crackdown on
Islamist extremism” on the instructions of the British government. Although the article
is of interest as it sheds light on The Muslim Charities Forum’s ability to network with
such establishment figures as the Princess Royal, the US Ambassador to Britain,
and Amir Khan, the boxer, it goes on to cite perceived links with the Muslim
Brotherhood which “had encouraged British jihadists to fight in Syria and Iraq” as
being part of the reason for their pariah status and that the British authorities had
identified “an incredibly complex web” of up to 60 organisations in Britain, including
charities, think tanks and even television channels, with links to the Brotherhood,
which would be coming under intense scrutiny. The report goes on to say that the
group has three major operating centres: England, Turkey and Qatar, two of which
Hand in Hand for Syria are most active in and one of which, Qatar, they are not so
obviously active in.
In the case of Qatar, the article reports on its receptiveness to the notorious Yusuf
al-Qaradawi as follows: Qatar, the wealthiest country in the world per head of
population, has for 30 years been home to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian cleric in
exile, often described as the Brotherhood’s spiritual leader. Qaradawi, who was
banned from entering Britain in 2008, is accused of anti-Semitism, supporting
Palestinian suicide bombers, condoning wife-beating and punishing homosexuals.
Not only does the rabidly sectarian Qaradawi promote wife-beating as al-Arefe does,
but he has been praised in “academic works” by prominent Hand in Hand for Syria
supporter Christine Gilmore, discussed later, who co-organised the horrific
Cricklewood attacks with the colourful Dr al Akraa, who has been prominent with
Hand in Hand for Syria.
Muslim Brotherhood Investigations: The report tells us that a government inquiry
is investigating: investigations into charities that are effectively “fronts” for the
Brotherhood; inquiries into funding of the organisation and links to jihadi groups
abroad; and banning clerics linked to the group from countries such as Qatar and
Turkey from coming to Britain for rallies and conferences. That being so, this, my
amended letter/article, is of direct interest to the police investigation into the Muslim
Brotherhood and I will pass it on to them not only for me to discharge my civic duty
but to avoid any possible conspiracy charges that should follow as a result of that
inquiry.
This is not to say that Hand in Hand for Syria is allied to the secretive, sinister and
sectarian Muslim Brotherhood but it is to query why they are now moving under a
decidedly Muslim banner under the auspices of a very controversial Muslim group
and to ask them to be much more transparent so that the British authorities can
ensure they are not being duped by the seemingly compromised Muslim Charities
Forum or even by more sinister elements such as the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood,
who are key supporters of the terrorist Free Syrian Army whose flag is central to the
logo of Hand in Hand for Syria.
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Given that one cannot be a little bit pregnant, this Daily Telegraph article
http://bit.ly/1M40OvI should be of particular note to the British government’s
authorities. It begins by stating that “The Muslim Brotherhood’s objective is to
replace secular democratic government with an Islamic caliphate under sharia law”.
Not only that but it goes on to say that the British government’s dilemma is not
actually stating that the Muslim Brotherhood supports terrorism but having the report
state how “strongly it should say the Brotherhood is linked to terrorism”. If, as may
be the case, Hand in Hand for Syria is plugged into that grid, then the same dilemma
applies.
Muslim Brotherhood Denials: Because the Daily Telegraph article is certain the
report will dismiss claims by the Brotherhood that there is “no evidence” of links
between it and terrorism”. Hand in Hand for Syria should acknowledge that such
links, tenuous or other, are a concern to the British Cross-worshipping public and
they should call off their legal eagles. This is all the more so as the article cites “one
person involved in counter-extremism who says: “When you start forensically going
through the names and locations, there’s no way the Brotherhood can keep up the
denials.”
The Daily Telegraph article goes on to say: Six of the Muslim Charities Forum’s 10
members are or were members of the Union of Good, also known as the 101 Days
Campaign. The Union of Good is designated by the US Treasury Department as a
terrorist organisation …”. As Hand in Hand for Syria are under the umbrella of this
questionable group, Hand in Hand for Syria should, to repeat, cease and desist from
threatening me either directly or indirectly and clarify, make plain and make
transparent all of their links, if any, to subversive groups like the Syrian Muslim
Brotherhood.
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Syria Relief: Syria Relief, one of the other two groups with Hand in Hand for Syria
in the triumvirate under the umbrella of the Muslim Charities, has been discussed
here http://standforpeace.org.uk/syria-relief/ in a website that, even though it may be
Islamophobic, is included here for the record. Here are some of its pertinent points:

On 21st June, British charity Syria Relief held its annual dinner. Although
Syria Relief, which has staff in both the UK and Turkey, claims to “provide
humanitarian help, in any shape or form, wherever it is needed”, the charity
provides platforms to extremist preachers and has links with extremist groups.
 Syria Relief was established in September 2011. The charity is closely aligned
with the British Muslim Heritage Centre (BMHC), with which it shares trustees.
In June 2012, the charity set up an office at the premises of the BMHC.
Speakers at the BHMC in recent years have included Adel Rahman al-Sudais,
Shabir Ally and Abdullah Hakim Quick. Sudais has prayed for God to
“terminate” the Jews (whom he describes as “monkeys and pigs” and
“scum of the humanity”), and was banned from entering Canada. Ally, who
believes that homosexuality is “sinful”, has said that those who practise “such
acts” will be “destroyed”. Quick also advocates the death penalty for
homosexuals, and has been recorded calling upon God to “purify Masjid alAqsa from the filth of the Yahud [Jews]”.
If there is any validity in those and related points, then Syria Relief also have serious
questions to answer. As does Human Care Foundation Worldwide, the last
member of the triumvirate if this article http://tinyurl.com/lh7ltmt in the prestigious
Daily Telegraph, which links them to a terrorist Trojan horse threat, is anything to go
by. Their own site http://www.humancaresyria.org/about tells us that “Human Care
Syria is the working name of UK-registered NGO, Human Care Foundation
Worldwide”.
Our present difficulty seems to be in differentiating between legitimate Muslim charity
groups and those infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood and similar subversives bent
on establishing caliphate rule in one form or another. Our difficulty in doing this is
stymied, as we shall again see, by the complex inter-weaving of personalities,
facilities and goals of all these groups, the more questionable and rabidly radical of
whom will obviously be devious, deceitful and dangerous.
As this article shows http://tinyurl.com/l4r9mg3 the wider Muslim community is very
aware of this problem and it states: “On the one hand, it has provided support and
guidance to new charities set up in response to the Syrian crisis (many of them
Muslim-led), including running workshops and helping to launch the Help for Syria
campaign with Human Care Syria, Syria Relief and Hand in Hand for Syria”.
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The very odd thing about the article, however, is it showcases the three different
group members of the triumvirate which was, recall, established under the protective
umbrella of The Muslim Charities Forum from which, presumably, Cross
worshippers would be advised to steer well clear. In the absence of further
clarification, one has to wonder if those three were the result of a random selection
or if there was a hidden hand, sinister or otherwise, picking those groups out of the
metaphorical Muslim Charities hat.
They Blog to Praise Human Care Syria: Perhaps in an effort to get a greater
diversity of opinion, HelpforSyria, mentioned two paragraphs above, gave a guest
blog here http://bit.ly/1bkRc1L to Human Care Syria, with which, as we have seen, it
has close ties. Let’s see how diverse their opinions are. After first learning that
“Human Care Syria is one of our three partner charities performing vital work in the
region”, the blogger blogs but not before we wonder if the other two partner charities
are from the ranks of “the usual suspects”. We first learn that: “Human Care Syria
has been able to provide humanitarian aid for the helpless people on the Syrian
ground and borders. They have been able to reach affected areas such as
Damascus, Homs, Hama, Latakya, Idlib, Aleppo, Deir Ezzour and Raqqa as they
have a permanent team and office on the ground, who in turn ensure that the UK
office is always aware of the most pressing needs on the ground”.
So, much like Hand in Hand for Syria, Human Care Syria are holed up in some very
dangerous places controlled by disparate armed groups who duke it out with each
other and who are highly suspicious of infiltrators from outside. The blog was written
on 30 January 2014, long after ISIS assumed full control of Raqqa, where Human
Care Syria also claim to operate.
Same Old Flag. Same Old Story: Like Hand in Hand for Syria, Human Care Syria
seems to have no problem with the flag of the terrorist Free Syrian Army if the above
photo is anything to go by.
The guest blog next tells us: “Many innocent people are injured and it has become
crucial to provide medical equipment and emergency relief to villages that are
vigorously bombed”.
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No doubt this bombing, the only method of death highlighted, refers to the barrel
bombs and other ordnance delivered to the terrorist areas by the dastardly Syrian Air
Force. There is, so far as I can see, no mention of the countless war crimes of the
rebel groups.
Lifeline Help: Hand in Hand for Syria should also explain their alliances with the
controversial Lifeline Help group, which also sports the terrorist Hand In Hand for
Syria flag and why the radical Islamic music and Takbir shouts on the above
YouTube video.
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Haven’t I seen you somewhere before: The un-named grey-headed Western
looking dude controlling access to Dr Hallam (top left) in Saving Syria’s Children is
not the same dude in the other photos, who seems to makes it onto the little screen
when Dr David Nott’s work with Syria Relief is featured on Channel 4 where he
seems to be a dab hand in their operating theatre. Like the Franco/Anglo/Syrian
nurse we already met, we must ask, in addition to Dr Nott and the highly acclaimed
Syria Relief team, how many different groups this silver fox operates with.
As well as his high-profile work with Syria Relief, Dr Nott, a very highly qualified
surgeon in his own right, is now Medical Director of The Phoenix Foundation, a new
charity set up by Dr Ahsan, who co-starred in Saving Syria’s Children opposite Dr
Hallam. Although this is a natural progression of his previous work with The Red
Cross and the more problematic Medecins Sans Frontieres that we also came
across in the original document, now appended, many questions regarding these
marriages of convenience between the different actors involved remain unanswered,
some due to the fog of war, others due to the fog of opaque governance systems.
Mentioned in Dispatches: Although this report http://bit.ly/1CIlsQ8 tells us of a
Moroccan resident raising funds in Morocco for Hand in Hand for Syria, it makes us
wonder why the collection is not for a Moroccan or Arab-based group instead. What,
besides the Muslim Brotherhood, could be the connection? This report
http://bit.ly/1GDjoGK has “humanitarian war monger” Gilbert Achcar, who we discuss
in the appendices in connection with the violent Cricklewood attacks, peddling his
faux anti-war credentials, concerning a “broad front” meeting he spoke at with
Tasneem Al-Zeer, an “activist with British Solidarity with Syria” and Marwa Kuwaider
of “Human Care Foundation World”, two dubious charities we already met. This
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report http://bit.ly/1bkSCJq tells us of a movie the hard line Leeds Friends of Syria
screened, which was followed by “a talk from Firas al-Rawi, a trustee for the Human
Care Foundation and chairman of Leeds Grand Mosque,” who told the punters about
“the Human Care Foundation Worldwide, which has been helping get humanitarian
aid to Syria since 1988”.
All in all, it seems like a very virtuous, very heavily Muslim-oriented circle and, in the
same vein, this link http://yhoo.it/1CHrEGC lists what must be a very comprehensive
list of donation details for charities, all apparently singing from the same hymn sheet,
while this link http://bit.ly/11kcuGZ brings us back to the betrayal and murder of Alan
Henning and alleges several of his fellow charity workers might have some of his
blood on their hands. It seems that the more we delve, the more disturbing questions
we unearth.
In conclusion to the above: Whether Hand in Hand for Syria like it or not, the
British public and the British authorities, who are charged with protecting them, have
an absolute right to know how precisely, or if at all, Hand in Hand for Syria fit into the
complex nexus the Muslim Brotherhood have spun as a part of their sectarian,
supremacist agenda. Nothing less can be acceptable.
Hold the Front Pew: Iman Mujahed pops up here again, with Paul Conroy, a fervent
proponent of “humanitarian bombing” who we meet again in connection with the
Cricklewood attacks and whose pathetic screed charitably reviewed here
(http://tinyurl.com/pqumfn9 ). As well as wondering why this “business woman and
mother” is speaking with one of Britain’s rabid war apologist, the other thing we must
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note is the venue, the spiritual home of Fleet Street. It seems a pity that neither St
Bride’s nor Fleet Street, both of whom most likely gave this Hand in Hand for Syria
coup their blessing, did not add a little balance, not to say common sense into the
proceedings and that the media allows itself to be so easily led from the path of
peace.
Martin Fletcher’s balanced contribution to proceedings can be gauged by reading
this article of his in The Times http://tinyurl.com/o5umd7h where he interviews Rami
Habib, a 43-year-old Syrian-born doctor from Leicester, who returned to Syria to
service the terrorists. Despite being allowed to study for free by the Syrian
government, he feels Syria did not give him all that he deserved, so he scarpered to
Saudi Arabia “to avoid military service”. He has admitted treating the odd captured
soldier “though I hate them,” he says. Fletcher informs us, with a straight face and
with no evidence: “The Assad regime has systematically destroyed great swaths of
its own capital, Damascus, and of Aleppo and Homs. The government has used
chemical weapons and has fired Scud missiles and dropped cluster bombs. It has
used shabiha to ethnically cleanse Sunni villages and kill women and children. It has
used rape, torture, abductions, firing squads and mass executions as weapons of
war. It has bombed schools, hospitals and bakeries”.
Habib, like Fletcher, it seems, believes the Syrian government, not the terrorists are
the problem. Regarding Jabhat al-Nusra, which is a part of the al-Qaeda franchise,
we are told: Around 150 members of Jabhat al-Nusra fight alongside the FSA in
Salma. Most are Syrians and last year they helped eject from the town dozens of
their colleagues who had defected to Isis. “We love them [Jabhat al-Nusra], so long
as they don’t interfere with our lives,” says Habib, who complained only that they try
to stop him smoking because they consider it un-Islamic. “They are very strong, very
sincere and willing to die to achieve any mission given to them. They have good
weapons and ammunition and they’re stronger than the FSA. You can’t win any
military operation without Jabhat al-Nusra,” says Habib. His great fear is that the air
strikes will encourage Jabhat al-Nusra to join forces with Isis against the US.
So there you have it. Habib, Fletcher’s “Leicester” doctor thinks we should all support
Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise. Dr Habib is amazed and annoyed “the police have
already quizzed friends in Britain about him and that donors to his foundation fear
they will be accused of funding terrorism”. Like Hand in Hand for Syria’s Dr Gabbar,
he is a doctor, he wants his blood-soaked revolution and we, it seems, should not
only cheer him on but fund his blood thirsty ways as well.
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I’m A Doctor: Let me through to have my photo taken: In the lead-up to the
Ghouta incident, The Times of Israel carried this http://tinyurl.com/nw36ks6 August
2013 report on an alleged chemical weapons attack. Note the mini-army of extras is
the photo and the logo on the female, bottom right. These links
http://tinyurl.com/nssne4u http://tinyurl.com/bpkcw3m indicate how chemical gas
attacks should be treated. Some pertinent points: avoid exposure; go to high ground
outside; remove clothing, rapidly wash the entire body with soap and water; stay
outdoors; do not crowd around the infected area or person.
Given the controversy surrounding false flag attacks, the above were my first
reactions when viewing this photograph in early April 2015. The photograph seems
to be from government-held side of the lines, the logo seems to be of a Lebanese
university and the gathered hordes could be explained by the novelty of the event
and the confusion it caused. There may be, in other words, simple explanations for
what may look, a priori, to be strange occurrences in this and in the Hand in Hand for
Syria related attacks that we are more interested in.
All that said, this important photograph concerns the first verified use of chemical
weapons in the Syrian conflict. The photograph is from March 19, 2013 at a hospital
in Khan al-Assal in the northern Aleppo province where medics treat a man injured
by chemical weapons. Let us look at two reports into the incident, the first by Russia
Today (http://tinyurl.com/d5y5gn8) and the second by the pro-war English Guardian
Newspaper (http://tinyurl.com/k97ztvm ) and then surmise what we can from it.
Russia Today (RT) and the Aleppo Chemical Attack: claims to have spoken to a
local priest, who claimed over 25 were killed and more than 100 injured: “Many of
them could not breathe, Ibrahim Nseir said, adding that at least 25 were killed by the
strike, some 130 were injured and 11 of them are critical. The attack occurred in the
area controlled by the government, a local journalist, who requested anonymity, told
RT, adding that there is a military station that has been under attack for three
weeks”.
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The report goes on to quote the journalists as citing recent reports that the terrorists
had been experimenting with chemical weapons before quoting Israeli and Russian
sources as both being non-committal as regards who used the chemical weapon.
NATO, however, were quicker off the mark as “Britain has been quick to respond to
the news with action. London is to airlift hundreds of chemical weapons detection
and protection kits to Syrian rebels”, indicating the British either thought the Syrians
did it or that, no matter who used the weapon, only the terrorists needed or deserved
protection from further chemical attacks. The report concludes by telling us that “A
month later Bassam Al-Dada, a prominent member of the Free Syrian Army, claimed
that rebels had all the components to produce chemical weapons and would use it if
necessary. He also said that the opposition would use the weapon only if the
government forces use it first”.
The Guardian and the Aleppo Chemical Attack: Though this piece begins by
admitting the fatalities, it immediately stresses there is doubt as to whose paw prints
were on the chemical gun. In harbingers of the later August 2013 Ghouta attack, it
stresses that NATO bullies Britain and the USA might intervene on the side of their
terrorist allies. Though it then stresses the weapons landed in terrorist-controlled
areas, it slips in the uncomfortable fact that “Loyalist troops as well as civilians were
reportedly among those killed and wounded”, which makes an obvious nonsense of
their previous point and of a later one which tells us that: Washington, which has for
the past six months claimed that only the use of chemical weapons could lead it to
overturn its opposition to direct intervention in Syria, later said it had "no reason to
believe" rebels had been responsible, but was studying claims that the regime may
have been.
So, despite scores of Syrian soldiers being killed, the geniuses of the Pentagon had
no reason to believe” their terrorist allies had committed the outrage. In case we are
in any doubt as to where the US war machine stands, the piece continues: "We have
no reason to believe these allegations represent anything more than the regime's
continued attempts to discredit the legitimate opposition and distract from its own
atrocities committed against the Syrian people," said US state department
spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, who has a way with words.
Russia Today or the Guardian? This is really a political call and one politicians and
people had to make in late August when the terrorists got their way and the Syrian
Army’s alleged use of chemical weapons was put in the front burner helped, in no
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small part by BBC’s controversial Saving Syria’s Children programme made, lest we
forget, with the help of Hand in Hand for Syria.
Leaving, if we can, our biases to one side, I unsurprisingly go with the Russians
because they got local opinion and they did do a cui bono analysis. The Guardian,
on the other hand, used laboured English to make it appear that the Syrian Army had
used the weapons which killed their own troops and, as in the later Ghouta attacks, it
then quoted Western a number of Western war hawks, who used the attack to justify
their own pre-hatched attack plans. The Guardian has a long and ignoble record of
such muted jingoism.
The 11 March 2004 Madrid Train Bombings: Spanish police and Spanish fascists
blamed and continue to blame the Basque separatist group ETA for this outrage,
even though the attack had all the hallmarks of an Al Qaeda operation, not an ETA
operation. Just as with Iraq, war hawks and their media apologists never let the facts
get in the way of the justification they need for war. So it is with Syria: a gang of
Pentagon sociopaths wish to install a puppet government in Syria and, as with the
failed state of Libya, they care not a whit about the facts as long as they can impose
their will and their puppets.
Dr Death: This Huffington Post article http://tinyurl.com/plt3jz3 recounts the rise and
fall of an Aleppo gunman who was first assigned to a medical unit but was not
averse to killing Syrian soldiers when the opportunity presented itself. The article
explains that Rayan was more than happy to treat any terrorists engaged in raping or
murdering his fellow-Syrians: Up until then, his interactions with ISIS had been
minimal. "I dealt with all types of brigades (in the hospital)," he says, "even treating
fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra (Al Qaeda's official branch in Syria) and ISIS." His
motivations were not only humanitarian; this was "for the sake of the revolution. I
worked for free as a volunteer because it was a cause I believed in.”
Rayan explains that he had been living in a house he stole but that he got very angry
with ISIS when “they ended up giving his property to a family from al-Safira.” So
Rayan the thief was angry that ISIS commandeered his stolen house for one of their
gang members, who probably needed it more for himself and his sex slaves.
When ISIS interrogated him, “Rayan was dumbfounded. He had served on the front
lines as the regime briefly took back this military base near Aleppo Airport. He had
seen Assad's brutality first-hand. And he was a doctor, a supporter of the revolution”.
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So Ryan could not understand why his fellow-criminals were angry with him as he
had murdered and he was a (n unqualified) doctor. Before ISIS let Rauan go on his
merry way, he glimpsed ”roughly 40-50 people, including old men and children”, who
were not let go, like Rayan who collaborated with them and their medical units.
Islamic State Murderers Recuperate: This report http://tinyurl.com/qyyaz6o tells us
of the healthcare facilities Turkey makes available on the Syrian border for its
sectarian Islamic Front proxies. Although the report is of interest as it shows the
involvement of a number of dodgy Turkish charities in this medical enterprise, Hand
In Hand for Syria and, it seems, the British authorities, would argue that as the
medics nursing these killers back to combat fitness are not actually pulling the
triggers or slitting the throats of the victims themselves, that they have no case to
answer.
The Doctor Can’t See You Now: Doctor treats wounded Free Syrian Army
murderers at Dar al-Shifa hospital in Aleppo, as civilians go to the back of the line.
But, never mind, as more medical aid is coming, for the murderers.
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Terrorist Doctor Witnesses Ghouta Chemical Gas Attack: The three screengrabs
above tell the strange tale of Dr Adnan Ismail who allegedly treated victims of the
now infamous Ghouta chemical gas attack. Before discussing his testimony, let’s first
completely discount it by noting the third screengrab which has him in front of the
flag of the terrorist Free Syria Army, which strongly indicates how biased and
partisan he is.
Batman to the Rescue: The Wall Street Journal http://tinyurl.com/oz6dp2m report
cited above (top left) paints Dr Ismail out as a Clark Kent Batman type figure,
working as a government gynaecologist by day and slinking off at night to patch up
bombers, snipers and other criminals. Though Spiderman, Batman or any other
Gotham City functional characters might do that at ease, it is very hard to imagine
anyone, let alone a humble gynaecologist, doing that with any consistency in Syria
because the risks are beyond suicidal. The second screengrab
http://tinyurl.com/q9tme28 (top right) is from the Wall Street Journal video page and
has his playing with his cell phone which, amazingly, he was also doing when the
chemical gas victims were being wheeled into him for treatment. The third
screengrab is taken from the video and his has expounding forth on human rights
even as the flag of the terrorist Free Syria Army death squad stands behind him.
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The video he hawks is of interest. In it, we see bodies being thrown about a
casualty ward with no regard to safety or contamination. We are told it took him a
perilous ten day journey to escape to Turkey but we are not told why it took him so
long to make that simple journey, though we are led to believe that hawking the
video was the primary reason for his exodus. This view is reinforced when are told
he wanted his video to help persuade the French to bomb Damascus, which is a
strange priority for either Batman or a life-loving doctor to have.
What is it with Gynaecologists and Chemical Gas Attacks? Though Syria seems
to specialise in producing gynaecologists with a nose for chemical gas attacks, those
gynaecologists seem less adept at producing actual victims. When we examine
Ismail’s footage, we do not get one single clear camera shot of a victim we can even
begin to identify. As a piece of evidence, Dr Ismail’s video footage is worthless and,
no matter how keen France’s mad President might have been to unleash weapons of
mass destruction on Syria’s civilians and no matter how committed Dr Ismail might
have been to the Free Syrian Army sociopaths, it was a stupid reason for this
gynaecologist to do his great escape from Syria.
No Rape Today: This Indian ISIS rapist gave up the jihad as he was in a toilet
cleaning rather than a child raping or head hacking brigade. ISIS, the Free Syrian
Army and their allied gang realise there is much work to do on many fronts and that
the toilet cleaner is, in his own way, as important as the gynaecologist turned
propagandist or the medical student turned organ harvester.
Al Nusra Also-Rans: This link http://tinyurl.com/q9f4bmn and leads emanating from
it give us insights into The White Helmets, Syrian Civil Defense, Physicians for
Human Rights and rebel similar mouthpieces. Though the author ascribes many of
these to the machinations of Turkish Intelligence, the main takeaway point is that we
have to heavily discount if not totally disregard much of their Batman–like evidence
in the face of both independent corroborating evidence and common sense. When,
for example, we see The White Helmets front group helping al Nusra clear the
streets of women, Christians and other desirables, we must surmise that they have,
at the very least, a strong working relationship to a common goal. Not every rebel
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gets to cut the head of a Christian child and any ISIS fighter have become
disillusioned when, instead of getting their desired job as executioner or rapist in
chief, they were instead assigned toilet cleaning duties.
British Medics Join ISIS Medical “Humanitarian Relief” Team: This late March
2015 report http://tinyurl.com/kwoyzbc indicates that other British medics are directly
helping the ISIS effort, with at least nine other British medics skipping the middle
step and joining ISIS directly.
Peddling the same line Gabbar did on ISIS, the report says: “Mehmet Ali Ediboglu, a
Turkish politician the Observer contacted, told us there is nothing to worry about as
they will most likely be patching up injured ISIS fighters rather than fighting
themselves. As he says: “We all assume that they are in Tel Abyad now, which is
under Isis control. The conflict out there is fierce, so medical help must be needed.”
The article goes on to say that: Both he and the students’ parents were convinced
that the young medics wanted to work with Isis, but they were also certain that the
group did not plan to take up arms and he says, in a tune we have heard with other
highly hyped British medics killed in rebel-held Syria: “Let’s not forget about the fact
that they are doctors; they went there to help, not to fight. So this case is a little bit
different.”
The British Home Office is then quoted as saying that the medics would not
automatically face prosecution under anti-terror laws if they tried to return to the UK,
as long as they could prove they had not been fighting. So, if a group of medics can
show beyond reasonable doubt that they had been assigned to a medical as
opposed to a fighting unit of ISIS, they should feel comfortable that they can return to
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the White Cliffs of Dover and soldier on as if they had done nothing untoward. That is
very disturbing.
We now have a situation that British medics can bypass Hand in Hand for Syria and
similar groups and go directly to succour ISIS. We in Europe have been down this
Pontius Pilate hand-wringing road before.
ISIS and the Medics: This report http://tinyurl.com/osozxss claims ISIS are
harvesting organs from prisoners. This report http://tinyurl.com/ptw7y6z recounts the
life and death of Saudi national Faisal bin Shaman al-Aanzi (above) who had
previously worked as a doctor before joining ISIS. Israeli citizen and fellow doctor,
Alkian Othman, from the Bedouin city of Hura, was also killed fighting for ISIS and
there have been many others, some of whom joined ISIS willingly and some not so
willingly.
This report http://tinyurl.com/pwfpz3x tells us that ISIS murdered six Mosul doctors
for refusing to treat wounded gang members (this report http://tinyurl.com/qjc2yz8
puts the number of murdered Mosul doctors at ten) and this report
http://tinyurl.com/p2g4swb tells us how they threatened Mosul’s female doctors. This
report http://tinyurl.com/pjtld29 tells us ISIS is in desperate need of trained medics.
When put together, these various reports tell us that any “humanitarian heroes”
serving ISIS or its feeder gangs in any way whatsoever should be arrested
immediately.
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British jihadist Abu Rahin Aziz also posted a photograph of himself with Dr Mirza
Tariq Ali, a former NHS surgeon, who fled the UK in 2013 to join an Al Qaeda
medical unit. Dr Omar Gabbar of Hand in Hand for Syria assures us that returning
ISIS medics pose no threat to the British public.
Will I, Won’t I, Will I Join the ISIS Death Cult? This fine medical student has now
decided a humdrum life as a British MP suits her more than the erratic hours an ISIS
organ harvester entails. Dr Omar Gabbar of Hand in Hand for Syria assures us that
returning ISIS medics pose no threat to the British public.
Cambridge-educated NHS Dr Bilal Abdulla (left), jailed for life for the horrific 2007
Glasgow airport and London Soho car bombings. Dr Omar Gabbar of Hand in Hand
for Syria assures us that returning ISIS medics pose no threat to the British public.
Cross-Worshipping Scots to Crush: Dr Faris Al-Khori (right), who was jailed in
April 2015, had enough explosives to slaughter scores of Scots. Dr Omar Gabbar of
Hand in Hand for Syria assures us that returning ISIS medics pose no threat to the
British public.
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Like Father, Like Son: Khaled Sharrouf (top left) holds the head of a Christian
soldier he just beheaded, while his son holds the severed head of another prisoner
(top right). Sharrouf (bottom) is well-versed in art of head-hacking. He has also
violently raped a large number of Yezidi women. Dr Omar Gabbar of Hand in Hand
for Syria assures us that returning ISIS medics pose no great threat to the British
public. He has not, as far as I know, commented on the dangers their children pose
or the dangers doctors who sign sick notes allowing ISIS fighters like Sharrouf claim
disability benefits even as they behead Christians and rape Yezidi women.
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Khaled Sharrouf’s Entire Family Rape & Torture: This report
http://tinyurl.com/plj5jsy tells us that Sharrouf’s wife and small children helped
Sharrouf and his comrades gang rape and torture them: One of the women,
Ghazala, said that Sharrouf's five children, who are believed to be with him and his
wife, participated in their terrifying ordeal. His children were treating us badly,'
Ghazala said. 'They had knives and cell phones saying that they will take videos
while cutting off our heads because we follow a different religion.' Still, as his
revolting children and his wife only tortured the innocents of Syria and Iraq rather
than us not us and as they have not been on combat operations, we should probably
accept the words of Dr Omar Gabbar that they pose no threat when they return to
the West.
Back to the Future: Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht was the architect of Hitler’s
rise to power. Though acquitted on all charges in the main Nuremberg trial, Robert
H. Jackson, who was the chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials,
said of this reprobate: “The most dangerous and reprehensible type of all
opportunists, someone who would use a Hitler for his own ends, and then claim,
after Hitler was defeated, to have been against him all the time. He was part of a
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movement that he knew was wrong, but was in it just because he saw it was
winning”. Leon N. Goldensohn, an American psychiatrist who monitored the mental
health of the twenty-one Nazi defendants at Nuremberg, said of this reprobate: “He
seems unable to brook any criticism or challenging of his stories or statements. My
comments from time to time, my obvious failure to be convinced of his complete
innocence and lack of guile were irritating to him, and his voice reached heights of
shrillness at times. As ever, his is still the pose of outraged innocence, and the
honest banker indignant”. Schacht who, this interesting link
http://tinyurl.com/3mkry3u tells us, had the highest IQ of all the Nuremberg
defendants, was actually acquitted, being the first of the twenty-one to beat the
hangman’s noose.
Medical Judgement at Nuremberg: Karl Brandt, Adolf Hitler's personal physician, is
sentenced to death at the Nazi Doctors' Trial in August 1947. Brandt was indicted
with 22 other Nazi doctors and SS officers. Within each SS-Sturmbann (battalion),
there existed one company of the SS Medical Corps whose duty was to serve as
medical support personnel to the rest of the SS battalion. The Nuremberg Trials
declared the Leadership Corps of the SS, including the SS Medical Corps but
excluding the SS Cavalry Corps, to be a criminal organisation. Dr Gabbar and Hand
in Hand for Syria should opine on whether the medical corps of ISIS are also a
criminal organisation and if those who collaborate with ISIS are, like their Nazi
equivalents, criminal collaborators.
Aleppo Hospital, Suicide Bombs and the Free Syrian Army’s True Medical
Policy: Two Free Syrian Army suicide bombers destroyed Aleppo’s Kindi Hospital on
December 20, 2013. Before the terrorists overran the hospital, it had over 250
physicians and over 650 nurses and administrators. Generations of specialized
doctors graduated from the hospital over the decades but Turkey’s psychopathic
proxies, doctors included, put an end to all that.
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No Doctors, No Murder Gangs: The 16 March 2015 piece http://tinyurl.com/mcvyhle
in The Guardian, from where the above quote has been life, tells us of another
“heroic rebel doctor” who spent his time patching up rebel killers and rapists. As well
as telling us in the above quote that they are simply field hospitals for rebel cutthroats, he also tells us this: “We are always short of medical supplies. Medicins
Sans Frontieres doesn’t disappoint us, but they can’t keep up with all of our requests
and demand. We are one of many hospitals they support”. Our original report had
this to say: “Hand for Syria should clarify who “the men with guns” allow into Atareb
Hospital, all the more so as the co-founder of the medical charity Doctors Without
Borders, Jacques Beres, had a similar experience with ”the men with guns” when he
treated Syrian rebels in the besieged city of Aleppo where he claims here
http://tinyurl.com/handchopw1 that 60 per cent of his patients were rebels– and
about half of those were foreigners hell-bent on establishing a Sharia dictatorship
along the lines some of the afore-mentioned benefactors and fellow-travellers of
Hand in Hand for Syria would approve of.
So, to repeat: what percentage of Hand in Hand for Syria’s patients are
terrorist criminals? Is it 60% as it is with Doctors Without Borders or is it only 10%
and why should the British public pay good money to patch up these serial killers
and psychopaths who are hell-bent on slaughtering them?
“If Dr Hallam cannot tell the difference between symptoms of nerve gas
attacks from other, burns-related attacks, her medical competence and that of
her collaborators has to be called into question in a most serious way”.
Regarding this quote, Nelson’s have this to say: Similarly this statement not only
highlights somebody who volunteers at the charity but also calls into question the
competency of her as a Doctor. There is no foundation for this comment and it seeks
to damage the reputation of this individual.
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To reply to this charge, it is again first necessary to break the above quote into its
two constituent sentences as follows:
Similarly this statement not only highlights somebody who volunteers at the
charity but also calls into question the competency of her as a Doctor.
Endnote 19 in the original article/letter, to which Nelson’s most likely refer, reads as
follows: Dr Hallam says “I need a pause because it’s just absolute chaos and
carnage here, we’ve had a massive influx of what look like serious burns, seems like
it must be some sort of chemical weapon, I’m not really sure, maybe napalm,
something similar to that.”
Because Dr Hallam has a very high public profile independently of me and one that
has been very prominently associated with Hand in Hand for Syria, her competency
or otherwise as a medical doctor is, of course, very much in the public interest.
However, the quote does not call her medical competency into question at all and
nor does her confusion between the symptoms of napalm and chemical weapons.
Rather, the sentence is formed in the material conditional form that all students of
logic and, presumably, all practicing lawyers, should be very familiar with. The
sentence utilises a simple logical connective or a binary operator connecting the
basic procedures any and every doctor should be able to perform [ability to diagnose
different life-threatening symptoms] with the degree to which a doctor could be
classified as competent [basic competence if they can differentiate between very
different life-threatening symptoms] or incompetent [incompetent if they cannot
differentiate between very different life-threatening symptoms]; to rephrase that, in
the same way that a qualified cook observing a cooker can tell whether an egg is
being boiled in water or fried in fat, so also should a qualified doctor be able to tell
whether a patient is suffering from severe burns or gas inhalation because the
difference in symptoms for them should be just about as clear as are those between
water boiling in a pot and fat sizzling in a pan for a cook.
In the specific case in question, which formed a central part of BBC Panorama’s
controversial Saving Syria’s Children programme, Dr Hallam is seen in an
emergency situation where Syrian civilians seem to have been hit by a flesh-burning
bomb or incendiary device. All medical doctors are trained ab ovo to recognise,
diagnose and treat, as best they can, the symptoms of every different type of lifethreatening injury. In the case in question, those injuries are either extensive burns,
which affect the flesh and/or gas inhalation, which affects the internal airways and
which is treated very differently from flesh burns. Just as the competency of a cook,
who could not tell the difference between water boiling and fat frying, would be called
into question, so also would the competency of any doctor, Dr Hallam included, be
called into question if they could not differentiate one from the other. Although my
own best guess is that an ODAB-500PM fuel-air bomb was used in the attack, the
BBC says the bomb contained a "napalm-type" flesh-burning substance which they
believe was thermite and Dr Salyeha Ahsan, a former British Army officer, who was
present with Dr Hallam, when the emergency/bombing raid happened, claims the
alleged weapon used was a Russian-made ZAB flesh-burning incendiary device, that
is not the point in contention here. The point is that Dr Hallam, in the oddest of ways,
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first claimed nerve gas was used before claiming, almost in the same breath, it was a
napalm-like advice. As nerve gas and napalm-like bombs would give very different
symptoms to the victims and would cause a competent doctor to treat them very
differently, Dr Hallam should explain how she can reconcile those two successive but
conflicting claims with her professional expertise. This is all the more so as the
symptoms from burns would be very obvious, very audible and very easily
distinguishable from those of nerve gas. No competent doctor should be confused on
this point.
Now, as Dr Hallam is a doctor and not a munitions expert or, one hopes, a cheap
propagandist, it is possible she was confused, all the more so, as the Panorama
programme in question had a major impact on British and American public opinion,
so much so that it almost swayed the Commons vote in favour of bombing
Damascus back to the Stone Age, something some supporters of Hand in Hand for
Syria, not least the least of whom is Dr Hallam’s own father, have advocated. That
being so, Dr Hallam’s prognosis is very much in the public interest and, if she was
confused on the medical as opposed to the munitions front, then her competence
has obviously got to be called into question, just as that of any other doctor in a
similar situation would have to be.
Saving Syria’s Children: Coincidental Timing and the Commons Vote: This
http://tinyurl.com/nh5lbcf the first BBC News report about the alleged gas attack in
question, aired on the 10pm news on 29 August. The Commons vote also opened
exactly at the same time, at 10pm. The Telegraph's live news feed of the vote states
here http://tinyurl.com/q5g4gpq that at 22:15: As MPs vote, the BBC is playing a
report into a horrific incendiary weapon strike on a school near Aleppo. Many
children have been badly burnt. The BBC's second news report
http://tinyurl.com/k3taetf on the incident aired on the 10pm News on 30 September,
and Panorama’s Saving Syria’s Children was shown after it the same night. Though
it had a huge and immediate impact on public opinion thanks in no small part to its
uncritical media coverage, it failed to swing the Commons vote and so Syria was
saved from the barbarians. The interested reader should go here
http://tinyurl.com/m4bap77 to see just how convoluted this whole mess is and how
BBC’s excuses for making changes in the footage don’t seem to stack up either.
Concerning BBC and the Commons vote, a London correspondent writes:
“Yes, that's right, SSC was shown at 10:35pm on 30/9/13 (as stated here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03c7m8s ) after Pannell's follow-up report on the
10 O'clock News. I don't think the news report was shown, for example, on the six
o'clock news that day, although I am not certain. The very first mention of the napalm
bomb at all was certainly the 10pm News of 29/8/13. Laura Kuenssberg confirmed
this a year later when she said “by chance, just as MPs voted, these images of a
chemical [sic] attack were shown for the first time”.
Our Westminster Correspondent Writes: “If the division is called at precisely, let’s
say 10.00pm, then MPs have 8 minutes to get from wherever they are to the
chamber. Most of them just hop to it immediately once the division bell rings, but if
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the MP is really close by the chamber, they might wait two or three minutes. But then
sometimes a division that’s “expected” around 10.00 might occur at 9.56 or 10.08.
They’ll have TVs in their offices, whether they’d be on or not, but I expect if it’s a late
vote they’re probably mulling about in either the Strangers Bar (which usually has
BBC News on silent) or in the Members Tea Room which I believe is TV-less”.
Hansard: tells us here http://tinyurl.com/kxxb2ad that the House adjourned at 10.34.
Division 69 at 9:59pm was the vote on the Labour amendment and Division 70 at
10:17pm was the government motion, which would tally with the Daily Telegraph
report here http://tinyurl.com/q5g4gpq which says at 22:15 “As MPs vote, the BBC is
playing a report into a horrific incendiary weapon strike on a school near Aleppo.
Many children have been badly burnt”. As this further Daily Telegraph report
http://tinyurl.com/oqc5jdj tells us that “A senior No 10 source said the evidence came
from the intelligence services but also from publicly available material including
YouTube videos of the atrocity,” we can imagine the high level of credence that
would be given to a joint BBC/Dr Rola Hallam production from a government that
was prepared to murder the residents of another country on nothing more than
YouTube evidence.
Business as Usual: Following the Ghouta chemical gas attack, Hand in Hand for
Syria’s Facebook posts continue to display the flag of the terrorist Free Syrian Army
as brazenly as ever.
In defence of Dr Hallam, and by way of showing I wish her no personal ill-will, it
should be noted that the existence of HOSPEX medical simulation techniques came
to light, via a Newsnight report, presented by none other than Dr Saleyha Ahsan,
who was with Dr Hallam when the bombing in question allegedly took place. Dr
Ahsan, in fact, has a direct personal connection with the army officer running the
simulation: “he was my squadron commander in Bosnia and inspired me to study
medicine”, she states in the Newsnight report.
Although it is therefore eminently possible that the flesh-eating Free Syrian Army
rebels, in the heat of the moment, pulled the wool over Dr Hallam’s eyes for their
own vile propaganda reasons, my simple statement of logical fact does not libel or
impugn Dr Hallam’s professional competency or that of anyone else in the least.
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Though I am not fully convinced of it myself, it is possible that the attack was
primarily of a chemical nature, that Dr Hallam’s first instincts were correct and that
the terrorists pulled the wool over her eyes by feigning burns injuries.
Napalm or Chemical, the Verdict: This further video http://bit.ly/1CaCR1J has Dr
Hallam claiming, a little uncertainly, that napalm was the culprit and the BBC, in a
series of open and confidential memos, seem to agree that “a napalm-type
substance had been used." In the BBC Editorial Complaints Unit provisional finding
of 23 April 2014, the considered opinion in the BBC's broadcast reports concerning
the substance used in the alleged attack are succinctly summarised as follows:
“Finally, I would like to respond to your concerns about any reference to napalm.
Panorama said the bomb “caused napalm-like burns consistent with an incendiary
device – rather than a chemical weapon”; in the first news report Ian Pannell said
“We don’t know for sure what was in the bomb but the injuries and the debris
suggest something like napalm or thermite. There were no shrapnel injuries and little
blood, just appalling burns”; the second news report spoke of “a napalm-like
substance”. I think that made it clear that he was not saying the substance was
napalm, but something like napalm, by which I imagine the audience would have
understood him to mean a substance which sticks to the skin and causes burns”.
If that was the case, the medics should have quickly diagnosed and treated it as
such and should not have confused the symptoms. Though that is plain enough, the
picture is further complicated by statements in the BBC Senior Editorial Complaints
Adviser’s decision of 26 September 2014, where the Adviser states: “The rushes
also gave an insight into the confusion amongst the first responders as they tried to
determine the nature of the attack and therefore how to treat the victims. There was
a good deal of discussion as to whether it was chemical, thermite, phosphorous”.
So, the mystery remains: how were the very different symptoms from napalm-like
ordnance and chemical weapons confused by these indisputably well-qualified
medical professionals and how were so many of the alleged victims able to run about
without screaming in pain (from a napalm-like attack) or gasping for air (from a gas
attack)? The reason I plumped for an ODAB-500PM fuel-air bomb was that it might
explain the putrid smells of burning flesh the journalists noted though it would not
explain highly-qualified doctors confusing the symptoms from a napalm-like
ordnance with those of a chemical weapon. As the comments on this Daily
Telegraph report show http://tinyurl.com/lctsxjb, many others have their doubts too.
Perhaps there is another, simpler explanation.
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Every Picture Tells Many Stories: In furtherance of my contention that Dr Hallam
may have been duped by the flesh-eating terrorists during the Saving Syria’s
Children filming, I am including the above pictures which terrorist supporters recently
used to highlight what they claim are ongoing Syrian Army atrocities which they quite
rightly oppose as well as other simulation photos below. The above photos show
rebel sympathisers painting children for propaganda reasons to make them look like
they have been bombed with flesh-burning ordnance. The point with these photos,
as anyone familiar with Hollywood horror movies will know, is it is possible to fake
the appearances of injuries and critics, who have devoted much time to examining
the matter, claim many of the injuries portrayed in Saving Syria’s Children are as
fake as those in the photos above are known to be. Though the specific matter of Dr
Hallam can, in part, be cleared up by getting her fellow professionals to
independently examine the entire episode, it does not change my statement of
general fact, confirmed to me by doctors and specialists I have consulted at my own
considerable expense, that the competency of any medical doctor would have to be
called into question if they cannot differentiate the symptoms of severe burns to the
flesh from those of chemical gas inhalation. If this is not the case, I again
unreservedly apologise not only to Dr Hallam but to the entire global medical
community and all the more so if Nelson’s have checked this with their own team of
medical specialists.
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Casualty Simulation Photos: These include a HOSPEX simulation photo (bottom
right). Guess which of the above injuries are real and which are fake? (Hint: they are
all fake photos and so might many of the injuries on Panorama’s Saving Syria’s
Children)
Scott Lucas/Abbie Pryce: No matter what happened that day at Atareb, Scott
Lucas, a Professor of American Studies at Birmingham University, claims to know
the full story and that is a relief as it should allow us to discount a number of Linkedin
and other links between Iman Mujahed and Abbie Pryce, who is described as a
“make-up artist since 2001, mainly, TV, theatre & film. Specialising in wigs, hair,
casualty make up & character make-up." This is not to suggest that Ms Pryce may
have lent her “casualty make-up” expertise to the caper but to say that, in the
absence of Scott Lucas and the others coughing up what all they know, questions,
silly or not, will continue to be asked and doubts will continue to be raised until we
know “who dunnit”.
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Napalm or Chemical Weapons? BBC’s Cop-Out: The interested reader should go
here http://tinyurl.com/m4bap77 to see just how convoluted this whole mess is and
how BBC’s excuses for making changes in the footage don’t seem to stack up either.
The entire Saving Syria’s Children episode also needs a full independent
investigation into it.
Dr Hallam, as this Channel 4 link http://tinyurl.com/b5zjflz explaining the meteoric
rise of the Hand in Hand group “within the Syrian diaspora” makes plain, is a star
media performer and that doctors are particularly needed in “Free Syrian Army held
areas”. Leaving aside this pro terrorist partisanship, the piece then goes on to tell us
that “Dr Rola, a British Syrian doctor working with HIH,” has a dog in the Syrian fight
and that “A number of her relatives have been killed and many injured. Her father,
also a doctor, helped coordinate medical logistics from inside Syria in the early days
of the uprising”.
“Rola”, the piece tells us, “knows an alliance between grassroots NGOs, who have
access on the ground, and international organisations, with their expertise and
money, has to emerge if lives are to be saved”. What “Rola” fails to tell us in the
article is quite how that happy marriage will take place, who should be the brides,
who should be the bridesmaids and who should control the process, those with long
experience in previous disasters or those Johnny and Jane come latelys, like “Rola”,
with a dog in the fight who do not join established groups but who set up their own,
competing, more controversial ones instead.
Dr Hallam has been busy. A Hand in Hand for Syria communique tells us that “Dr.
Simon Hallam (from England)” raised an impressive “£45,000 for Hand In Hand for
Syria in a single night with majority of donators being British” The entry uses her
maiden name and calls her “Dr. Rola Al Kurdi (from Homs, Syria)” and tells us that
this accumulated loot will be used to buy “2 ambulances for the people of Syria”,
most likely one suspects, those living under terrorist rule.
Although Dr Hallam’s fund-raising and networking skills are impressive, so too are
her media and other skills as shown in Panorama’s notorious Saving Syria’s Children
programme, a very important and relevant 44 second snippet of which may be
viewed here http://tinyurl.com/pb55rdx where Dr Hallam, her mouth interestingly
covered by a mask, first states the attack is a napalm attack one and then states it
was a chemical attack. The comments below the clip indicate the world’s Internet
community were not impressed by her masked performance, given that the show
was highlighted the night the British House of Commons voted against bombing
Damascus in retaliation for the Ghouta chemical gas attack most informed observers
now blame on the rebel terrorists, who have used such ordnance many times before
and since. By happy coincidence, Dr Mousa Al-Kurdi, her father, played a major part
in trying to pin the concomitant Ghouta chemical gas attack on the Syrian authorities,
which NATO wanted to use as a pretext to destroy Syria from the air in the same
way that they destroyed Libya and delivered it to the barbarians.
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Chip off the Old Rebel Block: Screengrab featuring Dr Rola Hallam (nee al Kurdi,
top), followed by her father, Mousa (bottom), calling for air strikes against Syria and
raising the spectre of chemical weapons some weeks before they were employed by
persons unknown in Ghouta. Note the flag of the terrorist Free Syrian Army in the
background.
The Rise of the Free Syrian Army Footsoldier: Rola Hallam’s Father
Mousa al Kurdi is not universally regarded as the avuncular, uninvolved observer the
media generally make him out to be. An obstetrician and gynaecologist by
profession, he was born with a silver Syrian spoon in his eloquent mouth, an
important fact when we consider his unbridled sense of entitlement. His brother was
a minister in the government of President Hafez Al Assad, the current President’s
father, and, perhaps as a result of that, he himself was given a very important post at
Damascus University, being appointed as a professor of gynaecology and as a
director of Damascus University Obstetrics and Gynaecology Hospital as well as a
consultant gynaecologist, which allowed him to build up a lucrative and impressive
private practice and garner many other privileges as well.
Despite his charmed life, al Kurdi was not a happy camper. He was very unpopular
with his colleagues who found him to be particularly un-collegiate to the genial and
universally well-liked Dr Mohamad Dahman, his line manager, a senior consultant in
his own right and a fellow-professor of gynaecology.
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Akin to many other Syrians, he found Dr Dahman’s oppression too intolerable to
bear and, without giving appropriate notice to Damascus University because of some
pending civil lawsuits we need not go into here, he upped sticks, moved to London
and became born again as a revolutionary solder of all things.
Johnny Rebel: In Gone With the Wind, Rhett Butler leaves Scarlett O’Hara to join
the Johnny Rebels, knowing they are bound to lose. Our heroes joined the Syrian
terrorist rebels convinced the terrorists were on the cusp of victory.
Al Akraa/Al Kurdi: Al Kurdi is the father-in-law of Dr Mahmoud al Akraa, the
apparently unhinged thug who disrupted the Cricklewood meeting. Al Akraa had
been sent from Damascus University, from where he had been a leading enforcer for
the ruling Ba’ath Party, to Britain on a fully-paid scholarship to train and qualify in
urology. Although he was contracted to return to Damascus University to repay his
training debt to them, al Akraa never returned. Instead, with the zeal of the convert,
he too became a Johnny Rebel, a job which, as the appendices say with respect to
him, entails terrifying toddlers in Cricklewood, praising the imminent return of the
Muslim Brotherhood terror gang to Syria and apparently even having snuff photos of
decapitated Syrian soldiers on his cell phone. This charge is laid out in the
appendices in one of a number of letters I sent to the police about the Cricklewood
terror attacks Akraa instigated.
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Screengrab for the son-in-law of Dr Mousa, Dr Mahmoud al Akraa and of Dr Isa
Abdur Rahman, who went to his death in Syria on what he believed was a
humanitarian mission. ISIS’ latest bunch of British recruits no doubt think similarly.
Dr Mahmoud al Akraa, the Muslim Brotherhood, the al Kurdi family and Hand
in Hand for Syria: From the original article, which is included as appendix 1: As this
link http://tinyurl.com/trusteexx1 shows, Dr Mahmoud al Akraa also shares platforms
with disgraced and discredited provocateur Danny Abdel Dayyem; more to the point
perhaps, Dr al Akraa claims that the Syrian government forces will summarily and
sadistically torture and then kill any Syrian seen to have been getting medical aid
from non-approved sources which, if true, would have to call into the question Hand
in Hand for Syria’s clearly suicidal policy, as enunciated by his (apparently) fellow
trustee, Mr al-Dairi, of running token medical services in government-controlled
Syria. Equally importantly, at 2:43 into the video, he expresses his delight that “the
Muslim Brotherhood is coming back” to Syria. Hand in Hand for Syria should explain
whether or not they also support the extremist Muslim Brotherhood, the Syrian
National Council and the various rebel extremist groups they have been associated
with. They should also clearly state what, if any, disciplinary action they intend to
take against Dr al Akraa as well as the blood-thirsty Mr Sahloul and if they will make
the results of their deliberations known to the public.
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What’s In It for Me? Dr Mousa al Kurdi, Dr Hallam’s father, mixes it with other
Syrian rebel top brass in the despicable Muslim Brotherhood-supporting micro state
of Qatar, the oil rich autocratic kingdom which finances much of the violence in the
Arab world. Check this link to see the nefarious plans they hatched there.
http://tinyurl.com/k6nyodv
Nor is that the end of the matter for Mousa Al-Kurdi, Dr Hallam’s father and the
father in law of the seemingly unhinged Dr al Akraa, is also a leading hawk in the
Syrian National Council (SNC), the western funded opposition group which, following
the Libyan example, was supposed to form the puppet government once American
air power allowed the rebels seize what remained of Syria. Although Mousa al Kurdi
appears to be as blood thirsty as most of the other SNC godfathers of violence, the
media generally refer to him as a Syrian or British doctor and omit his extremist
political connections, to make it appear he's some kind of avuncular, family doctor
type impartial observer to the chaos his rebels have visited upon his homeland. Dr
Mousa al Kurdi’s most perverted contribution to peace was alleging patients he
examined on the June 2, 2013 and August 21, 2013 were victims of chemical attacks
and using their sufferings, real or alleged, to urge the west to use “humanitarian
bombing” to slaughter the revolution’s enemies, the mass of the Syrian people.
Because this report http://bit.ly/1Gv1C8w indicates Dr al Kurdi, Dr Hallam’s father
and a leading rebel extremist in his own right, unearthed even more victims of
chemical gas attacks yet again prior to the Ghouta scandal, one has to imagine he
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was scouring Syria for victims just as a truffle hog might scour Europe’s forests in
search of their master’s booty.
Mousa al Kurdi and Rola al Kurdi: Blood Brothers? I am assuming that these
are, in addition to being Facebook friends
(https://www.facebook.com/mousa.alkurdi/friends ) father and daughter as well. In
this video clip http://tinyurl.com/lwgcttb where she is asked a number of questions,
Rola admits her father is a certain Mousa al Kurdi, a gynaecologist, but says the
other questions/statements of fact are not as accurate as that one and that he is not,
for example a “member” of the Syrian National Council (SNC).
Saleyha Ahsan, who starred with her in BBC Panorama’s controversial Saving
Syria’s Children says here in this 6 February 2013 piece http://tinyurl.com/ofy2o6e
that “her father, also a doctor, helped coordinate medical logistics from inside Syria
in the early days of the uprising. He is now involved politically with the Syrian
National Council”. Ahsan goes on to praise “the liberated areas” and, in bemoaning
the “resulting lack of doctors in Free Syrian Army held areas”, she repeats the
absurd claim that “healthcare professionals in Syria caring for the war-wounded are
deliberately targeted ”by the government forces, according to some report or other
by the International Rescue Committee, which is overseen by such dubious
“humanitarian bombing” advocates as David Miliband, Madeleine Albright, Kofi
Annan, Henry Kissinger and Colin Powell. Between all her tragic tales of dead
babies, ruthless Syrian Army soldiers and her mate, the heroic Dr Rola, Ahsan adds
to the suspicion that these august doctors have more than a dog in the Syrian fight.
Quotes they include from Medecin Sans Frontier which, as our original report/letter
claims, have no qualms in treating hardened sectarian butchers, do not alleviate
those suspicions.
Ahsan then repeats the assertion that “Health workers and facilities have repeatedly
been targeted by Assad’s forces. Being a doctor in Syria is now considered a highrisk occupation and many have left the country. Medicine has become a weapon of
war”. What she fails to mention is that the terrorists deliberately targeted Syria’s
infrastructure: its railway, industrial bases, electricity and even poisoned its water–
and that the rebels terrorists have committed mass executions inside some hospitals
and have bombed others, including some connected, however tenuously, with Hand
in Hand for Syria, without warning and with massive fatalities.
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Although she is correct to state “medicine has become a weapon of war”, she could
have commented on the medical aid Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar extend to the
terrorists. As regards doctors fleeing Syria, that process has been in place for very
many years for the simple reason that a medical qualification made it easier for
Syrians to get a visa to emigrate and, along with the formidable organising and
bullying skills of the Muslim Brotherhood, it is one of the reasons medics have been
so prominent in the expatriate opposition to the Syrian government and it probably
also helps explain why Mousa al Kurdi felt financially confident enough to hot foot it
from Damascus to what he thought were the greener hills of faraway England.
Whatever valid points these medics may hope to make are poisoned by their
partisan Free Syrian Army tinted blinkers.
Back to Dr Rola, Dr Mousa’s Daughter: Now, as one non-medical contributor to
the livelink video cited above says, it might be that victims of napalm and chemical
weapons display the same symptoms, in which case Dr Hallam’s medical confusion
might be understandable, even if her need for a second video take was not. Let us
now examine the two forms of symptoms to help us see if Dr Hallam has been
defamed. We will now call her father, Dr Mousa al Kurdi, the gynaecology professor,
as an expert witness regarding the symptoms of a chemical weapons attack which is
not his area of expertise.
Dr Hallam’s Rebel Father, Chemical Weapons and the Symptoms of Chemical
Gas Attacks Here http://tinyurl.com/nrgl3sx Dr Mousa al Kurdi, father of Dr Rola
Hallam, the star of BBC Panorama’s controversial Saving Syria’s Children
programme, discusses the symptoms of chemical weapons he has seen on his
ferreting trips throughout Syria. He describes these symptoms as "burns, suffocation,
breathing difficulty, sensitivity to light, severe pupil and bronchial stricture, temporary
blindness, nausea and vomiting, skin rashes, paralysis, convulsions and the inability
to speak".
Because doctors disagree and far too many Syrian patients die, we also use this link
http://tinyurl.com/npq9c8f to summarise the symptoms of and treatment of chemical
gas attacks. The relevant points are as follows:


Symptoms depend on which gas or chemical is inhaled and how deeply and
for how long it was inhaled. Symptoms may include irritation of the eyes or
nose, cough, blood in the sputum, and shortness of breath.
Chest x-rays, computed tomography, and breathing tests are used to
determine how much lung damage has occurred. Oxygen and drugs to open
the airways and decrease inflammation are given.
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
Gases such as chlorine and ammonia easily dissolve and immediately irritate
the mouth, nose, and throat. The more peripheral parts of the lungs are
affected only when the gas is inhaled deeply.
 Some gases—for instance, nitrogen dioxide—do not dissolve easily.
Therefore, they do not produce early warning signs of exposure, such as
irritation of the nose and eyes, and they are more likely to be inhaled deeply
into the lungs. Such gases can cause inflammation of the small airways
(bronchiolitis) or lead to fluid accumulation in the lungs (pulmonary edema).
 Symptoms: Soluble gases such as chlorine, ammonia, and hydrofluoric acid
cause severe burning in the eyes, nose, throat, windpipe, and large airways
within minutes of exposure to them. In addition, they often produce a cough
and blood in the sputum (hemoptysis). Retching and shortness of breath also
are common.
 Less soluble gases such as nitrogen dioxide and ozone cause shortness of
breath, which may be severe, after a delay of 3 to 4 hours and sometimes up
to 12 hours after exposure. With less soluble gases, long-term lung damage
can occur and cause chronic wheezing and shortness of breath.
 Tests of lung function, including determining how much air the lungs can hold
and the rate at which oxygen and carbon dioxide are exchanged, are done to
evaluate lung damage.
 Most people recover completely from accidental exposure to gases. The most
serious complications are lung infection or severe damage that causes
scarring of the small airways (bronchiolitis obliterans). Some studies have
shown long-term impairment of the lung function years after episodes of
exposure to gases.
 Gas masks with their own air supply should be available in case of accidental
spillage.
 People should not enter an environment where poisonous gases may be
present to rescue an exposed person unless they have protective gear that
supplies them with fresh air or oxygen from a tank.
 Oxygen is the mainstay of treatment for people who are exposed to gases. If
lung damage is severe, a person may need mechanical ventilation (see
Mechanical Ventilation). But any person who has breathing problems after
inhaling a gas is usually monitored in a hospital overnight to ensure that
serious complications do not occur. Drugs that open the airways
(bronchodilators), intravenous fluids, and antibiotics may be helpful.
Corticosteroids such as prednisone are often given to reduce inflammation in
the lungs.
So, if that link is anything to go by, because chemical attacks impact mostly on the
lungs and airways, the signs, symptoms and treatment for such attacks should be
markedly different for the trained professional eye than are those for napalm-like
attacks. Even though Dr al Kurdi highlights burns in his concise diagnosis above, the
contrary one indicates such “burns” will mostly be connected to the airways. That is
exactly what the original piece, included in the appendices, said. Chemical weapons,
unlike napalm-like attacks, affect mostly the airways.
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Napalm is discussed at length here http://tinyurl.com/ngsyx6c from a medical point
of view. It tells us “Exposure history usually is obvious, with the individual recounting
the sounds of an explosion and the unbearable pain associated with the burns of
exposure”. None of the characters in Dr Hallam’s hospital scene seemed to have
“unbearable pain associated with the burns of exposure” so that would seem to rule
napalm out.
The site goes on to tell us: “Burn care should begin at the site of injury and continue
through prehospital care and transportation to the closest burn center, or to the
closest emergency department (ED) with advanced life support capability, followed
by transfer to a burn center when appropriate”. The good doctors did not seem to be
treating them very well, unless they were using some strange mind-altering opiate
that simultaneously sedated them while allowing them to walk about in the oddest of
manners.
For the treatment of burn shock, we are told to: “Elevate the patient’s legs 12 in. off
the ground and administer humidified oxygen. Administer IV fluid if transport time will
be longer than 30 min and fluid resuscitation is indicated”. We are not told to let them
go walkabout almost on cue, as seems to happen on the BBC programme.
And on it goes. The symptoms of napalm and chemical weapons seems to be quite
different, as do their treatments. Perhaps her father’s tenacious obsession with the
Syrian government he had recently fallen out with using chemical weapons unduly
unhinged her judgement. Perhaps the rebels’ make up skills (many of them have
been arrested trying to escape as transvestites) fooled the less than streetwise Dr
Rola. Perhaps the ex-army officer who co-stars with her unnerved her. Perhaps the
Syrian air force simultaneously dropped both napalm and chemical gas bombs
where the effects of one confused the symptoms of the other. Although the BBC
cameras never lie, whatever happened on that day is immaterial to the point in
contention: the symptoms from a chemical or nerve gas attack are quite different
from those of a napalm-like attack and competent medical professions should not
confuse one with the other.
My Doctor Said: Before moving on, let us first look again at what the apparently
very accurate assessment the medical doctor I quoted in the original document said:
As a practising doctor informally consulted about this says about the medical part of
the programme: “I have watched the Panorama BBC documentary. Makes for
interesting viewing but I think the scene of the school children coming in with the
burns was an act.
I worked on trauma and orthopaedics last year for four months, so I have worked
with burns victims first hand. These victims displayed what appeared to be "less
painful" burns. They were able to sit down, be touched by others even talk. This is
not how a severe burn victim would present. Most victims:

would be screaming the place down in agony. Even after treatment and with
all sorts of pain drugs they still hurt and still scream.
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






Many burns victims cannot even focus enough to follow instructions such as
sit down and wait because of pain. This young boy, I found very odd (I don't
think it is cultural thing as pain is pain and it can drive a person mad).
would have difficulties with their airways, almost immediately, hence in the UK
many are intubated and treated in ITU. This shows them able to speak and
breathing very well no obvious signs of respiratory distress like coughing,
shallow breathing etc. In such an attack the poisons are inhaled.
They say they douse them in water (wouldn't the high spray of the hose cause
more problems to burnt skin).
when they came to the hospital they have evidence of this white powder on
their skin but not evident burn blisters which fill with fluid within minutes. Some
are shown with skin hanging off but the flesh beneath is not that convincing it
actually looks like more skin.
The walk is very odd. why??
The other concern in burns is their fluid status as they will be losing large
amounts of fluid through their burns. The cannula is essential to resuscitate
them. I’m not sure what A and E that doctor worked in but I have not worked
in A and E this year and I have placed I think almost 6 cannulas in peoples
feet. Any access is essential in burns, a standard training skill!
If the poison was dropped from above (a plane) their hair would have been
lost and patches would be evident. Many still had a full heads”
Clarification, Caveat, Invite: Although I have raised this matter in the past with a
relatively large number of Syrian. Arab and non-Arab medical professionals, to
further show my good faith, I intend to raise the matter in Damascus in late April and
try to get the Dr Mohammad Dahman and his countless professional colleagues to
lend their facilities to a full, free, air and frank debate on the matter. In the meantime,
I do hope Dr Hallam and her extended family can address the medical issues raised.
Chemical Mousa: Dr Hallam’s father reporting that his seemingly obsessive
ferreting and gynaecology skills show that the Syrian government have used
chemical weapons indiscriminately on countless occasions. I intend to get his former
line manager, Prof. Mohammad Dahman, to help investigate the matter further.
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This http://bit.ly/1Gv1C8w pro rebel report, incidentally, goes on to claim that “the UN
received reports of at least 10 instances of chemical weapons use in Syria between
December 2012 and May 2013”, that Hollande’s “France on June 4th said it had
proof President Bashar Assad's regime has used the deadly nerve agent sarin gas in
Syria” and that “British Foreign Secretary William Hague said the UN must
independently verify any allegations of chemical weapons use in Syria”. Because
Hague and Hollande, of course, were, like so many of the other bit characters
mentioned here, prominent proponents of the “humanitarian bombing” of Libya which
delivered that country into the abyss and, as both wanted Damascus bombed to
oblivion as well, their essentially worthless comments are probably best ignored.
The report goes on to quote Mousa al-Kurdi as saying they got their information from
cash-hungry Army deserters and that "We also relied on reports from the SyrianAmerican Medical Society, a report by the director of the Medical Council [in Aleppo],
Dr. Abdulaziz Hassan, and reports from doctors in northern Syria and in Damascus".
Despite all of those cases being on the rebels’ books, in the now all-too-familiar
scenario, none of these pro-rebel sources for 34 different instances of alleged
government gas attacks from June 2012 to May 2013, which al-Kurdi senior cited,
could be independently verified. Without that independent verification, they – and al
Kurdi senior – can have no credibility in this matter. We cannot just take the word of
one side that the other is using banned weapons that would cause the US and
NATO air forces to attack them and, as in Libya, hand the country over to the
improbable cast of characters making the dubious claims.
Interestingly, other rebel godfathers interviewed in the same article expressed their
fears chemical weapons might be deployed by anti ISIS militants in Lebanon and
none expressed fears about the Syrian rebels using them even though there have
been very many verified instances of them doing just that. This, again, is an all too
familiar scenario with the armed terrorist rebels using chemical weapons and the
unarmed rebels expressing the fears they will have chemical weapons used on them
in return.
Sins of the Father: Before we leave Dr Rola Hallam’s chemical weapons obsessed
bloodhound of a father, we must discuss this 10th April 2012 interview he conducted
with the BBC which can be found here http://tinyurl.com/k28mk77 and the transcript
of a similar one which can be found here http://tinyurl.com/nytrys9 ; in this second
interview he makes some irrelevant human interest comments about Syria’s
President, who he taught at university years before he jumped ship and he then
makes six points we will comment on.
1. Despite being “a university professor, independent academic, and oncologist”
he is “also the president of the Arab Institute for Clinical Excellence” but he
has spent the last 18 months delivering “some medical assistance to those
who were suffering, particularly in Baba Amr and the rest of Homs.
Transferring blood bags [into Syria] is, in the eyes of the regime, a crime
punishable by death or at least arrest and referral to court. The same goes for
transferring medical equipment. The person responsible for smuggling us into
Syria was turned over to the courts. Whilst those who support the revolution
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and freedom have their throat cut whilst they are still alive, whilst those who
take pictures or transfer video clips about the revolution abroad are blinded
and then killed…many people had not heard about this before, and this had a
significant impact on everybody [at the Friends of Syria conference].
2. Regarding his relationship with the President of Syria he says: I have been
repeatedly told that he has not forgiven my leaving Syria in 1992. A senior
official informed me that the projects that I have proposed are hindered by the
fact that I left Syria. So he has turned against supporting his old teachers for
political reasons, to the point that he refused to help development of health
care in Arab worlds, and tried to stop this.
3. This president who was previously calling for renewal and modernization
turned into a monster, but he is a monster that can only scare the weak, and
this is proof that he is a coward and will only be deterred by force or the threat
of force.
4. I would say that the majority of Damascus – where I lived – has defected from
the regime, including the university professors and students, as well as even
the officers and officials. The vast majority of people are waiting for the killing
to end to return to the street. People informed me that they have had enough
of this killing and destruction, as well as the lies of the media, namely that
Damascus is loyal [to the regime]. Whilst opinion polls of Syrian expatriates in
the US also revealed that around 80 percent want to see regime change, and
the majority of these expatriates are Christians.
5. As a soldier in the Syrian revolution, I will try to provide support via
international organizations who I will conduct dialogue with.
6. Firstly, I don’t know who you are, and even if I did, it’s not important, for the
lives of other people are more important than my own, and there are some
people who are risking their lives – and the lives of their family – to transfer
what needs to be transferred at the right time. It is clear that intimidation
tactics are being used, and there is only one way to deal with a regime that
wants to rule us or annihilate us.
Let us briefly address each of those points in turn:
1.
Small-scale smuggling seems a waste of his considerable talents. It is a
wonder he could not delegate simple smuggling operations to Syria’s terrorist
Turkmen who have excelled at it for centuries. One would imagine the Syrian Army
would be more focused on weapons smuggling than on medicine but it seems to be
the case from mounds of pro-rebel spokesmen like Dr Mousa al Kurdi and his
charming daughter that the Syrian Army is focused more on copying the rebels by
devoting scarce resources to slitting the throats of non-combatants rather than on
fighting the terrorists who are hell-bent on liquidating them. That does not seem a
wise battle plan and sits uneasily with the priorities an army under pressure such as
the Syrian Arab Army would have to have should they wish to stay in business.
2.
Dr Mousa Al Kurdi seems to believe he should be favoured for giving the
Syrian President deserved grades at Damascus University. He cannot see the sense
of unearned personal entitlement he epitomises and which we have already
discussed is a very major part of Syria’s problem.
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3. Here Mousa al Kurdi says merciless violence is the way forward for Syria. The
Syrian Arab Republic, he informs us, must be overturned by extreme violence to, in
effect, emasculate, if not exterminate the Alawites and send the Cross-worshipping
Christian collaborators scurrying to Lebanese bolt holes. It might, in passing, be
mentioned that Christians are disproportionately over-represented in the refugees
and that they are treated abysmally by the rebel thugs who control the camps.
Declan in the Lion’s Den: An April 2014 photo of me (above, bottom right) in
Damascus University with Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairéad Maguire, John Shipton
the father of Julian Assange, a number of other peace activists and students and
staff of the university which, Dr Mousa al Kurdi reliably informs us, is overwhelmingly
on the side of the rebel terror gangs, who have abducted and murdered scores of
students and staff from that and other universities. I saw no evidence of that.
Damascus in Revolt: Although Dr Mousa al Kurdi reliably informs us over 80% of
Damascus supports the terrorists, these unarmed soldiers behind me eating ice
cream in its old city don’t look too concerned about the good doctor’s prognosis.
They might even be laughing at him.
4.
Damascus, which the government holds with ease, is firmly on the side of the
rebel terrorists. Around 80% of the Syrian population want violent regime change
and the Christians who by and large support their government, want that change
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more than anyone else. This, for what it is worth, has not been my experience.
Further, as I have spoken at and lectured in Damascus University on very many
recent occasions, his contention that it is a hotbed of sedition is a source of personal
concern for me as I will shortly be returning there.
From my own admittedly relatively small exposure to Damascus and Damascus
University and from those I phoned up in Damascus University to make inquiries, I
see the situation as follows: though there may be pockets of latent support for the
terrorist cause, most in Damascus want a measured return to peace, the liquidation
of the rebels and a return to a chance for a normal life which is denied them by the
pro-rebel sanctions and by the indiscriminate rebel violence. The urban Sunni
Damascenes, people like al Kurdi himself, do not, as a rule, support the terrorist
cause unless they are like him and have a personal grudge or insatiable sense of
self-entitlement similarly driving them onward into the abyss. Terrorist support is
strongest amongst the rural poor and rural uneducated who are amongst the hardest
hit by the collateral damage of the sanctions and who are most easily manipulated
by suave urban saviours who use and abuse them for their own petty ends. It was
always thus.
5.
“As a soldier in the Syrian revolution, I will try to provide support via
international organizations who I will conduct dialogue with”. Here, Dr Hallam’s father
admits he is “a soldier in the Syrian revolution” even if he sees himself belonging in
the officers’ mess rather than with the semi-literate and easily-manipulated rebel
squaddies. Like father, like daughter? Is it a case of this “soldier in the Syrian
revolution” using the weapons he is most familiar and effective with to subvert Syria
by fair means or foul? Although their family affairs should normally be their own
private concern, if Dr Hallam’s father is “a soldier in the Syrian revolution”, I would
respectfully advise Dr Hallam to get professional counselling to deal with the many
demons that must come with her father’s very un-Hippocratic role as a soldier in a
totally discredited insurgency. Physician heal thyself (Luke 4:23), as it were.
6.
This point seems to say the good doctor supports smuggling weapons, maybe
even chemical weapons, into Syria and using whatever violence it takes to establish
rebel rule and bring to ruin all those who did not favour him. The al Kurdi family
would do us all a favour by clarifying this point in a simple yes/no format.
Doctors of Spin: Those advocating the overthrow of the Syrian Arab Republic must
count themselves fortunate to have such eloquent and rightly highly respected
assets as Drs Mousa and Rola al Kurdi who are both highly educated and highly
connected as these 2012 interviews conducted by Dr Sima Barmania with Mousa
respectively http://tinyurl.com/ofred7z http://tinyurl.com/kf9bwal for the prestigious
London Independent and The Lancet show.
The Independent article strongly objects to Syria’s President, himself also a highly
qualified doctor, using the medical metaphor of removing a gangrenous limb to
describe the Syrian government strategy. Perhaps the Syrian President had Bible
verses such as Matthew 5:30, Matthew 7:15-2, Mark 9:43, Luke 6:43-45, John 15: 127 and countless others in mind. Either way, there are worse things happening in
Syria than that perfectly legitimate and innocuous turns of phrase.
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The article then juxtaposes the Syrian President’s apt if rather unoriginal turn of
phrase with the following: The fact that bona fide Syrian surgeons in Homs such as
those from Hand in Hand for Syria, a UK-based charity that provides medical aid to
Syria, are tirelessly operating on civilian casualties caused by Assad’s troops makes
the injustice of such words even more galling.
This is a particularly weak use of the old-age chestnut of an appeal to authority,
argumentum ad verecundiam, as the Romans put it. The fact that a connected
bunch of doctors collaborate with the Free Syrian Army and are being used, willingly
or not, as propaganda pieces, does not validate their cause and nor does it validate
any statements they make or apparent facts they allude to. This faulty logic is like
appealing to the 45% of German doctors who were made members of Hitler’s Nazi
Party to validate the now well-documented atrocities of Germany’s Nazi movement.
The article goes on to say that “Al Kurdi, a Syrian gynaecologist living in Britain
witnessed the atrocities of Baba Amr.” Though it omits to tell us that Al Kurdi is much
more than a foot- “soldier in the Syrian revolution” it does confirm that he is
something of a Forest Gump or Dr Pangloss figure who is liable to pop up wherever
chemical weapons are being unleashed.
Al Kurdi then tell us that the Syrian authorities are “using torture against women and
children, not just for interrogation, but merely for the pleasure of punishment for
defiance.” So here we have al Kurdi senior again stating that the hard-pressed
Syrian authorities have nothing better to do with their time than to torture women and
children for the sheer fun of it and to thereby stupidly and needlessly make more
enemies for themselves both inside and outside of Syria.
Al Kurdi, his unbounded sense of self-entitlement frothing to the surface again, says
himself and his mates in the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood influenced- SNC (Syrian
National Council) should form the centre of a new Syrian government where cronies
of the present government learn their lowly place in the new scheme of things.
Showing himself a less than perfect prophet he next informs us that “the fall of the
regime will be peaceful and cooperative instead of violent and chaotic” and that the
Free Syrian Army will be the sole custodians of the new utopia their fratricidal
violence will beget. Al Kurdi who, in this instance, can really only speak for himself
and his mates, says that inertia “leaves us all with blood on our hands”.
The 26 May 2012 Lancet article is in the same general vein. It begins by telling us
about Syria’s “tyrannical regime” and then goes on to talk of “a myriad of nongovernmental organisations, including Physicians for Human Rights, Amnesty
International, and Médecins Sans Frontières reporting that there have been gross
breaches of medical neutrality plus the deliberate targeting of medical facilities,
health workers, and their patients by government forces”.
Into this predictably grim state of affairs, the Lancet tell us, come the medical
seventh cavalry of Hand in Hand for Syria who have to carry Syria’s medical cross
because “due to the ever-present security issues the larger, more established
charities are reluctant to operate within Syria without permission from the Syrian
Government”.
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The British Hand in Hand for Syria crew, we are told are “equipped with local
knowledge, networks, and exclusive access [and] are concentrating their efforts
within Homs, Syria, where there is a distinct absence of health services”. All very
good but the article does not tell us from where a British start-up group, with a
sprinkling of embittered Syrian expatriates, could get such an impressive, almost
readymade network from. It is not, one imagines, something that could be got in a
short time unless one went through groups such as the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood
and the Free Syrian Army. Unless more information is provided, we can only assume
they entered Homs through the same tunnels war monger Paul Conroy did – tunnels
that the Free Syrian Army made their slaves build at the barrel of a gun.
This view is reinforced when we are then told: access to Homs is made through a
supply route from Lebanon across the Syrian border, but neither doctors nor medical
supplies are permitted to pass across the border, so they have to be smuggled
through. The perilous journey, which takes 3 days, seems precarious but fortunately
he and all their doctors have returned unharmed.
Only an already in situ group of smugglers allied to bigger forces could have
consistently pulled such coups off. There is, one imagines, no way a British-based
start-up group, such as Hand in Hand for Syria, could just plug into such a grid
without the backing of the rebel network, who would obviously be wary of infiltrators
to their ranks.
German Wehrmacht troops pause before another attack close to the remains
of the Tractor Factory, Stalingrad, October 1942. The Lancet has us believe that
Homs was similar to Stalingrad and that only the gallant officers and foot soldiers of
Hand in Hand for Syria could run the Syrian Army’s vice-like gauntlet.
Though the article goes on to paint Syria and Homs in particular as a Levantine
version of Stalingrad and its famous tractor factory with its prolonged room to room
and wall to wall fighting, we are left in no doubt that Hand in Hand for Syria and the
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terrorist rebels are the good guys here. This is reinforced by the implication that only
three doctors remain from Homs’ 162 doctors to cater to the needs of the 30,000
citizens who have somehow managed to survive the government’s dastardly attacks,
something no doubt the Soviet citizens who soldiered on in Stalingrad’s tiny 900
metre wide hold-out pocket by the Volga could empathise with
.
They gave their tomorrows..: Some of the widows, mothers and children of Syrian
soldiers murdered in Homs by foreign and home-grown terrorists who I met in Homs
in 2014.
Orphaned by the terrorists of the Free Syrian Army: Some of the Homs children
orphaned by the gunmen and bombers of the Free Syrian Army I met in Homs in
2014.
Say Hello to my Little Friend: Homs, June 2014. Widowed and orphaned by the
terrorists of the Free Syrian Army, whose flag is on the logo of Hand in Hand for
Syria.
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Enter the Syriacs, Homs, June 2014: Even though Homs does resemble
Stalingrad, its residents welcome me and despise the terrorist Free Syrian Army
whose flag is emblazoned on the logo of Hand in Hand for Syria.
How’s It Going? With the Syriacs of Homs, June 2014: They do not welcome the
terrorist Free Syrian Army cut throats or their apologists. The damage the Free
Syrian Army did to their church will cost over $6 million to fix; the damage to the
entire neighbourhood runs into the billions.
Happy Druze: Having seen off the last of the Free Syrian Army killer gangs, the
Druze and all the people of Homs can relax again – except for the occasional suicide
bombs the Free Syrian Army and kindred groups explode in the town’s kindergartens
and schools.
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Yet, despite facing conditions that would have forced Hitler’s Sixth Army to give up
the ghost at Stalingrad’s tractor factory months earlier than they did, the Lancet’s 26
May 2012 article tells us that, even at that early stage in their “evolution”, “the charity
is still keen to show accountability and reassure donors that the medication, food,
and clothes are getting through by taking photographs and videos from inside the
hospital”.
Yet it is precisely Hand in Hand for Syria’s ongoing lack of transparency, governance
failures and lack of accountability that has got me to write this massive corrective
tome and that has me fearing not only legal flak but fearing for my very life as well.
The Lancet reporter is shown a few stock Syrian snuff movies to drive home the
point that Hand in Hand for Syria need our money now especially as the Syrian army
is using “rape and gender-based violence committed against both men and women”,
something, it has to be said, we now exclusively associate with the Free Syrian Army
and other terrorists the Syrian Army fights.
After titillating the readers for some paragraphs with tales of rape and pillage by the
Syrian authorities, we are next informed that our old friend “Mousa al Kurdi, an
outspoken Syrian obstetrician living in Britain has been vociferous in highlighting the
rape of two girls aged 10 and 14 years old who are now pregnant” and that “Al Kurdi
witnessed first-hand the bombardment of Baba Amr a few months earlier,” the
systematic rapes of entire families and communities by the Free Syrian Army
obviously passing him by.
All, the article tells us, is not doom and gloom because, thanks to the heroes of Hand
in Hand for Syria “there is also a sense of ingenuity exemplified in the logistical
operations of the field hospital. The hospital is a house offered by someone located
on a secluded side street and relocates every few months to avoid suspicion and
utilises personal networks to direct those requiring treatment to the unknown
location. Even an empty transfusion bag can cause suspicion and so the blood bank
is a close network of blood donors, which can be easily accessed”.
Whatever the veracity of those further heroic claims, we are next told, again without
corroborating proof, that “Even the medical staff in the hospital we are helping have
been targeted—one doctor has had his house set alight. His family have now fled the
area but he remains to continue running the field hospital” by the slothful, sadistic
Syrian Army. The article concludes with a throw away remark from Human Rights
Watch, the group which has consistently called for the humanitarian bombing of
Syria along the lines proposed by the Free Syrian Army.
Argumentum ad Verecundiam: These two articles, which appeared early in the
Syrian war, have been utilised here at some length for a number of reasons, chief of
which is their grating use of the argument from authority fallacy to help propound an
apocalyptic trajectory for Syria that few outside of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood
and their affiliated death squads ravaging Syria should really be expected to
swallow. In so much as the assertions made against the Syrian government’s forces
have any validity, those assertions are diluted to the nth degree by the consistent
failure of their proponents to verify their statements and claims or to criticise the well167
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documented crimes of the Free Syrian Army and similar criminal enterprises.
Although producing such independent evidence should be a cakewalk for such
eminent physicians as the al Kurdis as well as Dr Barmania, who have all spent time
galore in England and so should be familiar with examples such as Dr Hawley
Harvey Crippen, Dr Harold Frederick Shipman, Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde, we must still
ask them: show us where the bodies are buried, produce independent evidence and
stop repeating the same hackneyed old lines as that undermines your remaining
credibility.
Syrian Mother, Mother’s Day, Homs, 21 March 2015: All three of her children died
defending her from the terrorist Free Syrian Army, whose flag is emblazoned on the
logo of Hand in Hand for Syria.
Why We Fight: The heroes of the Syrian Arab Army wish their mothers and all
Syrian mothers their best wishes for Mother’s Day, 2015.
Nelson’s Letter, Part C; Nelson’s state: “The above is just a few of the false and
defamatory statements that have been made. The article --- is placing the trustees
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and the volunteers at risk, not only in the UK but in Syria”. The letter then goes on to
ask the university that “you will take all reasonable steps to ensure that the article is
removed from the internet”.
With regard to Nelson’s above statement:
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All of the points raised are not false and defamatory as claimed. Wherever
there are minor falsehoods, those falsehoods, as, for example, with Ms
Mujahed, seem to be inconsequential to the main thrust and seem to be the
fault of Hand in Hand for Syria, its opaqueness, its officers or supporters and
those alleged falsehoods could and should be cleared up by both Hand in
Hand for Syria and its supporters being much more transparent and paying
the requisite attention to their respective duties of care. Hand in Hand for
Syria’s lack of transparency and accountability remains a constant theme in
this whole sordid affair.
Because the other “false and misleading statements” alluded to have not
been explicitly expressed, they cannot be discussed, explained or negated.
However, if there are no such false and defamatory statements regarding, for
example, the highly controversial Atareb Hospital, which is discussed below,
then it may be reasonably assumed that Hand in Hand for Syria, through their
solicitors, are further undermining my good name, my credibility, my peace of
mind and my health and well-being and that has consequences.
The article does not put the trustees and volunteers at risk. If anything, it is
Hand in Hand for Syria, who put their people at risk by getting them to operate
where ISIS rules the roost and in conditions where, as they claim, fifteen of
their number have already been brutally murdered. That being so, not only are
Hand in Hand for Syria at fault but so too are their solicitors, who, having been
made familiar with the facts, not least by my “offending” article/letter, are not
seen here to be advising their client of the unnecessary dangers they are
subjecting their personnel to in Syria as well as in Britain, where ISIS terrorists
who protected them in Syria, may well want to silence them (or, more likely,
me).
The letter/article was distributed on 23 July 2014. Although Nelson’s wrote
their letter of complaint on 27 February 2015, more than seven months later,
they do not give any indication or evidence that Iman Mujahed/Murphy, Rola
Hallam/ al Kurdi or any other persons named or alluded to in the original letter
as being collaborators of Hand in Hand for Syria were put in any danger
whatsoever as a result of that letter. All we have is the word of Hand in Hand
for Syria.
As regards the UK, as the appendices show, I am the one who has come
under physical attack from supporters of Hand in Hand for Syria and there are
dozens of witnesses who can and will testify to that. Further, as Dr Hallam
and others have managed to fraternise with armed Syrian terrorists and have
even managed to pass unmolested through ISIS controlled check points and
territory, it is very reasonable to assume that I, a Cross-worshipper in their
perverted terminology, am much more at risk than are the personnel of Hand
in Hand for Syria from me and my confreres. A number of people, my local
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MP included, have expressed prior fears for my personal safety, fears the
actions of Nelson’s and Hand in Hand for Syria have accentuated.
The solicitor’s demand that the article be removed rather than amended is a
strange one as it indicates that they wish to entertain no criticisms, corrections
or amendments, however valid, to the piece. This is but one more indication
that Hand in Hand for Syria are not sufficiently transparent to be fully
trustworthy and Nelson’s should, I imagine, advise them to the contrary, to be
much more open and inclusive and to accept British norms of accountability
and transparency, however unpalatable they may find them to be.
As even the most casual reader can see, great time and effort has been spent
addressing their objections, no matter how vexatious or shallow they may
appear a priori to be. It is a shame that Nelson’s and Hand in Hand for Syria
share the same practical objective of silencing me as ISIS do to both me and
all other Cross-worshippers, as they sneeringly call us.
This is again a most strange statement for whatever wrongful damage has
been done has been done to me and not by me and it is I and their surviving
volunteers, rather than they, who can claim for a “significant sum”. It is also
most strange that Nelson’s did not ask the university to instead consider
giving a sizeable contribution to a neutral group such as Caritas or the Syrian
Red Crescent and hopefully the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) will also
have something to say on that matter.
From the original document: “Figure 8: Hand in Hand for Syria’s appeal for their
flagship Atareb Hospital, details of which are as opaque as all their other operations.”
Other Unspecified Charges: Although Nelson’s state that there are other “false and
misleading statements” in my original document but do not state what they are, we
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can only do informed speculation for now. As their flagship Atareb Hospital featured
so prominently in my original piece and as Hand in Hand for Syria were busy fundraising for it at the time, the following rather incredible correspondence between
Rinaldo Francesca, the well-known Italian peace activist, and Fadi Al-Dairi, one of
Hand in Hand for Syria’s top officials, may be of particular interest not only because
of the tragic fate of the two abducted and violated young Italian women earlier
mentioned that prodded Rinaldo into contacting Hand in Hand for Syria but also
because of the very serious governance and other issues it throws up about Hand in
Hand for Syria and its officials. The correspondence and Rinaldo’s explanatory
comments are now repeated verbatim and then commented on:
Enter Rinaldo Francesca: My first email to HIH was on February 7: this was in
connection with an appeal launched by Dr. Obied on his Facebook page. How I
came about it is another interesting story, but suffice it to say - for the time being that I learned about it on a number of Facebook accounts I had been monitoring in
connection with the "aid workers" Greta Ramelli & Vanessa Marzullo (allegedly
kidnapped by Jabhat al-Nusrah in August), as well as the pro-armed opposition
organisation Horryaty which shipped them there.
Here is what I wrote to HIH:
To whom it may concerns,
I have heard of a bronchitis emergency at Atareb Hospital, between Idlib and Aleppo.
Could you please tell me more about it and - more importantly - whether and how
one can contribute to the hospital? Is your organisation running some sort of
collection point, where one can drop any medicines the hospitals might need (and, if
so, which ones?), or is there some other way to be of assistance?
The reply came on the same day (Saturday):
Many thanks for getting in touch with us
Atareb Hospital was a hospital we did support until end of January 15 where we had
to pull out as a result of shortage of funds
We still support Atareb with medication and consumables in addition to Diesel to
keep the generators going since there is no electricity
We run 2 more hospitals for Maternity & Paediatrics in 2 different locations and both
are referral facilities
How can you support us?
Best wishes
Fadi
Fadi Al-Dairi
Country & Operations Director
UK Mobile: +44 788 444 7086
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Turkish mobile: +90 539 270 3894
I interpreted this email above as more or less saying: "We are not aware of any
emergency at the hospital we are constantly in contact with (go figure), nor do we
have any system in place for donors to drop any medicines or equipment at our
centre(s) in London - despite the fact that we nominally 'support Atareb with
medication and consumable' (and despite the fact that Dr. Obied has posted a very
specific list of items Atareb urgently needed). However, we would gladly accept your
donations for various other facilities we run. Thank you."
I replied to the email above on February the 12th:
What prompted me to get in touch with you was an appeal by Dr. Obied, where he
urged readers to help the hospital staff to deal with a bronchitis pandemic at Atareb.
It was my understanding that connected charities in various countries were
organising collections of urgently needed medicines donated by supporters, which
would then be shipped to Atareb hospital as soon as possible - please see here.
I was wondering whether you were aware of this current crisis at Atareb and, if your
organisation is supporting Atareb with medication, if there is a way to contribute with
whatever type of medicine is needed.
Fadi's enigmatic reply came ten days later (Sunday, 22 February):
I read the call which left me speechless as specialist centres has not seen that many
cases
No comments at all
All the best
Fadi
My interpretation of it is something like this (though I'm open to suggestions): I've
had a look at Dr. Obied's appeal and I am speechless. An emergency of such
proportions was unprecedented - they had never experienced anything like that
before. Yeah, it's sad but hey, what are you gonna do?
Perhaps I am reading too much into this...
Rinaldo Francesa Caveat: I am assuming Mr. Francesca is being totally honest
about this matter and that he contacted Hand in Hand because he genuinely wanted
to help.
Rinaldo Francesca Implications: We are left to wonder why Hand in Hand for
Syria’s top field operative was so totally unconcerned and uninformed about their
flagship hospital, especially given that their officials and Ms Mujahed/Murphy had
assured us they monitored everything, “even down to the antiseptic”, as she
eloquently put it. The allegations surrounding Atareb Hospital, including those
voluminous ones made in my initial report and the even more voluminous ones made
by Robert Stuart in his clinical analysis of BBC Panorama’s programme, can only be
properly addressed if the accounts and governance structure of Hand in Hand for
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Syria are forensically examined. If this entails the security services having to
confiscate all their documents as well as those of Nelson’s and other agents working
on their behalf, then Hand in Hand for Syria have to happily accept those intrusions,
much more major than my own superficial ones, as the minimum price they have to
pay for their apparent governance failures.
Reminder of relevant governance piece from original article/letter: The same
page of their website claims: “We’re as concerned as you are about aid getting
through. We’ve read the stories about bogus charities and diverted aid, and we want
to reassure you that we can guarantee that your donations will be used to help those
in the greatest humanitarian need. Not only are we regulated by the Charity
Commission but we also accompany all aid and cash donations to their eventual
destinations (we don’t delegate their delivery), and we keep meticulous records. And
we never take people we don’t know into Syria”. Obviously, if Rinaldo’s
correspondence has credence, their flagship Atareb Hospital slipped through the
cracks of their gargantuan enterprise.
Leicester Slip up? Although Hand in Hand for Syria claim “we also accompany all
aid and cash donations to their eventual destinations”, this Leicester Mercury report
http://tinyurl.com/ntavbex which states that “When they reach the Syrian border they
will hand over the supplies to members of the Libyan Red Crescent – part of the
International Committee of the Red Cross”, seems to contradict that. Hand in Hand
for Syria should confirm if they do, in fact, accompany all aid to its final destination
and if the Leicester Mercury is spreading false information. They and the various
groups they work with should confirm what the Libyan Red Crescent are doing on
the Turkish/Syrian border and why they are working with them, rather than with their
Turkish or Syrian equivalents. As the British Red Cross, for example, confirm here
http://tinyurl.com/osntrtm that they do not send such teams abroad and as the
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) explain
their policy here http://tinyurl.com/nrj5o8c , one has to ask how and why their Libyan
equivalents feel empowered to infringe the sovereignty of Syria in this way and why
the Libyan Red Crescent do so in collaboration with Hand in Hand for Syria rather
than with either the Turkish or Syrian Reed Crescents.
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Syrian Red Crescent Bury Another of their Members: The Syrian Red Crescent,
which have been a high-priority target for the Free Syrian Army terrorists, have
suffered a large number of fatalities and, as this link http://tinyurl.com/obpozks
shows, have been constant kidnap targets for the various rebel murder gangs
plaguing their homeland. These fatalities include Dr Abd-al-Razzaq Jbeiro, the
Secretary General of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) and President of the
Idlib Red Crescent branch, who The Free Syrian Army murdered near Khan
Shaykhun, Ildib on the main Aleppo–Damascus highway. Dr Jbeiro was traveling in a
vehicle clearly marked with the Red Crescent emblem following meetings at the
SARC headquarters in Damascus, when the Free Syrian Army gunmen got him.
Though Khaled Erksoussi, the head of operations for the Syrian Arab Red Crescent,
who recently visited the UK, as a guest of the British Red Cross, explains the
difficulties the Syrian Red Crescent labour under here http://tinyurl.com/oxhbcxm he
does not explain why the British-based Hand in Hand for Syria group work with
neither the British nor Syrian branches of the Red Cress/Crescent but work with the
Libyan Red Crescent within the borders of the Syrian Arab Republic.
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ISIS in Libya: The Libyan branch of the ISIS franchise in Libya kidnapped members
of the Iranian Red Crescent. Hand in Hand for Syria should explain whether that and
other manifestations of ISIS violence in Libya prompted the Libyan Red Crescent to
work with them in the relatively safer killing fields of Syria and how such
considerations were factored into their relative health, safety and welfare
calculations. They must also produce a paper trail on all these strange alliances.
Qatar Red Crescent Gun Runners: Although there is no suggestion that Hand in
Hand for Syria have worked with the Qatar Red Crescent, this article
http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/16160 which claims that Qatar Red Crescent
officials have been involved in gun-running to the Free Syrian Army terrorist gang is
of interest as it again turns the spotlight on humanitarian groups who may be
involved in very anti-humanitarian work.
Other (British?) Gun-Runners?: Given that Dr Aafia Siddiqui has been sentenced
to 86 years in an American court on terrorism charges why, one might ask, are these
brave souls Aud4Syria who we have come across time and time again in our
examination of Hand in Hand for Syria, such fans of hers, so much so that they
name a dual use fire ambulance in her name? Why, according to a BBC report, did
this aid group listen to sectarian Islamic vocals on their entire trip from England to
terrorist-controlled Syria? Why does this gallant “British aid convoy” work with IHH, a
Turkish “charity” implicated in an attempt to blow up Los Angeles airport? Should
reports that similar German convoys have been found to contain weapons for
terrorists be given any credence? Should one pay attention to the words of Kas
Jameel, as spoken to the BBC when he says they reject extremism or to his words
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as spoken on Facebook accounts, when he glorifies it? What should we make of
Aid4Syria, which has strong connections with Hand In Hand for Syria, circulating a
video by the notorious Sheikh Muhammad Al-Arifi who urges his listeners to wage
jihad in Syria, to kill infidels and to slaughter Jews? These right-wing sites
http://tinyurl.com/px5kdtz and http://standforpeace.org.uk/category/syria-charities/
which provide information on these and other connected group would like answers to
these and many more questions.
Ahsan Does Libya: Former elite British Army Officer Dr Saleyha Ahsan, who starred
opposite Dr Rola Hallam in Saving Syria’s Children, also hung out with the terrorists
in Libya. Here are some revolting souvenir pics from her Facebook page.
The Whiff of Libyan Cordite: The well-equipped operation treats some terrorists.
The poster belongs to the controversial WorldForSyria group, worryingly described
here http://tinyurl.com/pegtpmj :
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First they Came for the Africans: These three photos are to remind us of what the
moderate rebels did to African migrant workers in Libya before hot footing it to Syria
with Mary Fitzgerald, Paul Conroy and many of their journalist camp followers we
come across here. As for Dr Ahsan, she nailed her colours firmly to the mast. She
told a 2011 BBC News show about Libya: “I want to be part of this Arab Spring, even
though I was born in Britain and my roots are in Pakistan and Afghanistan.” Though
this strange woman wanted her hour upon the Libyan stage, the lynched African
Christians and their families did not want the role her jolly Johnny Rebel terrorists
allocated to them.
Radio 4 broadcast The Road to Bani Walid, a drama by Dr Saleyha Ahsan, on 27
February 2015. Billed as “the story of her journey to confront the reality of revolution
– and of her own reasons for being there”, some choice quotes include:
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23:00 – “every time we stop more vehicles join the convoy, revolutionary
songs playing from stereos – it’s more like going to a party than going to a
war!” ** Charles Manson would have got down and dirty with that.
24:00 – she claims she is “a woman in hijab driving herself to war singing
Andrew Lloyd Webber – how cool is that!” ** If it is really so cool wasting
Christian civilians, one wonders what she got up to in Her Majesty’s forces.
24:30 – “a seventeen year old boy who’s been separated from his brigade and
is desperate to get back to them. You can tell he’s seen action, the way he
holds himself, his eyes always focussing somewhere else – he needs his unit”
**Most of us would think the child needs counselling, his family and his
school, not a rampaging terrorist “unit”, out killing school teachers and raping
their daughters.
26:50 – “it looks like an arms fair out here – armoured vehicles, artillery,
tanks, all lined up like a showroom – instant adrenaline surge! This war’s for
real!” ** It was very real for the Africans, the Copts and the other real martyrs
but there was no adrenaline rush for them, just a noose or a psychopathic
coward’s blade.
42:36 – “I’m covered in blood, my headscarf has somehow disappeared
leaving just a small black bandana, but I know this is why I had to come; this
time, in this place, I am 100% whole, complete and alive. Life is simple – I
know who I am and exactly what I need to do, just me and what I can offer
here and now, and my team.” ** The rest of us can guess what she has
become as well. Though it scars all it touches, the secret of war is not to
become depraved by it. Not everyone succeeds.
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Hang ‘Em High: These pictures from Dr Saleyha Ahsan’s Facebook page show the
Libyan terrorists she consorted with taking a Christian African migrant worker out to
lynch him.
Atareb: The End is Nigh In accordance with their well-established pattern, the
imminent closure of Atareb Hospital generated acres more column inches for Hand
in Hand for Syria. The Guardian, for example, had this uncritical piece
http://tinyurl.com/pe5ze8u which recounts their all too familiar tale of Hand in Hand
for Syria standing between Syria and medical meltdown. It quotes “the charity's head
of logistics, Fadi al-Dairi, speaking from the Syrian-Turkish border”.
Al-Dairi “said the charity has enough money from donors to keep the hospital
running, but cannot get it into the country, because it needs a partner to channel the
funding, and established charities are pulling out of Syria”. But didn’t Hand in Hand
for Syria repeatedly tell us they brought all the money and other essentials in
themselves?
"It's because of bureaucracy, red tape," he added. "We have the expertise, but not
the experience." But haven’t they constantly told us they have both the expertise and
the experience and that is why we should give our hard-earned shekels to them?
We next get three predictable paragraphs from “Omar Gabbar, an NHS consultant
from Leicester” and then it is the turn of Faddy Sahloul, who tells us that they had
only a one-year agreement with some anonymous European NGO partner to run the
place. But, as my original letter says and as I told my MBA-level medical students at
Damascus University, hospital planning with expensive kidney dialysis units so close
to the front lines cannot be done on such an ad hoc, seat of the pants contingency
basis. Hand in Hand for Syria cannot have their hospital cake and eat it. They cannot
operate so amateurishly and obliquely and expect more established and respectable
charities and the general public to jump to their tune. Highly qualified medics many of
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them may be but that does not mean the world must doff their caps to them and
must not dare question, their motives, their methods and their management skills on
life and death matters like this.
The Guardian article, if such it can be called, finishes with Dr Rola Hallam. There is,
in the whole piece, no critical voice, no dissenting analysis, no inkling that Tracy
McVeigh, who penned the piece, did not lift the entire piece off a Hand in Hand for
Syria press release.
Atareb Hospital, a Local’s View: The following piece is from a local correspondent.
It has been modified in parts to improve the English and to omit some idle tangential
points and speculations that would open up yet more cans of worms. The ideas
belong to the correspondent and not to me. My comments are prefaced with two
stars as follows: **
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The genesis of this NGO begins with YADAN BI YAD (in Arabic: HAND IN
HAND) which was founded in Aleppo in 2007 by Mrs. Zeinab Al Khauli whose
son is handicapped to aid the handicapped. ** The reader will note this and
that I give a different reason for its origin.
The “brand” was later sold to “those people come from Reyhanieh, Gazientep
and Antioch. They want to work inside Syria, but they are foreigners, they
come with Turks. They are paying us very high salaries”. ***The reader will
note the mention of Reyhanieh, where both the Free Syrian Army and Hand in
Hand for Syria’s field headquarters are located.
A number of workers joined the new, deeper pocketed management team
which had arrived from the Free Syrian Army stronghold of Reyhanieh which
is just over the Turkish border as the map blow shows. The old local
management left and the new Turkish-centric management took over. **That
is feasible as the new lot would have had the blessing of the Free Syrian
Army and most Syrians are now too destitute to run any charitable enterprise.
Free Syrian Army terrorists looted the hospital, sent the handicapped packing
and turned it into a field headquarters and field hospital. ** That accords with
other reports and what a gang of armed thugs might be expected to do.
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The Map: **This shows the proximity of the Turkish safe haven of
Reyhanieh and how useful it would be to create terror in Northern Syria
and, of course, to deliver medical aid as well. Whatever snippets of
verifiable information have emerged all indicate that this small salient is
where Hand in Hand for Syria primarily operate.
ALATARIB HOSPITAL: The www.Orient.net page tells us here
http://tinyurl.com/mjjretk that, as Orient Humanitarian Network was picking
up the tab, they named it “Orient Hand in Hand’s Hospital”.
The correspondent continues:
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This dedicated Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/MshaklMshfyAlatarb exists to “clarify
errors in the hospital Alatareb and the way to correct them in order
to keep the hospital running”. ** So there is some grassroots
dissent to the narrative of Hand in Hand for Syria.
There are big problems relating to administration, honesty,
transparency and professionalism. ** No surprise there.
Cronyism is a big problem with rebel carpet baggers getting the
jobs and locals being side-lined. ** That makes sense in a
deliberately pauperised environment ruled by unaccountable
gunmen and carpet-baggers.
The next piece of Arabic is translated as: Do not let the blood of the
martyrs be useless. This hospital serves the Jihadis in the same
time as the martyrs’ sons and their families. Allah will take revenge
and will hear the condemnations of the deplored mothers and the
widows for all who is responsible of the closure of this hospital. **
So the jihadis get premium service at Hand in Hand for Syria’s
hospitals?
Our correspondent next cites this article
http://www.all4syria.info/Archive/143247 of 22 April 2014 which
says a leading Free Syrian Army officer died through medical
negligence at the flagship hospital. ** With no accountability or
transparency, we cannot really be surprised at that, the claims of
Hand in Hand for Syria notwithstanding.
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The positive media spin the British media put on it as “one of the
country's most sophisticated remaining hospitals closing its doors”
is not reflected by the reality on the ground where it is something of
a standing, sick joke. ** My original article, written without the input
of this correspondent, guessed as much for the obvious reasons it
explains.
The correspondent’s report goes on to discuss Bab El Hawa Hospital and Atmeh
Hospitals which almost straddle the Turkish border and which were built with the
assistance of Turkish Intelligence with Orient again playing a major administrative
role. It says that Atmeh in particular was much better run that the standing joke of
Atareb, which supposedly was Hand in Hand for Syria’s flagship hospital. The
correspondent goes on to mention the horrific 22nd of February 2014 bombing of
Atmeh hospital by a rival terrorist mob as part of their perennial Chicago-style
gangland turf wars.
Al Dana Hospital is a former government hospital which was taken over by the Nusra
franchise. Neither the Orient Institution nor Hand in Hand for Syria have a part of the
action, an indication “even in the medical issues the same divisions exist among the
opposition sectors as in the military and the political fields.”
Moving on to the Atareb Hospital napalm/chemical gas attack, the correspondent
has a few sociological points worth noting:
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Rebels forbade the children attending school on Nigeria’s Boko Haram’s
educational principle that Western education is forbidden and that it was
necessary to “change” the mentality of the Syrian people from secular to
“religious” to brainwash and emasculate them. ** This makes eminent sense
and there has been no indication from Hand in Hand for Syria that the
“Educate that you may be free” maxim pertains in the terrorist-controlled
areas. Because all we see are a few kids getting pens, pencils and school
satchels, we can surmise that education is far down the priority list of the
semi-literates who comprise the bulk of the revolutionary foot-soldiers.
Religious Wahhabi fundamentalist clap trap now forms the core of the
curriculum of all schools in terrorist-controlled Syria, those in Muslim
Brotherhood controlled areas included. ** Again this makes sense, not only for
the ISIS areas but also for those controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood
influenced Free Syrian Army, who need Syria’s lost generation to be
compliant cannon fodder, not Oxford Union debaters.
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Children of the Revolution and the New Curriculum: Children in the areas of
Syria controlled by the Free Syrian Army and other terrorist groups get into the
rebels’ curriculum. The Sun’s question is easily answered: The West facilitated
Turkey’s barbaric proxies through a variety of Muslim Brotherhood gateway groups.
One cannot argue that one supports the “Revolution” and one does not support this
barbarity, which was a feature of the Muslim Brotherhood inspired “Revolution” from
the very beginning.
SS Boss Heinrich Himmler inspects a concentration camp. Though Himmler’s
minions were charged with committing countless despicable war crimes in those
camps, Himmler, by all accounts, had not the stomach for it himself and got
physically sick on this one occasion he saw the Satanic fruits of his labour. Syria’s
killing fields are no different. As with the Nazis, Syria’s killing fields are caused by
the physical butchers and the more dangerous and urbane ones, who liked to relax
listening to Strauss as they assigned more yet devilish work to their uneducated
subalterns.
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Is it all too much for Hand in Hand for Syria’s sensitive leaders?: This fawning
article http://tinyurl.com/p6ylzdu begins by telling us Faddy Sahloul, the founder of
Hand in Hand for Syria, rubs his tired eyes and pulls heavily on his cigarette in the
Turkish town of Rayhaniya, which Turkey allowed and still allows to be used as a
Free Syrian Army terrorist base to attack and undermine Syria. Faddy is not only a
man with a mission but also a man with a pile of phone bills and very deep pockets
as he claims to give all his Syrian operatives dual use satellite phones, which “cost
USD 3000 dollars each, not including the cost of using them”.
Faddy says he is staying in a flat in the Turkish protected Free Syrian Army
stronghold full of doctors, each one of whom, predictably given its source, “has
suffered torture and imprisonment because they tried to fulfil their Hippocratic Oath”,
reflecting Mousa al Kurdi’s belief that the Syrian Army concentrates its efforts on
killing doctors rather than killing the terrorists who behead their colleagues. Faddy
feels it is a crime not to allow the Rayhaniya humanitarian brigades sweep in to
Northern Syria and deliver their goods. Although he complains: “We have had aid
workers tortured even in Lebanon. We had to close our offices in Lebanon because
of pro-regime forces there,” he does not explain why the hard-pressed Lebanese
would torture Hand in Hand for Syria volunteers even as they cooperate with
countless other groups to counter the massive human disaster spilling over from
Syria into Lebanon.
Faddy, on either ideological or practical grounds, seems to also have contempt for
“the Faith-Based Organizations (FBOs) as well, particularly the Islamic charities that
seemingly peddle verses from the Qu’ran to get donations while delivering very little.
“One CEO of a charity operating outside Syria that raises money for the country,
refused to work with charities inside Syria due to the belief that, without ascertaining
the facts, they had allegiances to the FSA” says Faddy from Rayhaniya, which is the
headquarters of the FSA murder gang and who just does not seem to see how
stupid, self-serving and irresponsible that statement sounds. Faddy, with the same
seemingly boundless sense of self-entitlement we found in Dr Mousa al Kurdi, just
cannot get it through his head that established charities, suspecting the Free Syrian
Army terror gang may be trying to con them, cannot just hand over money to a
representative from Hand in Hand for Syria, who is based in Rayhaniya, the town
that is the operating centre for the terrorist Free Syrian Army, whose flag forms part
of the logo of Hand in Hand for Syria, which Faddy represents.
Still, the pressure must be contagious because others have it too. A Facebook entry
by Hand in Hand for Syria on 15 October 2011 tells us as follows: “Just had a call
from Jordan in relation to the current situation of the Syrian Refugees. The situation
is quite bad where they need everything; from water, baby milk, clothes and
medication. There are also lots of casualties in hospitals around Amman, Alramtha,
Irbid and many more cities. Most casualties has been shot in SPINE and most of
them are now paralised, the age range between 13 and 17 years old. We will need
your support to help them with the treatment cost”.
In short, the report implies the horrid Syrian Army shot a bunch of youngsters in the
spine and all of those gravely injured youngsters, at great expense and unimaginable
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inconvenience, were somehow transferred to various hospitals throughout far-away
Jordan, which seems as implausible as much of Panorama’s Saving Syria’s Children
programme.
Our medical correspondent writes: Spinal injuries call for immediate critical care
and to have spinal boards and other related specialised equipment on hand if the
injured parties were to be moved. Because of the severity of the alleged injuries, it is
highly unlikely the teenagers would have been moved at all, let alone over an hour’s
journey to Amman and other Jordanian cities.
Hand in Hand for Syria’s Mr Omar Gabbar of Leicester who shared a platform
with notorious child sex jihadist proponent al Arafe is a spinal expert. Perhaps Mr
Gabbar can opine on this matter when he is not otherwise engaged.
Sad as their cases are, let’s turn our eyes away from those ferried to Jordan with the
shattered spines and turn our minds back to Faddy in Turkey. This 14 May 2012
report http://tinyurl.com/mno8pgw tells us he sent a £30,000 aid shipment to Homs,
Idlib and Deraa via Tripoli, in Lebanon although it does not tell us how it avoided
major Syrian government strongholds to get from Lebanon to those disparate places
or why they did not just take the simpler route to the rebels via Turkey.
Although this ex-Lebanese caper indicates Hand in Hand for Syria had a remarkably
comprehensive if somewhat opaque logistical system in place since the start of the
murder campaign, one of my correspondents in northern Syria is unimpressed and
writes: Their statement that they help needy all over Syria is false. They have never
helped any of the coastal areas, where there are currently 2 million Aleppo refugees
living. Places like Latakia, Tartus, Banias and Jeblah. They are strictly a support
group for the FSA controlled areas. Perhaps, they are also actively supporting areas
under Jibhat al Nusra control??? I don’t know.
Regarding Reyhanli, which seems to be the HQ of Hand in Hand operatives working
in the field, the same correspondent writes: Reyhanli is a small town in Turkey. It
has a Syrian refugee camp. It is near Idlib, between Idlib and Aleppo, on the Turkish
side. The Syrians in Reyhanli are all either FSA fighters, their families, or their
supporters. There could now be there other groups, such as Al Qaeda and Jibhat al
Nusra. But, it is predominately FSA. There was in the past a huge car bomb which
killed many Turkish residents. However, the Turkish gov’t supports FSA and all
Radical Islamic terrorists, so the situation there is very dangerous and ugly. I can’t
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imagine the suffering of the local Turkish residents, who can’t get rid of these foreign
fighters and have to suffer in silence in their own homes. If they were to complain,
the Turkish authorities would kill or imprison them. However, we can discount the
fact that many Turkish citizens are making money hand over fist off the Syrian
terrorists, and others. They are supplying everything they need from food, medicine
to transportations. They are probably hoping the fighting last forever. $$$$$.
If my correspondents are anyone to go by, the only reasonable impression we can
get until Hand in Hand for Syria fully open their books for a forensic investigation to
prove the contrary, is that Hand in Hand for Syria are hand in hand with the rebels, in
particular those associated with the Free Syrian Army, whose flag they used in their
logo and with whom they share Reyhanli as a safe base to operate from.
Reyhanli: Yasir Alsyed volunteers as the executive manager of the Dar al-Istshfaa
Syrian Medical Center in the Turkish border town of Reyhanli. Note the flag of the
terrorist Free Syrian Army in the background. This report http://tinyurl.com/otkx2rz
tells us that the hospital was “founded by the Paris-based Union of Syrian Medical
Relief Organizations (UOSSM), an aid organization created by Syrian physicians
from Europe, the U.S., Canada and other Middle Eastern countries” and that “Dar alIstshfaa was designed to provide free medical care to all Syrians, regardless of
religion or politics”, even though it sports the flag of the sectarian Free Syrian Army
and, as with Hand in Hand for Syria, it is housed in the same town where the
murderers are based.
Alsyed tells us that “most of the patients, if not all, are supporters of the revolution,”
sectarian killers in other words. The report also reveals that “ten to 15 percent of the
center’s patients are women and children,” a surprisingly low percentage which
makes us wonder who comprise the remaining 85%. One might also surmise that
85% or more of Hand in Hand’s patients are also males of arms-bearing age.
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The UOSSM propaganda site http://www.uossm.org which runs the Reyhanli
terrorist hospital has this idiotic photo on their home page. The signs in the back tell
us they fear cigarettes, the get-ups in the front are pretending they fear a chemical
attack and the idiot third to the left proves his fellow fools are dolled up only for
propaganda purposes. UOSSM’s affiliated groups, many of whom are the usual
suspects, are showcased here: http://www.uossm.org/#/member_organizations
Hand in Hand for Syria are certainly, by their own words, an incredible crew. In
this report http://tinyurl.com/ldplyen on their website they inform us: They were the
first people to take humanitarian aid into Syria, and they’ve remained at the forefront
of emergency aid in Syria ever since. They get into the hardest-to-reach areas.
Because of the unique way they operate, they can take aid into really tough places –
like behind front lines and, whenever they can, into besieged areas. For example,
they were the first to take food aid into Yarmouk, a besieged area of Damascus, in
January 2014. And they went back the following month.
Let us analyse that paragraph. Hand in Hand for Syria, a recent charity start-up,
which is not recognised by the Syrian authorities and which has no real transnational
standing, is able, like a modern Santa Claus, to get aid to where it is most needed,
even into the besieged “Hotel California” of Yarmouk camp where those with better
contacts and better logistics cannot check in at all and they can certainly never leave
without the permission of the Nusra jailors who use the Palestinians there as human
shields.
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Thanks for the clean roads and English lettering on the Yarmouk shops:
Children at Yarmouk Camp take a break from starving to death to show off their
penmanship and to thank a notorious supporter of the armed destruction of the
Syrian Arab Republic. Whereas the road on the left looks as neat as the children’s
hand-writing, the Yarmouk roads on the right look more like the battle ground
between the Syrian Arab Army and their Palestinian allies on the one hand and ISIS,
al Nusra, the Free Syrian Army and the Golan Turkmen on the other.
The Lies of the Free Syrian Army Apologists Cost Lives: In these tweets, we see
apologists for the Free Syrian Army claiming a Yarmouk fatality was the fault of the
Syrian Army rather than as a result of the turf wars between ISIS and the other
criminal gangs that were raging in Yarmouk at the time. These Western apologists
are, in essence, just the unarmed wing of the murder gangs.
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Alan Henning: In a similar vein, these two young children were got to express
condolences to the late Alan Henning. It is unlikely such children would use the
quintessentially Western expression “RIP” and it is likewise unlikely Syria toddlers
would refer to a Briton they may have occasionally met as “Uncle Gadget.” It seems
that cynical people are again at work here.
Hand in Hand for Syria’s Yarmouk Video: Though this video
http://tinyurl.com/oy3wjta purports to show Hand in Hand for Syria delivering aid to
Yarmouk and there are some starving children in the short video, their established
camera patterns mean old questions remain. The footage just cannot be accepted as
genuine until they verify it. Why, for example, did they only take a short video and not
interview dozens of the Palestinian human shields the Turkmen terrorist hold there.
Why were the starving children not interviewed to verify they were Palestinian and
not abducted Latakia Alawites? Until Hand in Hand for Syria start answering
questions and making verifiable claims, their word cannot be taken as Gospel.
Nelson’s letter concludes by saying that “given the very damaging nature of the
contents of the [enclosed] article, we anticipate our clients claim will be for a
significant sum”.
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Summary, Conclusions and Recommendations:
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I have made every reasonable effort to highlight clarify and correct any
untruths, falsehoods or simple misunderstandings the original letter/article
may have contained.
I feel I have demonstrated that there were no material or malicious falsehoods
and that, as a consequence, any action against me or anyone else would fail.
I feel my lengthy rebuttal as well as the tens of thousands of British pounds I
have spent on the cause of Syrian peace without any reimbursement or any
personal advantage amply demonstrate my good intent and that I am working,
however imperfectly, for peace with justice in the Syrian Arab Republic, where
I have no material assets, family connections or prior involvements to
prejudice my actions one way or the other.
I feel this position is strengthened by again considering the hundreds if not
thousands of hours I have devoted to the cause of peace in the Syrian Arab
Republic, time I could have otherwise spent further enriching myself with the
skill set I have developed over the last many decades.
This, my belief, is considerably fortified, by for example, the representations I
have made to Tory MPs, former government ministers included where, in front
of credible witnesses and prior to receipt of Nelson’s scary letter I told them, in
Westminster Parliament buildings, that Syrians in Britain I am in touch with
are demonstrably terrified beyond words for their lives and for the lives of their
families of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, whose spectre hangs over much of
these activities; I have had those fears confirmed this afternoon. Those
members of the Conservative Party share my concerns and have expressed
them in a number of forums, not the least of them being the floor of the House
of Commons itself. Although I can name those most respectable of MPs if
necessary, I would prefer to allow their efforts to secure peace and stability in
the Arab world to proceed, unhindered by threatened lawsuits like this, which
they may well find frivolous in the extreme and not worthy of their precious
time.
As against the apparent belligerence of Hand in Hand for Syria, as displayed,
in their solicitor’s letter, I have tried to be as helpful and cooperative as
possible. I have not only given primary pre-eminence to their objections and
concerns but have even offered to help them put faults, apparent or
otherwise, to rights. I am, to use the vernacular, bending over backwards to
accommodate not only them and their concerns but the apparent duty of care
deficiencies of their agents.
The only place I am not fully kowtowing to them is in my refusal to fully
digitally eat my words by removing them and, like my fellow-Christians living
under Muslim Brotherhood rule, to pay them some sort of judicial tax for
examining material and personnel they have put into the public domain. I
believe my failure to submit there may be traced back to my tempered belief
in free speech and in my Catholic faith, both of which would gravely imperil
me, were I to be landed into areas of Syria Hand in Hand for Syria primarily
operate in.
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Despite all of that, I still see myself as under threat so much so that I have
booked an appointment with one of my solicitors to amend my last will and
testament. My name and reputation have both been traduced, my standing in
the various communities I operate in has been greatly diminished and I now
have very well-founded fears for my own safety. I have, to date, received no
assurances from Hand in Hand for Syria, their agents or the more sinister
figures cited in the appendices that my fears are unfounded and I must take
those factors into account if I wish to be like St Paul and fight the good fight.
Because all of us have the welfare of the Syrian people at heart, I would like
any substantial sum they care to pay me by way of redress to be donated to
the Syrian Red Crescent and, for my part, I will use whatever influence I have
with Syria’s religious leaders to ensure that the money they pay me is used
transparently and exclusively for medical relief in accordance with Hand in
Hand for Syria’s mission statement.
A photo of me with my good friend, His Beatitude, Patriarch Gregorios Laham, whom
I accompanied to Ma’loula on Easter Sunday, 20 April 2014, after the Syrian Arab
Army liberated it and its people from the terrorists of the Free Syrian Army, whose
flag is used in the logo of Hand in Hand for Syria. Because His Beatitude, like His
Grace, the Grand Mufti, is a man of the utmost integrity, Hand in Hand for Syria can
rest assured that their concerns about fraudulent charities, which is cited in the
original document and reproduced herewith as an appendix will, in this instance at
least, prove to be groundless. Noting also Hand in Hand for Syria’s claim that “we
also accompany all aid and cash donations to their eventual destinations (we don’t
delegate their delivery), and we keep meticulous records”, I will arrange for that to
happen and thereby allow Hand in Hand for Syria to truly walk hand in hand with the
Syrian people, who need the help of all of us.
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Ma’loulah Here We Come: As we barrelled in to Ma’loulah on Easter Sunday with
Syria’s Christian leaders, we passed the outer defence rings of the Syrian Arab Army
who protect the town. The Free Syrian Army terrorists murdered three journalists
there a few hours earlier.
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Enter the Liberators, Easter Sunday 2014: Syrian Muslims and Christians
welcome Syria’s Christian leaders back to Ma’loulah after it was freed from the
scourge of the Free Syrian Army, whose flag is emblazoned onto the logo of Hand in
Hand for Syria.
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Christian Leaders inspect the damage, Easter Sunday 2014. Syria’s Christian
leaders inspect Ma’loula after it was liberated from the sectarian terrorists of the Free
Syrian Army, whose flag forms part of the logo of Hand in Hand for Syria.
Made it ma, top of the world: Relaxing with the Syrian Arab Army, Easter Sunday
2014, Ma’loulah.
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Return to Ma’loulah, September 2014: The heroic children of Ma’loulah, under the
protection of the Syrian Arab Army, learn to relax again and hope the rebel demons
the Free Syrian Army sectarians brought with them will not return.
Palm Sunday, Ma’loulah 2015: The heroic children of Ma’loulah, free from the
scourge of the Free Syrian Army and under the protection of the Syrian Arab Army,
return to the ways of their forefathers.
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A VICTIMLESS CRIME?
Picture Right: 140 children died of lack of medication caused by the terrorists'
sectarian siege on the predominantly Shia towns of Nubl & AlZahraa, Reem was the
140th child to succumb, late in March 2015. Hand in Hand for Syria, who have depots
nearby in Aleppo in the terrorist areas, say they are adept at bringing medical
supplies to besieged communities.
Picture Left: Mohamad's parents are currently helplessly watching their son die, all
thanks to the rebels besieging their town and blocking aid. Hand in Hand for Syria,
who have depots nearby in Aleppo’s terrorist enclaves, claim to be adept at bringing
medical supplies to besieged communities.
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Three year-old Mohamad Salame is dying in his grandparents’ arms because
doctors treating him in the besieged villages of Nubl & Zahraa cannot get vital
medicines through the terrorist areas of Aleppo where Hand in Hand for Syria
operate and where they have a major depot.
Lost Lives: Their sons died defending them, their Syrian homeland and their people.
Hand in Hand for Syria allege their dead children and/or their comrades are much
more interested in raping women, girls and boys than in fighting the terrorists of the
Free Syrian Army, whose flag formed part of Hand in Hand for Syria’s logo
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Martyrs of Ma’loula where they speak the Aramaic language of Jesus. Terrorists
from the Free Syrian Army, whose flag is part of the Hand in Hand for Syria logo,
along with their Jabhat al Nusra allies, butchered them for no other crime than for
being Syrian Christians. Hand in Hand for Syria do not, as far as I know, operate in
Ma’loulah as they claim that working there would be much more dangerous than
working in Deir ElZor, Raqqa and other outposts of the Islamic State that they do
claim to work in.
Death of a farmer: Syrian terrorists killed this young boy’s father (pictured), when
his wife was pregnant with him. Hand in Hand for Syria have, as far as I know, no
connection with this young boy.
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Trick or Treat? Three young Syriac Christians enjoy Halloween 2014. Rebel
terrorists kidnapped them shortly after. Hand in Hand for Syria operate unmolested
in the areas their kidnappers control.
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Julius Streicher: Hanged as a war criminal for being a propagandist. Should
propagandists for the Free Syrian Army also be jailed?
Sweden Begs to Differ: Sweden, as the above screengrab shows, has begun to jail
members of the Free Syrian Army as war criminals. To rephrase that: Sweden now
regards terrorists who fought under the flag of the terrorist Free Syrian Army, the flag
which forms the centre-piece of Hand in Hand for Syria’s logo and which still features
very prominently on Hand in Hand for Syria’s website, as war criminals who should
be jailed. This begs a number of questions Hand in Hand for Syria must directly
address. These questions include the following: does Hand in Hand for Syria regard
members of the Free Syrian Army as war criminals? If they do, do they regard the
flag of the Free Syrian Army in the same way most Westerners regard the Nazi
swastika, as a symbol of hate, prejudice and evil? If not, why not? Just how do they
regard the war criminals of the Free Syrian Army and do they believe that, as at
Nuremberg with the Nazis, fund-raisers, propaganda experts and other non-armed
collaborators should be in the dock? At Nuremberg, for example, the non-combatant
Julius Streicher was amongst the first despicable batch to be hanged in the early
hours of 16 October 1946 and Nazi medics also got their own separate trial.
Who are the Criminals? The fact is that in war, there are no victimless crimes and
when and if the Syrian conflict ends, those who gave succour to the terrorists must
be held to account just as many Nazi subversives were, following the unconditional
surrender of the Wehrmacht. For justice to be done and to be seen to be done, it is
important that the white-collared godfathers of the terrorists are not allowed to slink
away into the undergrowth of middle class respectability, their criminal collaboration
unatoned for. They too must be held to account.
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Even the Free Syrian Army Disagree that it is Free: This report here
http://tinyurl.com/ls5uudn comes from Yarmouk Palestinian camp, which has been
the focus of a major media and humanitarian war between the Syrian authorities and
the terrorists and their propagandists. The Syrian authorities have alleged that the
remaining civilians in Yarmouk are held as human shields by the terrorists who in
turn claim that the Palestinians of Yarmouk are being starved to death on the direct
orders of Syria’s elected President. The article describes how the Golan Turkmen
Battalion terrorist unit caught fifteen unfortunate Free Syrian Army soldiers trying to
escape to the government side of the lines. The key thing here for our purpose is to
point out that the Turkmen, who are associated with a string of war crimes, not the
least of which is the brutal rape of the Armenian town of Kesab, are not Palestinians
and should not have been in the camp at all and that, if the Free Syrian Army is not a
conscript army, its volunteers should be free to leave as they please. Such is
obviously not the case.
If one checks the appendices, one will see that prominent Hand in Hand
activist/supporter Christine Gilmore, who was reported to the police for being the
ring-leader of the violent disruption at the Cricklewood meeting, has been honoured
by “the people of Yarmouk” for her work helping them and Hand in Hand for Syria
itself has predictably claimed, without any corroborating evidence, to have been able
to get aid into the camp past the government lines. This leads us to ask whether that
aid was funnelled through the Golan Turkmen or their captives and how they intend
to proceed with delivering future aid to Yarmouk, which is controlled by these
unhinged Golan Turkmen killers.
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Hand in Hand for Syria’s Bruised Name: Hand in Hand for Syria have made it
known they feel their good name has been impugned. Yet, the great mass of the
British people might feel that their good nature has been infinitely more violated if
monies they have donated to relieve the suffering of the Syrian people have been
abused. Charity start-ups, such as Hand in Hand for Syria, no matter how explosive
their growth or how slick their media and fund raising arms are, have an absolutely
duty to be totally transparent in their dealings, in their accounts and in their corporate
governance structures and much of my academic work over the last many decades
has been exploring such issues. But so too has some of my field work in Syria as the
following pictures from Kesab indicate.
Captured Rebel Medical Aid in Kesab: The young Armenian girl, guarded by
soldiers of the Syrian Arab Army, holds the Turkish licence plate of an ambulance
Free Syrian Army terrorists were using to transport men and materiel into Kesab,
which is discussed in the appendices in connection with the terrorist atrocities of the
leaders of the Free Syrian Army. I do not currently know if Hand in Hand for Syria
were active there during its sacking by a large coalition of different rebel terrorist
groups which was so intense and diabolical that even the USA was forced to
condemn it.
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APPENDICES
There next follow a number of appendices as follows
Appendix 1: This is the original document, article or letter that caused Hand in Hand
for Syria to react as it did. Only the logo heading and some redundant contact details
have been changed or removed; other than that, the document retains its original
form, with nothing added, redacted or elided. This is to enable fair and honest people
to more better judge if the allegations of Hand in Hand for Syria against it can be
sustained.
Appendix 2. My follow up document, which cursorily examined the unaudited
accounts of Hand in Hand for Syria. Because these unaudited accounts were
submitted very late, analysis of them could not be part of the original document to
which Hand in Hand for Syria so stridently objected. This section asks further serious
questions of Hand in Hand for Syria, which, one hopes, they will quickly answer to
the satisfaction of all people of good will. Though I have not yet revised it, I am
happy to do so once Hand in Hand for Syria or their agents supply me with relevant
information to clarify matters that may be in dispute. That said, I would hope this, my
submission, would form part of a fuller and more official investigation into the issues
raised. Appendix 2A is a preliminary assessment of the accounts of Hand in Hand
for Syria for the year ended 31 October 2013. Though quickly written after Hand in
Hand for Syria submitted their accounts over the Easter 2013 weekend, because it
asks many further serious questions of this group, it is worthy of particular study.
Appendix 3: A selection of screengrabs concerning notorious Saudi extremist Mr alArefe and his contacts with various charity and NGO groups Hand in Hand for Syria
should be very familiar with if, as the Charity Commission expect them to, they did
due diligence on him before showcasing this evil man to their supporters, friends and
other benefactors, many of whom were most probably radicalised as a result.
Appendix 4: The Fallen: Lest We Forget. A Tiny Selection of the crimes and
victims of the Free Syrian Army and related murder gangs.
Appendix 5: Other screengrabs, photos and comments which attempt to flesh out
Hand in Hand for Syria’s role in the Syrian crisis. These will probably be expanded
on receipt of Hand in Hand for Syria’s reply.
Appendix 6: An account of the violent demonstrators, many of them prominent
Hand in Hand for Syria activists and/or supporters, who disrupted the Cricklewood
meeting and who terrified the women and smaller children attending it in the process.
Appendix 6: Addendum: My 30 November 2013 letter of complaint to Hampshire
police, concerning Christine Gilmore, Dr Mahmoud al Akraa and the Cricklewood
terror attacks.
Appendix 7: Syria’s Band of Muslim Brotherhoods. Current British government
investigations increasingly point to this shadowy, subversive organisation as the
power behind a whole range of interlinked charities and support groups for
questionable change across the Arab world. Though the original report on them is
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included here in the appendices, they and their opaque ways feature in the main
body of this work as well.
Appendix 8: Short notes from Kessab, Saidnaya, Damascus and elsewhere from
my 2013 trips to Syria. These are important to show that I, in contrast to Hand in
Hand for Syria personnel, have been open and transparent in my movements in
Syria.
Appendix 8a: The Massacre of Armenians at Kassab, Syria under the support of
the Republic of Turkey, June 26, 2014. By Our Correspondent, Latakia and Kassab,
Syria. As we approach the April 24th 2015 100th anniversary of the Armenian
genocide, it is important to take note of our correspondent’s report on how Turkey,
through their proxies, continues the war of genocide against the Armenians the
criminals of the Young Turk movement initiated 100 years ago
Appendix 9: Some Closing Notes on our Embedded Media. Though these short
notes and comments could be expanded into a virtual library, these short notes are
important in assessing how groups like Hand in Hand for Syria have not only been
spared even the mildest criticisms but have been actively promoted at the expense
of the more established and less controversial ones. A forensic examination of the
media in the wars of the Orwellian-named Arab Spring would indicate that Hand in
Hand for Syria are most likely the tip of a rancid iceberg that will poison our planet
unless it is resolutely dealt with.
Appendix 10: A selection of correspondence from Nelson’s solicitors, acting on
behalf of Hand in Hand for Syria, and form the University of Southampton,
DISCLAIMER, CAVEAT AND CLARIFICATION.
The articles included in these appendices have not been substantially
rewritten since I came into receipt of the complaints of Hand in Hand for Syria.
Although I suspect they again might object to some of my wording and,
perhaps, to the strange position of Omar Gabbar, which seems somewhat
analogous to that of Ms Mujahed, within Hand in Hand for Syria, those are
secondary if not tertiary matters that can be dealt with in the same manner as
similar cases in the main piece.
Regardless of what form of action Hand on Hand for Syria choose to follow,
they have a growing number of serious questions to answer to fulfil their civic
duty to the British, Irish and Syrian people, to their donors and to their
employees and volunteers.
As a further gesture of goodwill, the appendices will also be rewritten,
complete with appropriate disclaimers, clarifications and caveats when Hand
in Hand for Syria and/or others supply more information to enable that process
to be successfully and finally completed.
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Re: Hand in Hand for Syria? (Registered Charity 1145862)
Please find the attached document outlining my concerns about the above-named
charity and why I believe it warrants an urgent investigation by the police, by the
Charity Commission, by the media and by relevant elected officials which all have a
duty of care to ensure bogus charities are not allowed operate for either base
mercenary or politically-motivated reasons. My main concerns may be summarised
as follows:
 Hand in Hand for Syria is very politically partisan. It is an active, if somewhat
clandestine supporter of the armed Syrian opposition and is therefore, at the
very least, in breach of the Charity Commission code.
 Hand in Hand for Syria, superficial claims to the contrary notwithstanding, is
financially and organisationally very opaque. This is not only unacceptable on
financial probity grounds but adds to the suspicion that Hand in Hand for Syria
and groups allied to it are effectively financial and propaganda tools for the
armed Syrian opposition.
 Hand in Hand for Syria have engaged in a number of very dubious highprofile media coups, most notably in Saving Syria’s Children, the widely
criticised BBC Panorama show. If the complaints against Hand in Hand for
Syria are sustained, they bring the BBC and other media outlets that have
collaborated with them into disrepute.
 Hand in Hand for Syria have the active support of a relatively large number of
medical professionals working for the NHS. If the complaints against Hand in
Hand for Syria are sustained, they bring the NHS and all its staff into
disrepute.
 Hand in Hand for Syria have been primarily funded by a notorious Saudi
extremist who is now banned from entering Switzerland and Britain. That
being so, a full investigation is needed to ascertain if Hand in Hand for Syria
are merely well-funded and well-organised “innocents abroad” or if there is a
more sinister under-current to them.
 Hand in Hand for Syria have a number of trustees, who have expressed their
support for extremist actions and extremist organisations in Syria and
countries contiguous to it. That being so, a full investigation is needed to
ascertain if such support is the real raison d’être of Hand in Hand for Syria.
If you want further information or to speak to me about any of the material contained
here, please contact me at the following email address [email protected] or
on my mobile phone +447942440165.
Dr Declan Hayes dated: 23/7/2014 (amended 17 March 2015 to change logos &
remove redundant contact emails)
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Who is Hand in Hand for Syria Hand in Hand with? (Registered Charity
1145862)
I wish to draw to your attention my serious concerns with the above-named charity
and their apparent links to Syrian extremists. Specifically, I believe this group,
contrary to their role as a charity registered with the Charity Commission, has raised
money and made fraudulent propaganda for their political aims of helping the armed
Syrian rebel extremists achieve power rather than the humanitarian aims they
purport to work for and for which the Charity Commission licenced them.
Although I base my beliefs on the well-documented controversies surrounding their
media involvement and the apparent governance and financial contradictions and
anomalies in their fund-raising activities, most of what follows will concentrate on
reconciling the financial and media claims they make with what is known of the Hand
in Hand for Syria organisation and the people behind it.
Despite its penchant for publicity and the relatively large number of NHS-related
medical professional supporting it, Hand in Hand for Syria is not a transparent
organisation. Not only are much of its media activities dubious in the extreme but the
fact, claims to the contrary aside, it is so financially opaque sits uneasily with the
amount of NHS medics it has supporting it. One would expect if not demand these
medics and other professionals colluding with it would appreciate the importance of
having a transparent money trail. Because no such transparent money trail seems to
exist and the sympathies of its leading lights are so clearly aligned with those of the
Syrian rebel extremists, Hand in Hand for Syria warrants an investigation into it by
the police, by the Charity Commission, by the media and by relevant elected officials
which all have a duty of care to ensure bogus charities are not allowed operate for
either base mercenary or politically-motivated reasons. If any of Hand in Hand for
Syria’s principals knowingly engaged in fraudulent, dishonest or unethical behaviour,
the forces of law and order and the appropriate professional bodies must take the
severest punitive action against them.
Hand in Hand for Syria’s Main Objective
The leaders of Hand in Hand for Syria have a political objective and their
propaganda and actions are conducted to serve that objective. As the rest of this
document will show, its key leaders have long supported the armed Syrian
opposition and most, if not all, of their activities are in areas controlled by those
extremists. That makes them, in effect, collaborators of the armed Syrian opposition.
Where Does Hand in Hand for Syria Primarily Operate?
Their website claims here http://www.handinhandforsyria.org.uk/: “We take medical
and humanitarian aid into 90% of the country, using our unique and extensive
networks on the ground in Syria. We also implement aid funded by, and on behalf of,
some of the world’s biggest aid agencies, who are unable to get into Syria
themselves”.
This is untrue. They do not work in 90% of Syria and they have no demonstrable
established links with major aid agencies, who would demand a well-established
audited money trail before working with them on any meaningful level. If the situation
is as they claim, they should name “the world’s biggest aid agencies” which work
with them both for transparency and for their own credibility.
Their http://www.handinhandforsyria.org.uk/ website makes plain they are busy
collecting funds to use in the “90% of Syria” they claim to operate in. However, as
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they do not and cannot operate in any of the areas controlled by the Syrian
government, the claim they operate in “90% of Syria” is very clearly wrong, if not
deliberately misleading. The Syrian authorities would not allow any such organisation
with their sympathies operate in areas they control and the Syrian government
controls far more than 10% of Syria.
Contrary to their claims of impartiality, the Hand in Hand for Syria charity operates
only in the areas controlled by ISIS and the other Syrian rebels and their appeals,
such as their current ones for their flag-ship hospital at Atareb, are primarily to send
aid to those operatives in those areas. Although their logo, which originally had the
flag of the Syrian rebels embedded in it, indicates that they are politically partisan,
many of their leading members have umbilical links with the leaders of the Syrian
rebel militias. Because there is absolutely no way these people, given their
allegiances, their track record and their blanket displays of rebel logos, would be
allowed to operate in government-held areas, there is a very black cloud over them
and their financial and other claims.
Here http://tinyurl.com/rolax2 Hand in Hand for Syria claim: “Neither the Syrian
government nor the Free Syrian Army (or other opposition groups) constrain our
activity, which means we can work across borders and behind front lines. Therefore,
we deliver aid to both opposition-held and government-held areas, including
besieged areas whenever possible. And since we don’t work through third parties,
we can monitor everything directly to ensure our aid reaches the right people, and
those who need it most”.
This is patently untrue and, as we shall see in the following paragraph, Hand in Hand
for Syria admit as much. The Syrian government would not and do not allow a group
with such obvious political links to rebel extremists to operate in their areas. Were
Hand in Hand for Syria operating in government-controlled areas, the Syrian
authorities could tell where precisely they are operating and how they are supplying
the centres they operate from. However, as there is no way Hand in Hand for Syria
could run and supply any medical facilities on the government side of the lines
without the cooperation of the Syrian authorities, grave doubts have to be cast not
only on Hand in Hand for Syria’s claims to be non-partisan and to operate in 90% of
Syria but on all of their other claims as well.
In answer to the charge than Hand in Hand for Syria only operate in rebel-controlled
areas, Mr al-Dairi, one of their (three only) trustees listed with the Charity
Commission, claims here http://tinyurl.com/Fadix1 that “[In the governmentcontrolled areas] you wouldn’t see Hand in Hand’s name; you would see a normal
name. We have two schools and a hospital, but these do not look like they are
associated with Hand in Hand, they would look entirely normal. This is to protect the
people on the ground and the people who attend.
We do it totally differently in the government-controlled areas. In these areas we
would do it in normal vehicles: small saloon cars or normal cars. In opposition held
areas we can travel openly, whereas in government-controlled areas, you cannot fill
a car with more than two food baskets – two is the maximum. Anyone seen with a lot
of aid is targeted, it is a criminal offence.”
Mr al-Dairi goes on to explain: “Due to the enormous risk that the volunteers and
workers from Hand in Hand run when they deliver aid into the government-controlled
areas of the country, the charity has suffered tragic losses in personnel. We have
lost 15 of our staff in Syria over the last two and a half years, which is why we are so
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security-conscious. We believe that they were captured and then killed – tortured to
death. We do a lot of work inside Syria, but we don’t talk about it because nothing is
safe”.
So, although Hand in Hand for Syria has suffered 15 fatalities for some unexplained
reason in government-controlled areas where they continue to operate a token
supply of aid, in addition to the two schools and a hospital they claim to have there,
this and the fact “we don’t talk about it” does not seem credible for a number of
reasons. Given the relative tokenism of the aid to government-controlled areas, it is
not worth the risk. As for the two schools and hospital, there is no way, Mr al-Dairi’s
bizarre claims to the contrary, they could exist or function without the Syrian
government knowing about them. Because Mr al-Dairi does not address the question
as to why they can be so (seemingly relatively) open and transparent in the rebelcontrolled areas but so underhand and tokenistic in the government-controlled areas,
the inference must be that they are primarily supporters of the Syrian rebels. This
view is strengthened by examining their key players and they key projects.
Hand in Hand for Syria’s Guiding Lights
Hand in Hand for Syria’s website was first registered with Whois here:
http://tinyurl.com/HIHR1 only as recently as 12 April 2012 and it is registered until 12
April 2015. It is registered to Marwan Ghannam, 67 Yoxall Road, Solihull, B90 3RP.
Marwan’s phone number is given in a fund-raising poster here:
http://tinyurl.com/HHand8. These links http://tinyurl.com/HIHR2 and
http://tinyurl.com/HHand2 indicate he is very involved in the local Islamic Centre and
has taught Islamic courses in the USA and Syria; he has also been mentioned here
http://tinyurl.com/HHand3 in a BBC account of outreach programmes in London.
Interestingly, given the lack of audited accounts to date, he is a chartered accountant
by profession. Interesting, as this link http://tinyurl.com/HHand1 on their webpage
states, Razan Zehrawi, one of Hand in Hand for Syria’s trustees, whose background
is decorative arts, is in charge of their banking, rather than Marwan Ghannam, who,
as a qualified chartered accountant, is much more competent to fulfil that role. Given
his relevant training, one would a priori expect Mr Ghannam rather than Ms Zehrawi
to be in charge of the accounts but that is not the case. Hand in Hand for Syria
should explain why this is not the case.
Ms Zehrawi is pictured with her daughter here http://tinyurl.com/HHand4 at a Hand in
Hand for Syria fund-raising event. Her contact details, including phone numbers and
address are here: http://tinyurl.com/HHand5 Her address is given in this newspaper
report http://tinyurl.com/HHand6 As this link http://tinyurl.com/HHand7 indicates there
is a Razan Zehrawi Sahloul living nearby, it is possible she is related to Faddy
Sahloul, the chairperson of the Hand in Hand for Syria group. This link gives the
same address that Razan Zehrawi uses for Faddy Sahloul. http://tinyurl.com/homex1
it also lists him as directors of two separate companies, both with similar names
(Global Fresh Produce and Ideal Fresh Produce) and both of which have since been
dissolved. Both Faddy and Razan Sahloul are also listed here
http://tinyurl.com/finestx1 as former directors of Finest Fresh Produce Ltd company,
which also included Vicki Steward as a director12. This link http://tinyurl.com/finestx2
1
They expand on these unrealistic claims here http://tinyurl.com/HHclaims1
Here is a link with slightly more information on this company
http://tinyurl.com/handchopx1
2
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tells us that “Vikki Steward …has resigned from 199 companies and held 9
appointments at 9 dissolved companies”. Faddy’s extended family are reputably big
players in the transfer of currencies to the world’s more exotic locations; much of this
grey market is reputedly controlled by Zuhair Sahloul: http://tinyurl.com/sahloul1 and
http://tinyurl.com/sahloul2
Hand in Hand for Syria’s website claims here
http://www.handinhandforsyria.org.uk/about-us/ : “We don’t ask questions. We bring
aid to anyone who needs it, regardless of their politics or religion. We are
humanitarian in the full sense of the word”. Although the blood-curdling sympathies
of Mr Faddy Salhoul, their trustee, would suggest not all of them are “humanitarian in
the full sense of the word”, their clear and constant political pro-rebel stance is a
breach of the Charity Commission’s guidelines.
As this Skynews report on one of their doctors killed in Syria shows
http://tinyurl.com/HIHTrustee one such trustee (unlisted with the Charity
Commission) is Dr Mahmoud al Akraa who led a mob that disrupted a peaceful and
inclusive meeting in London. Details of that meeting, where they heckled children
and hurled abuse at them, are here: http://tinyurl.com/HIHTrustee2. His Facebook
page shows here http://tinyurl.com/HIHTrustee3 he and Dr Rola Alkurdi Hallam are
friends. As this link http://tinyurl.com/trusteexx1 shows, Dr Mahmoud al Akraa also
shares platforms with disgraced and discredited provocateur Danny Abdel Dayyem;
more to the point perhaps, Dr al Akraa claims that the Syrian government forces will
summarily and sadistically torture and then kill any Syrian seen to have been getting
medical aid from non-approved sources which, if true, would have to call into the
question Hand in Hand for Syria’s clearly suicidal policy, as enunciated by his fellow
trustee, Mr al-Dairi, of running token medical services in government-controlled
Syria. Equally importantly, at 2:43 into the video, he expresses his delight that “the
Muslim Brotherhood is coming back” to Syria. Hand in Hand for Syria should explain
whether or not they support the Muslim Brotherhood, the Syrian National Council
and the various rebel extremist groups they have been associated with. They should
also clearly state what, if any, disciplinary action they intend to take against Dr al
Akraa as well as the blood-thirsty Mr Sahloul.
This link http://tinyurl.com/rola1 points out that Dr Rola Hallam, who is at the centre
of the Hand in Hand for Syria movement, is the daughter of Dr. Mousa al Kurdi, a
leading apologist for Syrian extremist militias, who has been involved at the highest
levels with the rebels. Dr Rola was one of the signatories and organisers of the 16
September 2013 letter to The Lancet, signed by a large number of medics, many
globally prominent, asking that they be allowed to work unhindered in Syria. Given
that all of them, Dr Rola included, declared “that we have no conflicts of interest”, Dr
Rola should clarify whether that is, in fact, the case3. Dr Rola should, in other words,
explain whether her 16 September 2013 declaration is true that she has no conflict of
interest or whether her real sympathies and those of Hand in Hand for Syria, like
their actions, are partisan.
See here for the letter http://tinyurl.com/medicsign1 and here
http://tinyurl.com/medicsign2 for the list of signatories.
3
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To aid her in that process, further information on her dubious links and more
evidence showing Panorama’s apparent fake reporting can be had here4
http://tinyurl.com/rolaw1
Figures 1 and 2: Pro-rebel screenshots of the Facebook page of Faddy Salhoul.
More screenshots are in Appendix 1. The actual photo is one of a very large number
of staged photos rebel extremists in Kafranbel flood the Internet with.
Until early July 2014, the Facebook banner of Faddy Salhoul, Hand in Hand for
Syria’s co-founder and chairman, read5 “We will bring Assad to justice, no matter
what lives it takes, no matter how much catastrophe it makes”. This blood lust
contradicts Hand in Hand for Syria’s declared purpose (on the Charity Commission
website) of “the advancement of health or saving lives” even though it sits foursquare with the aims of the Syrian rebel extremists. As can be seen from the
screenshots, his Facebook page also prominently displays Hand in Hand for Syria’s
original pro-rebel logo. Hand in Hand for Syria should declare whether or not they
and their leaders support the Kafranbel rebel extremists. If they do, the Charity
Commission should take the appropriate action; if they do not, they should dispense
with the services of Mr Sahloul and have his services professionally audited for fear
of bringing Hand in Hand for Syria into disrepute.
Hand in Hand People: Mohammad bin Abdul Rahman Al Arefe
The Wikispooks page does get the dates and names of programmes Dr Hallam appeared
on muddled up. Though Malik al-Kurdi, deputy commander of the Free Syrian Army may not
be related to her, there are many questions concerning her Hand in Hand for Syria role she
should answer directly to clarify matters.
4
The image was removed shortly after this comment was made on a Guardian article about
Hand in Hand for Syria www.tinyurl.com/q5krojp . Although he subsequently made his
Facebook page private, screenshots of his page are appended in the appendices.
5
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Figure 3: Mohammad Al-Arefe, the extremist Saudi preacher, speaks at a Hand in
Hand for Syria event (where the rebel emblem can clearly be seen on their logo).
Hand in Hand has for Syria has other extremist links as shown here:
http://tinyurl.com/HIHfounder and http://tinyurl.com/HIHfounder2 where extremist
Saudi Salafist preacher Mohammad bin Abdul Rahman Al Arefe is photographed
speaking at a Hand in Hand for Syria function and, worryingly, is named as its
primary financier. Al-Arefe, who holds the position of Imam of the Mosque of the
King Fahd Academy of the Saudi Navy, is banned from entering Switzerland due to
his extreme sectarian views. Following the airing of video footage depicting young
British ISIS jihadists he helped radicalise urging their compatriots to follow them to
Syria, the Home Office belatedly banned al Arefe from Britain too after it was
revealed he preached at the al-Manar Centre the young jihadists attended6.
As this report in the Independent http://tinyurl.com/HHclaims2 states, Al-Arefe
supports the concept of jihad in Syria “in every possible way” He has in the past
accused Shias of being responsible for kidnapping, cooking and skinning children
before placing their remains outside the family home for their parents to find, and he
recently called for Muslim women to travel to Syria to perform sex jihad. Al-Arefe Is a
disciple of the late Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah bin Baz who, as Grand Mufti of Saudi
Arabia from 1993 until his death in 1999 was an ardent supporter of Osama bin
Ladin.
6
http://tinyurl.com/arefeban1 and http://tinyurl.com/arefeban2
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Figure 4: Mohammad Al-Arefe is honoured at a major jihadist fund-raising event.
The above photo was retrieved from this link http://tinyurl.com/arefex2 which
discusses Al-Nusra’s structure. The photo is from a jihadist fund-raising meeting and
Arefe is portrayed as one of their key fund-raisers.
The similarity between this jihadist “hand in hand” logo and that of Hand in Hand for
Syria is not accidental as they are both based on the original rebels’ emblem,
explained in this BBC report http://tinyurl.com/arefeq where the founding statement
of the Free Syrian Army states they "work hand in hand with the people to achieve
freedom and dignity, topple the regime, protect the revolution and the country's
resources and stand up to the irresponsible military machine which is protecting the
regime." Hand in Hand for Syria, it seems is hand in hand with some very unsavoury
characters.
Figures 5a (Free Syrian Army Flag), 5b (Hand in Hand for Syria logo), 5c. (Flag
of the Syrian Arab Republic). It is apparent that the emblem of Hand in Hand for
Syria (5b), is modelled on the flag of the Free Syrian Army and is therefore aligned to
those Mr Al-Arefe used in Cairo. Not only do both Hand in Hand for Syria and Mr AlArefe, their extremist benefactor, use the flag of the Free Syrian Army as their
prototype but they both used clasped hands alluded to in the founding document of
the Free Syrian Army.
Hand in Hand for Syria People: Ms Iman Mujahed
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Figure 6: Ms Iman Mujahed, who is listed here, but not on the Charity Commission
website, as a trustee of Hand in Hand for Syria. Note the Free Syrian Army emblem
on the Hand in Hand for Syria logo on this poster by the Leeds Friends of Syria
Group.
Because of its opaqueness, it is hard to ascertain who exactly is in charge of the
Hand in Hand for Syria organisation. Although, for example, Faddy Sahloul is used
as the main contact point on the Charity Commission page, which also lists Razan,
his (apparent) wife and Fadi al Dairi as the only other two trustees, some others,
such as accountant Marwan Ghannam who registered their website (but who is not
involved in doing their accounts) also play key roles. Another person who has played
a prominent if at times coy role in this group is marble entrepreneur Iman Mujahed
who we now discuss.
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Hand in Hand for Syria activist, Iman Mujahed: “As a revert I worry constantly
about being with parents, siblings & grandparents that did/ have not become
Muslim.” She also worried about Irish people knowing where she comes from.
This April 2013 video http://tinyurl.com/kilburnx3 features a woman with an Irish
accent in Kilburn who goes by the name of Iman describing a convoy leaving Kilburn
for Syria. She sports the logo of the Free Syrian Army. This article
http://tinyurl.com/xIrishIman2 describes her as “a trustee of Hand in Hand for Syria”
and has her claiming, wrongly, that “Hand in Hand have been established for quite
some time” and that is why she is “very confident that the aid we deliver goes into
(HIHS) - a London-based charity” Although she has a discernibly Dublin accent,
having been perhaps born in Ireland in 1966, the report says “she would prefer her
home county in Ireland not to be published.” In this link http://tinyurl.com/IrishIman1
she is described as the national organiser for Hand in Hand for Syria and she has,
as the above picture shows, been variously described as a trustee of Hand in Hand
for Syria. In this link http://tinyurl.com/Mujahed1 she is “the Head of Fundraising at
the charity”.
In this video report http://tinyurl.com/IrishIman11, which gives her full name as Iman
Mujahed, she admits that Hand in Hand for Syria buy most of their products in
Turkey, thus leading to the question as to how Hand in Hand for Syria get it over the
lines into the government-held areas they also purport to service. In this article
http://tinyurl.com/xIrishIman1, we hear that Ms Iman “accompanied deliveries all
across Syria and was greeted by women with cries of adoration for her gifts...the
gifts that we need only walk to the corner shop here in Britain”. If this is so, the Hand
in Hand for Syria organisation must be as big as their claims make it out to be.
Although her pro-rebel sympathies would preclude her from entering governmentcontrolled Syria, a simple perusal of her passport for relevant visa stamps would
prove the veracity or otherwise of that claim that she travelled “all across Syria”.
In this link http://tinyurl.com/IrishIman2 she claims “Hand in Hand for Syria has
opened a children’s hospital in the Atmeh border town in Idlib province, which hosts
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the largest number of refugees in Syria. There is also a new maternity unit nearby,
established for an obstetrician previously delivering babies on her kitchen floor,
highlighting the fortitude with which many women are dealing with the crisis”. Given
their expertise and her own experience in running marble businesses in England,
one must ask how their accounts seem to be so late and their organisation so
opaque. One must also wonder why they are so heavily entrenched in Atareb, which
is firmly under the control of Syrian extremist rebels.
In this link http://tinyurl.com/IrishIman5 Ms Iman speaks with noted academics in her
capacity as a Hand in Hand for Syria trustee. Here http://tinyurl.com/IrishIman6
Amnesty International host her at the Quaker Centre in Milton Keynes whereas in
this transcript, http://tinyurl.com/IrishIman8 Ms Iman tells us she checks the stock at
Hand in Hand for Syria's warehouses “even down to the antiseptic”, thus confirming
the claims made on the Hand in Hand for Syria website and by their other speakers
that they keep meticulous records “even down to the antiseptic”.
In this video http://tinyurl.com/IrishIman7 Ms Iman is shown packing a truck for
delivery to Syria. Though she states she has no interest in politics, the Hand in Hand
for Syria logo she wears on her shirt implies otherwise. The back of the shirt is
emblazoned with the words “Stand by Syria”, which is the pro-rebel group Ms Iman
was formerly involved with before Hand in Hand for Syria gained traction. Here, Ms
Iman is photographed driving to a clinic in Northern Syria
http://tinyurl.com/IrishIman9; although it is unclear who paid Anna Branthwaite, the
professional photographer for her time and expertise, issues like this could easily be
cleared up by a forensic review of the accounts of Hand in Hand for Syria.
In this Islam Channel video, http://tinyurl.com/IrishIman3 she shares a platform with
Dr Mousab Azawi of the pro rebel Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and she
speaks as a spokesperson for Stand by Syria. At 7.10 into the video, she praises the
work of Danny Abdul Dayem http://tinyurl.com/IrishIman4 who has since been
exposed as a fraudulent propagandist for the Syrian rebels. After 10 minutes into the
interview, Dr Azawi makes a number of heroic logistical claims on behalf of the
SOHR. After 19 minutes, he downplays the Libyan carnage, claims to have links with
groups similar to his own in Libya, and says his own Syrian-focused organisation has
three demands: a buffer zone, a humanitarian corridor and a no-fly zone, three
concessions which, based on the Libyan experience, would topple the Syrian
government and lead to massive loss of life at the sort of scale only Mr Sahloul
would perhaps be happy with. Iman Mujahed not only concurs with Dr Mousab
Azawi’s wish list but also calls for more support for the Syrian rebels “to defend
themselves”. Ms Iman’s phone numbers are given here:
http://www.solaceuk.org/index.php/whats-on
ISLAM TV
As the 10 June 2014 deadline for Hand in Hand for Syria to submit their accounts to
the Charity Commission is long past, their attacks on the Commission, which they
now brand as Islamophobic for asking them to submit their accounts, have become
more virulent.
http://tinyurl.com/rolax9 Here Hand in Hand for Syria features in a discussion on
IslamTV about sending money to Syrian extremists. They attack the Charity
Commission, they claim they are working with very many NGOs and that everything
they do is fully accountable. Yet most major charities will only work with
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organisations with an audited track record, which Hand in Hand for Syria currently do
not have.
Going through the IslamTV video:
10.55 They claim Hand in Hand for Syria’s accounts are open and they help
everyone. Yet their website freely admits they have yet to open their books as they
are only a (very successful) start up.
11.00 they have seven hospitals on the ground. This would take a lot of money and a
lot of organisation to do and, of course, a money trail to prove it.
11.15 "we report properly" They have yet to report at all.
17.10: 17.25 they are going to submit their accounts to the Charity Commission "in
the next few days" (this was in 24 April 2014 but they still have not submitted them in
late-July).
21.40: they make excuses for not having receipts, and they complain Syria is harder
to get records for than an earthquake or flood zone. This is no excuse not to submit
audited accounts and it contradicts their earlier claims that they document everything
“even down to the antiseptic” as Ms Iman so clearly puts it.
http://tinyurl.com/rolax10 This sympathetic Channel 4 clip shows warehouses
brimming full of donations and contains more attacks on the Charity Commission.
Though all they have to do is produce their books and have them audited, at least
one sinister inference is possible. Hand in Hand for Syria are a rebel support front,
who have collected money and material by fraudulent means and they cannot
account for it as they have passed most of it on to either Islamic rebels or their
handlers and enablers in ways analogous to how arms to the “moderate” rebels have
been found to be funnelled to their more extreme allies. A forensic examination of
their audited accounts would now be essential to ascertain where and to whom their
aid has gone.
Fellow-Travellers: The case of Christine Gilmore
Figure 7: Children, supposedly from Yarmouk camp, thank Qaradawi admirer, Leeds
University student and serial Hand in Hand for Syria fund-raiser Christine Gilmore for
her help. The shop in the background has Western lettering and the road looks
interestingly clean for a teeming refugee camp, whose residents have suffered so
much. One should, of course ask how they got the (tokenistic?) aid to Yarmouk as it
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would almost certainly involve having to go through government lines and, as Mr alDairi previously explained, the penalty for providing such tokenistic aid is death.
There are a large number of smaller and often overlapping organisations which work
hand in hand with Hand in Hand for Syria under the British Syrian Centre umbrella7.
One such group is the hard-line Leeds University based Leeds Friends of Syria
whose Leeds University web entry tells us their oxymoronic “mission” includes a
“campaign against sectarianism in pursuit of a pluralistic society in Syria” and “To
work with other organisations in the UK and international organisations including
those based in Syria to try to bring about an immediate end to the violence, the
implementation of political reform and the fall of the Assad regime”8.
Their main organiser is Christine Gilmore, a mature student, who got romantically
tied to Ziad Arabi-Katbi, a much older Syria rebel, when she visited Damascus in
2010 and who now campaigns for her him to be admitted to the relative safety of
Britain but for “Assad’s Syria” to be put to the sword. Although Ms Gilmore is in
Leeds University to research “Nubian Studies” for a PhD, most of her writings are
paeans to arch-extremist, homophobic Hitler admirer and Muslim Brotherhood High
Priest Yusuf al-Qaradawi as some kind of protector of minorities and enlightened
enhancer of society rather than the intolerant promoter of sectarian slaughter that he
is. As they support the overthrow of the Syrian government, which can only happen
by armed foreign intervention, as they have hosted Ms Iman Mujahed, as they collect
exclusively for Hand in Hand for Syria9 and as their leading light is a fervent admirer
of arch-bigot Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Leeds Friends of Syria should themselves be
subject to scrutiny.
Suspect Claims
Hand in Hand for Syria’s website claims here
http://www.handinhandforsyria.org.uk/about-us/ : “We are extremely fast and costefficient. We owe it to our donors and to Syrians to make donations stretch as far as
possible. Most of our aid is purchased in Turkey and in Syria, where £1 buys a lot
more. And this way, we don’t have the delay or expense of shipping from the UK”.
Their accounts, despite promises to the contrary, are long overdue. This would
indicate that they are not as efficient as they claim. They have also not indicated
where precisely they buy their materials: though groups like the Turkish Red
Crescent would, for example, be the obvious place to locate such material in Turkey
which is a major hub for jihadists fighting in Syria, such groups would insist on paper
trails and Hand in Hand for Syria have so far failed to produce any paper trail.
Their website claims: “We believe in sustainable aid. No one wants to live on handouts, and everyone wants to have dignity. That’s why we fund community
empowerment projects in Syria (providing livelihoods for many people) and why we
source some of our aid from those projects”. Because there is no financial or other
evidence they are supplying such expensive services, their critics could argue that
they are making extravagant claims for publicity and fund-raising reasons only. Hand
7
See http://britishsyriancentre.com/node/225 for more of these groups.
8
http://www.leedsuniversityunion.org.uk/groups/FriendsofSyria
9
http://www.justgiving.com/teams/friendsofsyria
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in Hand for Syria could silence their critics by submitting their accounts for a full,
forensic examination by independent auditors.
The same page of their website claims: “We’re as concerned as you are about aid
getting through. We’ve read the stories about bogus charities and diverted aid, and
we want to reassure you that we can guarantee that your donations will be used to
help those in the greatest humanitarian need. Not only are we regulated by the
Charity Commission but we also accompany all aid and cash donations to their
eventual destinations (we don’t delegate their delivery), and we keep meticulous
records. And we never take people we don’t know into Syria”.
Leaving aside the fact they have still to submit any accounts to the Charity
Commission, they claim to accompany all aid to its final destination and to keep
meticulous records “even done to the antiseptic” as Ms Iman previously explained. If
so, there is no reason for their accounts to be so late. They have also provided no
evidence of the governance safeguards they purport to have in place. Hand in Hand
for Syria could clarify these matters by showing us the minutes of the meetings of
when and why Ms Iman, Dr Mahmoud al Akraa and other controversial characters
were appointed as trustees.
They claim http://tinyurl.com/HandC2 : (paraphrasing the poor translation) to operate
five different hospitals, support over 140 makeshift hospitals, operate a fleet of 32
ambulances and a permanent blood bank and to train large numbers of medical
workers in the treatment of conflict injuries. Yet they have no paper trail. Their FAQs
http://tinyurl.com/faqsW1 say, amazingly in the context of transparency and audited
accounts, they will not disclose the addresses of their hospitals and they will accept
no volunteers to work with them inside or outside Syria. The main inference to be
drawn from all this is, their string of media coups notwithstanding, they are much too
opaque an organisation to be allowed operate as a charity. Although this
opaqueness is a critical concern, their FAQs lead to a host more questions such as
why they still collect goods but do not run convoys.
Hand in Hand for Syria’s website claims: “We don’t subtract anything from your
donation to cover admin costs. If you donate £1 to Hand in Hand for Syria, £1 goes
into Syria. All of our operational costs in the UK are covered by what we recoup on
Gift Aid, and our costs in Turkey and Syria are covered by our partnerships with
major aid agencies”.
If they were so cost-effective, they would be the most efficient Western charity
organisation there is. This can be seen by examining this site
www.charitynavigator.org/ which gives relevant information for all of the USA’s major
charities, all of which are infinitely more transparent than Hand in Hand for Syria and
none of which meet its exacting but unproven efficiency standards.
They have produced no evidence of any significant partnerships with major aid
organisations working in Syria and, if they had any such partnerships, those partners
would ensure they had the paperwork to show they did. As they are currently very
late in submitting their accounts to the Charity Commission
http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/find-charities/ this cannot presently be fully
verified. Despite collecting huge amounts of money from the British public and
claiming to have huge support networks in Syria, they have, as yet, verified none of
that.
This link http://tinyurl.com/rolax5 verifies they still have money for (presumably) very
expensive ad campaigns on the London underground tube service. How does this sit
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with their claims that all monies donated go to Syria and not on administration?
Although all of the major charities could be criticised for media spending, they are all
almost infinitely less opaque and more transparent than Hand in Hand for Syria,
which claims to be more cost efficient than any of them.
This page http://tinyurl.com/handhosp4 says they source ambulances
decommissioned by the NHS, repair them and drive them, packed with aid and two
way radios to the front lines of Syria. Clearly a massive undertaking and all done, it
seems, on less than a shoe string and with no full-time staff to co-ordinate. They
should have receipts for all of this. Certainly, people like their webmaster (links here:
http://tinyurl.com/handwebm1 http://tinyurl.com/handwebm2
http://tinyurl.com/handwebm3) should have receipts for the work she has done for
them and such receipts should help indicate how financially efficient this organisation
actually is.
This page http://tinyurl.com/handhosp5 has them claiming: “Working with our
partner INGOs, we begin by finding some of the world’s experts in war surgery from
the UK and Europe. We then invite them to Turkey, where they meet up with the
Syrian doctors, nurses and paramedics we’ve managed to bring out of the country.
These experts, together with our own medical lead, spend 3 days transferring vital
skills, including the latest techniques in emergency trauma care and resuscitation, as
well as how to handle the effects of chemical and biological warfare. We translate all
training materials into Arabic, ready for the participants. On their return to Syria,
these doctors can perform more effectively — but most importantly, they can also
train their colleagues”.
Again, another massive and massively-expensive undertaking, all done with no
permanent staff and no partners, except the UN’s OCHA (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) with which they claim “to plan the distribution of
aid”. Nor, it seems, are Hand in Hand for Syria averse to spending big sums on what
almost amounts to frivolities. This link http://tinyurl.com/rolax4 claims that they buy
satellite phones cost at a cost of US3000$ each, not including the cost of using
them. They have money to spend on expensive phones and, as we have seen, on
expensive webmasters but not on accountants. Here they claim their convoys have
now been suspended so again more opaqueness and more confusion as to whether
they are still running them or not.
Although Hand in Hand for Syria is, superficially at least, secular, Islamic Relief, to
take but one pertinent example, has overheads of £7.4 million and most other similar
organisations claim efficiency ratios of no more than 90%10. International Medical
Corps, which operates all over Syria and which, we later discuss, is infinitely more
transparent and accountable than Hand in Hand for Syria, who should explain why
this is the case.
Website’s Specific Claims
http://www.5pillarz.com/2013/09/17/islamic-or-capitalist-charities/ Christine Gilmore of
Leeds Friends of Syria, a Hand in Hand for Syria affiliate, had problems with this article, in
particular these lines: Islamic Relief’s strapline proudly states, “Dedicated to alleviating the
suffering of the world’s poorest people” whilst Help for Syria disgracefully proclaims, “Help
Syrians in need. No politics, just aid”.
10
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Although they make a number of unsubstantiated claims that they are educating
Syria’s children, their core claims are that they supply 100 Syrian hospitals, have
opened 6 new hospitals and have brought 32 ambulances to Syria.
The video on this page (http://tinyurl.com/handhosp1), also available on YouTube
here http://tinyurl.com/handhosp2 gives a guide to one of the very expensive and
modern hospitals they claim to have opened. This hospital, contrary to their claims,
cannot be in the centre of Damascus as claimed because, as shown on the video,
the charity’s logo includes the distinctive three-star emblem of the Free Syrian Army.
Though they later removed the rebels’ flag from their logo to mask their political
affiliations, put bluntly, no-one with those evident rebel sympathies would have been
allowed to open or operate such a hospital in government-held Damascus. That
being so, their claims to operate on both sides of the line have to be false.
In this page (http://tinyurl.com/handhosp3) Hand in Hand for Syria purport to be
helping in Lebanon but they now say all their aid goes into Syria itself. Though the
Free Syrian Army emblem is prominently displayed on the t-shirts and other apparel
of the helpers, the aid given here looks very modest in comparison to the hospitals,
ambulances and kidney dialysis machines claimed elsewhere. That being so, this
may be another fraudulent claim11.
This page http://tinyurl.com/handhosp6 tries to entice NGOs and charities to work
with Hand in Hand for Syria, claiming, with no proof, that it has access and networks
all over (rebel-held) Syria and all with no paid administrative staff: “Our partners
provide funding for specific programmes such as hospital supplies (medicines,
consumables and equipment), tents to provide shelter, and WASH programmes
(water, sanitation & hygiene). They also help to cover our costs for logistical support.
Most of them however have to work anonymously for security reasons”.
Leaving aside the obvious and important fact that a registered charity should not be
cloaked in so many layers of opaqueness, one wonders how this anonymity will
affect their accounts if and when they submit them. Here we have an organisation
making huge logistical claims but presenting no evidence to back them up. One has
to, for example, wonder whether their anonymous collaborators will present receipts
Another such umbrella group they have links with is the “British Syrian Centre” which is
run by Dr Saladin Sawan, a Syrian native and rebel supporter who has appeared on BBC
several times His website http://www.britishsyriancentre.com/organizers contains the logo
of the Free Syrian Army and advertises groups like this http://tinyurl.com/napalmx2 human
rights organisation, which falsely claims to be based in Damascus.
http://tinyurl.com/napalmx3 “Damascus Center for Human Rights studies (DCHRS) is an
independent, non-governmental organization, established in 2005, located in the Syrian
capital of Damascus”. Yet none of their staff or contact points are in Damascus. As the
“British Syrian Centre” site shows, there seems to be a large network of such opaque groups,
one of which is Hand in Hand for Syria. Here http://tinyurl.com/handchopx2 the British
Syrian Centre advertise a function Hand in Hand for Syria are running with other opaque
groups.
11
This recent BBC story http://tinyurl.com/convoyx1 about a 4 July 2014 programme
highlighting British convoys going to the rebels cites fears the authorities have about these
convoys helping the rebels. This 10 July 2014 report http://tinyurl.com/convoyx2 says that
Kasim Jameel, the leader of that convoy, has been charged with child porn and sex related
offences.
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and invoices and thereby shed their anonymity. Hand in Hand for Syria should
present the minutes of their meetings so interested scholars, along with the relevant
authorities, can see how they addressed this problem on an ongoing basis.
Fund-raising
http://tinyurl.com/handhosp7 In this video, Luke McManus, their (one-time?) director
of medical projects, bemoans the high costs of their operations and appeals for
money. Outside of raising money for them here http://tinyurl.com/handhosp8 he has
no relevant internet foot print. Many local and national English papers have also
commented on their formidable fund-raising successes with even the Anglican
Church12 helping http://tinyurl.com/babies3x and a number of Catholic, Anglican and
other schools donating to them http://tinyurl.com/rolax8
Fundraising also features prominently here http://tinyurl.com/atareb4 and on Hand in
Hand for Syria’s Facebook page http://tinyurl.com/handhosp9 as does its very
considerable media coups. This page cites over $500,000 in one donation but again
with no clear evidence of where it went. This link http://tinyurl.com/rolax3 mentioned
another £100,000 raised. Here http://tinyurl.com/rolax6 a figure of $1.5 million is
mentioned. This link http://tinyurl.com/HHand9 mentions a further £76,647.67 being
raised. It also gives a large number of phone numbers and contact
addresses/storage points, as does this one http://tinyurl.com/homex2 . The
Nottingham storage address at 20 Lenton Lane Nottingham NG7 2NR is a selfservice one. The drop-off point at 254 Kilburn High Road London NW6 2BX seems,
according to Google but not by a current physical check, to double as Qaran
International Money Transfer which, as this link http://tinyurl.com/HHandX1
suggests, has been in trouble with the financial authorities before. It is now called
Marble House and seems to be a private house with a possible connection to Ms
Iman, the Hand in Hand for Syria trustee, fund raiser tsar and marble entrepreneur13,
who audits Hand in Hand for Syria’s supplies “even down to the antiseptic”.
http://tinyurl.com/HandHx6 says they send the colossal sum of up to £200,000 a
month of medical aid14. By way of comparison, the accounts of Syria Relief (listed
here http://tinyurl.com/HandHx4 with Hand in Hand for Syria and other organisations
under the British Syrian Centre and the FSA logo umbrellas) gives annual revenue
figures of £2.4 million. Hand in Hand for Syria should clarify precisely how much
Atareb hospital and similar enterprises costs to run and how much the capital
equipment they supply them with costs15. Until their audited accounts can be
The wife of the bishop of Stepney collected £10,000 for them according to this report
http://www.london.anglican.org/articles/special-event-highlighting-syria-crisis/
12
In these links http://venice-marbles-ltd.london.amfibi.com/uk/c/610376-venice-marblesltd http://bizzy.co.uk/uk/03756037/venice-marbles we learn that Venice Marbles Ltd was
incorporated in England & Wales on 21 April 1999 and is actively trading in other business
support service activities. Venice Marbles Ltd had a single current director, Yousef Mujahed
who may be now estranged from his Irish-born wife, Iman.
13
“First and foremost, there’s the medicine. We provide vital medical supplies for each of the
84 field hospitals and makeshift clinics we support – and this is no simple feat. Put in
perspective, our latest shipment is made up of £200,000 of medical aid”
14
15
We are assuming it has not been pilfered from the Syrian medical authorities.
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forensically examined to see if they have dealt properly with those vast sums, grave
doubts about them, justifiable or not, have to remain.
The Controversial Atareb Hospital
One of Hand in Hand for Syria’s major fund-raising endeavours has been for Atareb
Hospital http://tinyurl.com/atareb1 which they belatedly admitted was at the centre of
the widely circulated but now largely discredited Panorama programme, Saving
Syria’s Children, very detailed criticisms of which may be found here:
http://tinyurl.com/atareb2 and, to a lesser extent here http://tinyurl.com/atareb5 and
here http://tinyurl.com/syriaq2 by former British Ambassador, Mr Craig Murray.
Indeed, as this report http://tinyurl.com/atareb7 says: “Footage of the horrific incident
in northern Syria was broadcast by the BBC last night just before MPs voted down a
motion designed to pave the way for military intervention against the Assad
regime16.”
Given its timing, their critics cogently argue that this event was staged to bolster
public support for intervention in Syria after the anticipated Commons “yes” vote. As
a practising doctor informally consulted about this says about the medical part of the
programme: “I have watched the Panorama BBC documentary. Makes for interesting
viewing but I think the scene of the school children coming in with the burns was an
act.
I worked on trauma and orthopaedics last year for four months, so I have worked
with burns victims first hand. These victims displayed what appeared to be "less
painful" burns. They were able to sit down, be touched by others even talk. This is
not how a severe burn victim would present. Most victims:
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would be screaming the place down in agony. Even after treatment and with
all sorts of pain drugs they still hurt and still scream.
Many burns victims cannot even focus enough to follow instructions such as
sit down and wait because of pain. This young boy, I found very odd (I don't
think it is cultural thing as pain is pain and it can drive a person mad).
would have difficulties with their airways, almost immediately, hence in the UK
many are intubated and treated in ITU. This shows them able to speak and
breathing very well no obvious signs of respiratory distress like coughing,
shallow breathing etc. In such an attack the poisons are inhaled.
They say they douse them in water (wouldn't the high spray of the hose cause
more problems to burnt skin).
when they came to the hospital they have evidence of this white powder on
their skin but not evident burn blisters which fill with fluid within minutes. Some
are shown with skin hanging off but the flesh beneath is not that convincing it
actually looks like more skin.
The walk is very odd. why??
The other concern in burns is their fluid status as they will be losing large
amounts of fluid through their burns. The cannula is essential to resuscitate
them. I’m not sure what A and E that doctor worked in but I have not worked
in A and E this year and I have placed I think almost 6 cannulas in peoples
feet. Any access is essential in burns, a standard training skill!
As the Westminster vote closed at 10pm and as the report was on BBC News at 10pm, this
is therefore not fully correct. .Mr Murray returned to this topic here
http://tinyurl.com/murrayd1 and http://tinyurl.com/murrayd2
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
If the poison was dropped from above (a plane) their hair would have been
lost and patches would be evident. Many still had a full heads”.
Perhaps it is a case of doctors differing and patients dying. In this link
http://tinyurl.com/thermalx1 Dr Saleyha Ahsan claims it was a “thermal bomb” and
that it exploded at the “nearby school, the Iqraa Institute” and its “headmaster,
Mohammed Abu Omar” is quoted as saying there were three immediate fatalities
and a further eight later on17. The same article claims Hand in Hand for Syria only
operate two hospitals in Syria and, though Mr Faddy Sahloul, Hand in Hand for
Syria’s director, is quoted as saying: ‘We have a very small secret back-up generator
that we run to get when the electricity goes off to keep the incubators working’, as he
does not explain why they have to keep the generator hidden, this can only be seen
as further entrenching Hand in Hand for Syria’s needless opaqueness.
Though it has to be said journalist Ian Pannell attempts to refute some of the
allegations made against this programme here http://tinyurl.com/atareb2 and here
http://tinyurl.com/complaintBBC1 a growing consensus, looking at when it was aired
and the very strange sequence of events documented in it and discussed here
http://tinyurl.com/atareb2 is that this was a fraudulent programme concocted to
forward a fraudulent objective, a fraudulent charity and a fraudulent war18.
In passing, it should be noted that Dr Hallam has suggested that napalm was used
and links like this http://tinyurl.com/this-time-white-phosphorous have “activists”
suggesting that white phosphorous was used19. If Dr Hallam cannot tell the
difference between symptoms of nerve gas attacks from other, burns-related attacks,
her medical competence and that of her collaborators has to be called into question
in a most serious way.
Although the afore-mentioned Panorama programme, along with Ian Pannell, its
previously-compromised reporter http://tinyurl.com/atareb7 and
http://tinyurl.com/atareb8 and http://tinyurl.com/atareb9, is now largely discredited,
Hand in Hand for Syria are still energetically collecting for this most dubious of
Dr Ahsan makes the same point in this article http://tinyurl.com/ahsanx1 where she
claims the solution to Britain’s Syrian-related problem of young and vulnerable Britons being
indoctrinated by jihadist extremists is not to ask Muslim women to work with the police but
to send more aid to the opaque Hand in Hand for Syria organisation. Dr Ahsan’s “innocent
abroad” approach in the Saving Syria’s Children has been questioned as she is a former
officer in the British Army and a seasoned media performer.
17
The full Panorama documentary was aired on 30 September. The BBC’s first news item was
aired AFTER the Commons vote closed on 29 August 2013.
18
Dr Hallam says “I need a pause because it’s just absolute chaos and carnage here, we’ve
had a massive influx of what look like serious burns, seems like it must be some sort of
chemical weapon, I’m not really sure, maybe napalm, something similar to that” Ian Pannell
says “Napalm or thermite” was used in this 29 August 2013 piece:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-23892594. There are references to white phosphorous in
these two articles but again not from the doctors: http://tinyurl.com/HandC3 and
http://tinyurl.com/HandC4 This reference claims napalm was used:
http://tinyurl.com/napalmx1 and this link http://tinyurl.com/napalmx6 claims white
phosphorous was used; though it has many supposedly corroborating videos, it does not
mention a school at all.
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hospitals even though, as these BBC reports http://tinyurl.com/atareb3 and
http://tinyurl.com/rolaw2 makes plain, its allies now question the amount of logistical
medical help it is giving to ISIS and other frontline rebel fighters. As the
http://tinyurl.com/atareb3 report says: “Hand-in-Hand for Syria's former partner
decided not to seek further funding for the hospital because of security fears,
including for its own staff. But the BBC understands it also had concerns about the
proportion of fighters being treated at the hospital….”
This should not be such a surprise. The Times of 15 February 2013 reported20 on a
Hand in Hand for Syria run hospital in the rebel stronghold of Ma’arat al-Nu’aman
where “Last month they treated more than 2,600 patients — roughly half of them
fighters and the rest civilians”. If at least half of the patients are Syrian rebel fighters,
then the Ma’arat al-Nu’aman hospital can only be regarded as a Syrian rebel field
hospital which will treat rebel non-combatants only if the rebellion’s immediate
priorities allow it. As it is in Hand in Hand for Syria’s Ma’arat al-Nu’aman hospital, so
also should it be in Hand in Hand for Syria’s Atareb hospital: given the proximity of
the war and the danger to life and limb the Syrian rebels who control the area run,
we must suppose, unless contrary evidence is presented, that it is the Syrian rebel
fighters and their families rather than the local non-combatants who will be prioritised
and that, as a consequence, Atareb Hospital can only be regarded as a field hospital
for the Syrian rebels.
“The Men with Guns”
This link http://tinyurl.com/HIHKurd1 tells us “In al-Dana in Idlib, Mahmoud Hussein,
an activist from the NGO Hand in Hand for Syria who conducted research on this
subject (sex jihad), told Al-Monitor that a large proportion of these marriages end in
divorce after two months, at which time the foreign fighters marry another woman.
Sexual relations under the appropriately sanctioned institution of marriage is their
main concern”.
Mr Hussein, the Hand in Hand for Syria activist, then tells us: “All the 'immigrants'
who come to the medical center in the countryside of Latakia insist that the female
doctors marry them. These doctors say they are engaged, and the fighters insist on
being introduced to other Syrian girls”.
Mr Hussein next recounts a wealthy Libyan who was kidnapped by jihadists seeking
assistance in marriage. “He told us that he came to Syria with the intention to help
out Syrian families by donating money. But upon his arrival, ISIS captured him and
kept him hostage until he paid a sum of 5,000 euros [$6,928] to help a Libyan jihadist
fighter get married. When he asked the jihadist about his wife residing in Libya, the
latter answered, 'This is her punishment because she refused to come with me to
wage jihad in Syria.'”
Mr Hussein, then, adopts a very blasé attitude to the victims of sex jihad and it
appears that the Hand in Hand for Syria hospital he works in are more than happy to
treat injured jihadists as long as they confine their rapes to those not employed by
the hospital Hand in Hand for Syria run. Hand in Hand for Syria should explain
whether or not this is their general policy regarding the victims of sex jihad.
The account can be read on this Facebook posting
https://www.facebook.com/handinhandsforsyria/posts/487106314658409
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Paul McMaster, who co-signed the afore-mentioned Lancet letter with Dr Rola of
Hand in Hand for Syria is featured in this self-written article
http://tinyurl.com/medicsign3 where he recounts his experiences working in an illegal
hospital in rebel-controlled Syria and treating “fighters – from both sides as MSF is,
of course, impartial – with serious gunshot wounds”. Much later in the piece, he tells
us that “Sometimes, after the casualties, the men with guns would arrive. At MSF we
never allow weapons into the treatment area – no matter which side they are on. We
did have prisoners from the government forces brought in for treatment and I went to
see one after we had treated him. He was being well looked after”.
So, far from being a neutral drop-in centre, Mr McMaster was, in effect, helping to
operate a rebel field hospital and salving his conscience by treating the odd prisoner
“the men with guns” brought in.
Hand for Syria should clarify who “the men with guns” allow into Atareb Hospital, all
the more so as the co-founder of the medical charity Doctors Without Borders,
Jacques Beres, had a similar experience with ”the men with guns” when he treated
Syrian rebels in the besieged city of Aleppo where he claims here
http://tinyurl.com/handchopw1 that 60 per cent of his patients were rebels– and
about half of those were foreigners hell-bent on establishing a Sharia dictatorship
along the lines some of the afore-mentioned benefactors and fellow-travellers of
Hand in Hand for Syria would approve of.
Figure 8: Hand in Hand for Syria’s appeal for their flagship Atareb Hospital, details
of which are as opaque as all their other operations.
The moral and ethical issues “the men with guns” give rise to notwithstanding Hand
in Hand for Syria, as the above photo on their Facebook page on 16 June 2014 and
other pictures included in appendix 2 show, is currently collecting for the
controversial Atareb Hospital. They are claiming that this hospital which is only a few
miles from the Aleppo front line has 113 births a month, has an A&E dept. that treats
almost 100 patients a day, performs 9 life-saving operations a day, has a kidney
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dialysis unit and sees 71 out patents each and every day of the year. And all of this
with only 98 paid staff. They claim to treat 68,704 patients a year, or 188 a day each
and every day of the year. Not only that but they claim to offer all kinds of treatment
from neo-natal units to expensive kidney dialysis units.
All that expertise contradicts this 29 August 2013 BBC News item
http://tinyurl.com/BBCXSyria1 where the same Ian Pannell described Atareb (as it is
now known to be) as “a basic hospital funded by handouts”. The inaccuracy of this
description is, however, contradicted by the list of facilities and the funding
arrangements discussed above. http://tinyurl.com/greathosp1 encapsulates their
latest Twitter efforts to raise more funds for this “state of the art” hospital.
That Atareb’s very substantial funding was in place prior to the “incendiary bomb
attack” of August 26 2013 which featured in Panorama 'Saving Syria's Children' is
clear from Hand in Hand for Syria’s website, which in this June 2014 article
http://tinyurl.com/XSyria2 states “after one year our agreement with our INGO
partner has come to an end”. Either the hospital is basic, as they claimed, or
advanced, as they claim; it cannot be both. The fact that they are so opaque does
not help clarify things at all. The trustees of Hand in Hand for Syria should name “our
INGO partners” and clarify all other related matters in writing once they publish their
audited accounts.
Dr Rola Hallam, who 'stars' in ‘Saving Syria’s Children’ writes here
http://tinyurl.com/XSyria3 about “One of the country's most sophisticated remaining
hospitals”: “The hospital costs between $60,000 and $70,000 a month to operate,
depending on our field costs”. If all $70,000 was spent on salaries to the 98 locals
they employ, this would make an average monthly salary of $714 each, assuming
British volunteers paid for their own keep and all medicines and running costs were
free which they clearly are not. The ratios do not stack up here. If and when they do
submit their accounts, we will have to see if the revenues and costs for all activities
balance. Conservatively extrapolating from that figure, we would be having to look at
figures of at least $5 million a year just for that one hospital alone.
Mr al-Dairi claims here http://tinyurl.com/Fadix1 that their employees “are paid
around £70-80 a month” or £7,500 or so a month in wages for all the employees of
the flagship Atareb hospital. This figure, however, conflicts with Dr Rola’s $70,000 a
month estimation, especially if we take British and Irish ratios, which say wages and
salaries are hospitals’ major expenditures as the norm. If, in fact, Mr al-Dairi’s figures
are the more accurate, then Hand in Hand for Syria’s massive revenues should be
more than sufficient to meet their needs. The trustees of Hand in Hand for Syria
should clarify by making their audited accounts and detailed notes thereto open for
inspection.
In this Guardian article, http://tinyurl.com/napalmx7 Hand in Hand for Syria’s Chief of
Logistics Fadi al-Dairi, who is also one of its listed trustees, said the closure of their
flagship Atareb hospital was “heartbreaking”. “He said the charity has enough money
from donors to keep the hospital running, but cannot get it into the country, because
it needs a partner to channel the funding, and established charities are pulling out of
Syria”.
But Hand in Hand’ for Syria’s website claims they handle all their own logistics so
why close for want of a partner to do what they claim to do themselves? To repeat
their website claims http://tinyurl.com/HandC5 : “We’re as concerned as you are
about aid getting through. We’ve read the stories about bogus charities and diverted
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aid, and we want to reassure you that we can guarantee that your donations will be
used to help those in the greatest humanitarian need. Not only are we regulated by
the Charity Commission but we also accompany all aid and cash donations to their
eventual destinations (we don’t delegate their delivery), and we keep meticulous
records”. Ms Iman Mujahed has, let us again recall, told us that they track their
supplies “even down to the antiseptic.”
If Hand in Hand for Syria now find they cannot work in Syria because they lack
partners, then who were they working with previously when they claimed to provide
aid to 90% of Syria via more than 100 hospitals and all through their own logistical
network? As previous links showed, they claimed to be delivering all the aid
themselves, even going so far as to buy expensive satellite phones so they could
track their shipments over the Turkish border to the nearby rebel stronghold of
Atareb. Because Hand in Hand for Syria are very opaque, these issues cannot be
fully settled until a full, proper and independent forensic investigation is done of their
financial accounts which, to repeat, are long overdue.
In brief, Hand in Hand for Syria have their flagship hospital in a front line zone in an
area not only controlled by Islamic extremists but that has been the scene of recent
heavy ground and aerial fighting. They have amassed huge sums of money
supposedly to fund this hospital but, outside of their own unverified claims, they are
opaque as regards the entire operation surrounding this, their flagship hospital,
around which many doubts have been raised and unanswered questions asked.
Extra Points Concerning Atareb Needing Clarification
Hand in Hand for Syria should explain why they positioned their state of the art
hospital in Atareb, which is very firmly in rebel hand with the Turkish border being a
mere 7km away and the nearest government positons in Aleppo and Idlib being 15
km away by map but much further by road; the villages where the bombed schools
are supposed to be are about 4 km from Atareb and again are in areas very firmly
under the command of the rebels. As it would be unthinkable that a government
supporter or a member of a religious minority, who would almost certainly be
summarily executed as a traitor and apostate, would reveal themselves by availing of
their services, Hand in Hand for Syria’s claim that they treat people of all religious
and political persuasions in Atareb is ludicrous.
Not only is Atareb very firmly in the hands of the Syrian rebels but because it has
been at the centre of very heavy fighting, it would therefore be absolutely the wrong
place to site a hospital unless that hospital, like the one Paul McMaster worked in,
was geared to serving the medical needs of front-line Syrian rebels. This link
http://tinyurl.com/atarebx3 shows Atareb is a strategic cross roads and has
witnessed very heaving fighting. This link http://tinyurl.com/atarebx2 shows the
extremist Isis Islamic group controlling Atareb. This link
http://newsmotion.org/fr/tags/46th-regiment has videos of the heavy weaponry the
rebels looted from the armoury of the 46th regiment who were stationed in Atareb.
These links http://tinyurl.com/atarebx1 and http://tinyurl.com/atarebd2 show Atareb
littered with destroyed tanks and other equipment. Given its volatile position, this is
not the place to site a state of the art hospital. Hand in Hand for Syria should explain
why they chose that site for their hospital and who donated, rented or sold to them
the buildings they use.
In this link http://tinyurl.com/babies1x Hand in Hand for Syria claim the controversial
Atareb hospital is highly proficient at delivering premature babies. They are, in other
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words, claiming to have a state of the art hospital only miles from the front line and
one that is under continued aerial and artillery attack. In these links
http://tinyurl.com/HandHx3 http://tinyurl.com/HandHx2 Hand in Hand for Syria claims
to have set up a 68 bed children’s hospital but they do not show any verifying
pictures. In this link, http://tinyurl.com/HandHx Hand in Hand for Syria claims they set
up both a children’s hospital and a Syrian office although it is unclear how they
managed to fund such a grand enterprise. In this link http://tinyurl.com/babies2x one
of their leaders is filmed in a bedroom purporting to be a children’s hospital. This
would seem to be the same unit that is featured here http://tinyurl.com/xsyria4 just
after 29 minutes in Saving Syria’s Children. Although Panorama did not identify this
unit as being located at Atareb, if it was Atareb, it would further undermine Ian
Pannell’s “basic hospital funded by handouts” claim.
Atareb, “an area in nice need”: In this link http://tinyurl.com/XSyria5 Faddy
Sahloul, co-founder and chairman of Hand in Hand for Syria, states: “We set up
Atareb medical institution early in 2013 in a neighborhood we recognized in nice
need" So the hospital is less than two years old. It is in a heavily fought over area, it
has state of the art equipment and it also got bombed in a high profile aerial attack.
Because all of that sounds improbable, Hand in Hand for Syria should clarify
matters.
http://tinyurl.com/napalmx5 Interestingly, at least two of these well-scrubbed Hand in
Hand for Syria supporters are featured in the 26 August 2013 Hand in Hand
Facebook post http://tinyurl.com/XSyria6 showing Atareb staff on training in Turkey.
Critics suggest that regular staff were evacuated on this date so the Hand in Hand
for Syria actors could come and perform their piece for Panorama. Hand in Hand for
Syria should again clarify matters both for their own stakeholders and the wider
community.
International Hospital Comparisons
If we take Southampton General hospital as a very rough comparison, the quickest
glance over their annual accounts http://tinyurl.com/sotonx1 will show much better
governance and professionally-audited figures which allow us to calculate financial
ratios. Soton’s new and expensive trauma centre, for example, treats 1000 patients a
year, a much lower number than Hand in Hand for Syria’s flagship hospital does in a
much more volatile combat zone.
In Australia, this link http://tinyurl.com/sotonx2 tells us, a kidney dialysis unit costs a
minimum of $AUD 40,000 per patient. Yet Hand in Hand for Syria can keep an entire
unit operating on Syria’s front lines for no discernible reason, given that Turkey is
only a few kilometres away on the one side and the Syrian authorities have good
facilities on the other.
This link http://tinyurl.com/sotonx3 tells us that the world-renowned Portland
Hospital, England’s only fully dedicated maternity hospital, handles 2000 births a
year. Yet Hand in Hand for Syria can treat a large number of pregnant women with a
fraction of the money Portland, which specialises in the area, has available to it.
This link http://tinyurl.com/sotonx4 tells us that Dublin’s world-famous National
Maternity Hospital has 820 employees and this link http://tinyurl.com/sotonx5 tells us
it delivers between 30 and 35 babies a day or up to 12,775 a year, an average of
15.57 babies a day per employee. Its most recent annual report, given here
http://tinyurl.com/sotonx6 claims that it costs €63.3 million to run, with over two-thirds
of that coming directly from (Irish) government sources. Although over €50 million of
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this goes to pay and pensions, it must be noted that, as this hospital has been in
existence since 1894, it would not have the significant start-up costs and attendant
credibility issues the hospitals Hand in Hand for Syria run have. It is, like its English
and Australian counterparts and unlike Hand in Hand for Syria, fully transparent both
in terms of fund-raising and in its medical activities. The fund-raising capabilities of
these well-established hospitals seem to fade in comparison with those of Hand in
Hand for Syria’s very opaque Atareb Hospital.
International Medical Corps
Figure 9: International Medical Corps
As their website http://tinyurl.com/handusa5 shows, International Medical Corps
have not only been operating openly in Syria in 2007 “with a range of critical health
services, including maternal and child health, mental health, psychosocial support,
and gender-based violence prevention and response” but “Due to the ongoing
conflict in Syria, International Medical Corps has expanded our services to address
the critical needs of affected Syrians both inside Damascus and in bordering
countries where refugees are seeking shelter and humanitarian resources. We
operate mobile medical services and support health care facilities in and around
Damascus, providing primary health care, mental health care and psychosocial
support, and distributing critical supplies. In addition, International Medical Corps has
scaled up our Syria refugee responses services in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and
Iraq”.
The International Medical Corps’ website also contains their audited reports and it
tells us that “The American Institute of Philanthropy rated us an "A", for unsurpassed
efficiency and fiscal responsibility. International Medical Corps is also a member of
the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance and has met its Standards for
Charity Accountability”.
Its penchant for fund-raising and self-serving publicity apart, Hand in Hand for Syria
cannot be compared in terms of professionalism, probity, efficiency or transparency
to more established and more respectable groups like the International Medical
Corps. Hand in Hand for Syria’s opaqueness and its almost umbilical associations
with “the men with guns” puts it and all associated with it under a moral and ethical
cloud and none more so than those associated with Panorama’s Saving Syria’s
Children programme.
Saving Syria’s Children
Panorama’s Saving Syria’s Children programme, though thoroughly discredited in
more informed quarters, does command some serious attention because of the
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damage it has caused the Syrian peace process. The British Embassy in
Washington even went so far as to host a special filming of the event on December
11, 2013 with Frederic C. Hof, Hillary Clinton’s former adviser on Syria and wellknown Pentagon hawk, delivering some choice opening remarks at the event, which
is reported on here http://tinyurl.com/handusa1 by The Atlantic Council, a very
influential Washington think tank.
Based on Hand in Hand for Syria’s work, Mr Hof claims that Syria faces a
government-fuelled genocide no matter whether the “murderous intent of Mr. Assad
and those who kill on his behalf has genocidal motives or not.” Mr Hof then bemoans
the fact that the USA did not conduct “a punitive, humanitarian military
intervention21”. As Mr Hof’s are not the sentiments a respectable charity should have,
Hand in Hand for Syria should apologise for their role in enabling people like Mr Hof
push Syria to the brink of extinction and annihilation and make appropriate pecuniary
amends to the victims of violence in Syria.
Summary
Hand in Hand for Syria has collected vast and, as yet, unaudited amounts of money
supposedly to help the victims of the Syrian conflict. Their claims and the guidelines
of the Charity Commission notwithstanding, Hand in Hand for Syria and its core
leadership in particular, seem to be both very opaque and very politically partisan 22.
Their claims to offer aid in a non-partisan manner do not seem to stand up to
scrutiny and their media activities are likewise open to question. Unless Hand in
Hand for Syria, its trustees, its officials and the medics who worked for it can
alleviate all these concerns, the police, the Charity Commission, the media, the
relevant professional medical bodies and the public they have raised vast sums of
money from should demand those answers as well as the appropriate redress if such
is warranted.
Appendix 1: Screen shots of Faddy Sahloul’s Facebook page before he made it
private on 13 July 2014.
These screen shots show the sympathies Faddy Sahloul. Hand in Hand for Syria’s
main trustee, has for the most extreme elements of the Syrian rebels. Mr Sahloul
should be asked why his Facebook page includes such incendiary photos and why
he belatedly limited access to his page. Because he is the main contact point for
Hand in Hand for Syria, which has collected vast sums of money from the British
In this incredible interview http://tinyurl.com/handusa2 with a sympathetic Israeli press,
Mr Hoff tells us that the leaders of Iraq and Syria are primarily responsible for the violence
and Iran should dispense with both of them: “Iranian and Hezbollah personnel have been
shocked by the barbarity of the Assad regime….Assad and Maliki - are the principal authors
of political disasters that can undermine Iran's security decisively”. Given the welldocumented war crimes of the Syrian and Iraqi rebels, this is an incredible statement to
make but one largely in line with the thoughts of others discussed here.
21
This link http://tinyurl.com/tubex2 is asking for any evidence Hand in Hand for Syria has
ever condemned the crimes of the Syrian rebels in the area it operates in and suggests that
the lack of any such condemnations is further evidence of their partisanship. It seems a fair
and important point.
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public, Mr Sahloul’s support for extreme sectarian violence, which he seems to share
with Mohammad Al Areifie, the extremist Saudi preacher who funds his organisation,
is of public concern and must be investigated with a view to bringing prosecutions if
such are warranted.
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FRIEND WITH MOHAMMAD AL ABDALLAH
APPENDIX 2: Atareb Hospital: Hand in Hand for Syria’s Fund-Raising Claims.
These pictures summarise Hand in Hand for Syria’s grandiose claims on behalf of
their (unaudited) flagship hospital. These have been discussed at some length in the
main body of this document.
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Appendix 3: Kafr Nabl (also spelled Kafranbel or Kafr Nabil), close to the rebel
stronghold of Ma'arrat al-Numan where Hand in Hand for Syria operate a front line
hospital servicing rebel fighters and their families and supporters. Many of the
pictures rebel sympathisers in Hand in Hand for Syria and elsewhere use come from
this town where, these reports http://tinyurl.com/handusa3
http://tinyurl.com/handusa4 say, the rebel extremists Jabhat Al Nusra have a very
sizeable presence. As their banners indicate, these propagandists support
beheading their enemies. Mr Sahloul and his confreres in Hand in Hand for Syria
should clarify their position on beheading and the other murderous policies of the
Kafranbel propagandists.
Appendix 4: The Muslim Brotherhood on Syria
Political and military alliances in Syria and countries contiguous to it are both very
complex and that is reflected both in the ranks of the Syrian rebels and those
supporting them from afar. Although, to use Lenin’s infamous phrase, there might be
many “useful idiots” furthering the rebels’ cause, there are, it is now widely agreed,
very sinister and dedicated die-hard elements supplying a logistical backbone to
them. One such group we now discuss is the Muslim Brotherhood, which is
supposedly at the centre of the “moderate Syrian National Council”. We will first of
all comment on interviews its Turkish-based leader, Mohammad Riad al Shaqfeh,
gave, and then reproduce a statement he made and briefly comment on that
statement.
In this interview http://tinyurl.com/MBSyria1 with The Majalla, Mohammed Riad AlShaqfa “insisted that the Assad regime cannot be a part of any political solution”. Mr
Shaqfa then asserted that “humanitarian corridors and safe zones have become an
urgent necessity to protect the Syrian people.” He then called for the Syrian
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opposition groups to be supplied arms. These, as we have seen, are the same
demands groups like the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights and a number of
Hand in Hand for Syria trustees have made.
Mr Shaqfa then says the future Syria ”will be a pluralistic, democratic and civilian
regime in which all members of the Syrian people will take part. Domination will not
be seized by one party or one sect: our people are tired of individualism and
exclusion”. He believes “that the Syrian society, even with all its sects, is capable of
understanding and coexisting despite the attempts of the Syrian regime to make
them frightened of each other”. All this, however, is not the way things are evolving
and such aspirations have been historically foreign to the Muslim Brotherhood.
He then tells us that “Gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia and Qatar, took practical
steps and began to finance the opposition in order to support the Syrian people. We
hope to use this support to fulfil the ambitions of the Syrian people to topple the
Syrian regime”. However, as the track records of Saudi Arabia and Qatar are the
very antithesis of “building a pluralistic, democratic and civilian regime”, it is hard to
see how they could contribute in any meaningful way to reforming Syria.
Mr Shaqfa then tells us that “the Muslim Brotherhood “support the Free Army of
Syria, we coordinate with it and we support it as much as we can”. So, support for
the Free Syrian Army equates to support for the Muslim Brotherhood and vice versa.
When asked “Do you see a problem of religious and racial minorities?” Mr Shaqfa
says “There is no problem in Syria of religious and racial minorities. The Syrian
people with all their races, religions and ideologies have coexisted since the oldest
ages. But the Syrian regime tried to stir disputes among those sects; it deluded them
that it is the protector of the minorities and frightened them of each other. The
Muslim Brotherhood has previously stated its stance on this issue through its view of
the Kurdish case and its vision about the social structure and the sectarianism in
Syria, and both are approved by the group”.
This does not seem to be the reality on the ground where most minorities flee for
protection to the government lines and where the Alawites of Adra, the Armenians of
Kasab and the Christians of Ma’lulah for example, for example, were slaughtered by
the armed militias the SNC, the Muslim Brotherhood and the various trustees of
hand in Hand for Syria are hand in hand with.
These concerns are echoed in this piece http://tinyurl.com/MBSyria2 which tells us
that “The Brotherhood’s concern to showcase its commitment to inclusive, pluralist
politics and to reiterate its identity as a “centrist” Islamist organization is
commendable given the growing radicalization and sectarianism in Syria. But
delivering on its promise will prove a tough challenge. Religious and ethnic minorities
as well as secular Sunni Muslims are likely to dismiss Waad as a mere facade for
the Brotherhood. Conversely, conservative Sunnis, including some of the
Brotherhood’s own members, and militant Islamists will dislike Waad’s
multiconfessional and ideologically heterogeneous self-image and distrust the
presence of non-Sunnis and non-Arabs in its leadership”.
“The Brotherhood’s own members are divided about Waad. Some regard the party
as a mistimed gesture that will undermine the organization’s ongoing efforts to gain
influence within the armed rebellion on the ground, where it has recently become
less circumspect about its role in supporting like-minded rebel groups. And the fact
that Brotherhood leaders who favor the new party see it as a means to project
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moderation ahead of possible negotiations with the regime of Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad in Geneva deepens the suspicions of the dissenting minority”.
The Muslim Brotherhood, then, are caught between the proverbial hard rock of
reverting to their previous intolerance and the hard place of tolerance, which would
surrender their ascendancy to those who refuse to compromise and negotiate. This
is, in fact, the conundrum of all those who wish for change in Syria and as Yeats’
The Second Coming shows, it is not a new one:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Whatever about the Syrian government side, the centre has certainly not held on the
rebels’ side and that is generally what happens when “the men with guns” call the
shots, which is precisely what many of the parties mentioned previously, the Muslim
Brotherhood amongst them, have, consciously or otherwise, worked towards.
Mr Shaqfa must have known the carnage which ensued would have been the result
when he wrote the following sectarian call to arms in March 2011 when Syria could
still have been pulled back from the brink. Perhaps the following earlier statement
was a truer reflection both of his own opinion and of how the situation has actually
played out.
A Statement of Support to the People of Syria
With the name of Allah
Allah had said in Quran: “The permission is granted to the fighters for his well, to
defeat the injustice and Allah is capable of making them win”, and all prayers and
salutations to his messenger Muhammad who has been sent for the mercy of all
people, and all prayers and salutations also to Muhammad’s companions and
followers until the end of the days.
We are – the Muslim Brotherhood – declare that we have got enough from the
politics of the Baath-Regime and his infidel supporters in the past years.
We declare, it is enough after all what we have faced from killing, arresting and
displacement against our leaders and followers.
It is time for us to come back home and rule Syria under our principles that
come from Islam (Sharia), these principles that have been brought back to life by
the greatest renewer of the 20th century Imam Hassan Al-Banna – Allah’s mercy on
him.
Seikh Hassan Al-Banna (1906-1949) the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.
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It is time for our forbidden party to come back home, and there is no way to achieve
that goal without igniting and supporting the revolution inside Syria.
The people in Syria have demands: a better life, a more freedom, … and we have to
exploit and push them to take actions that guarantee the overthrow of the current
government.
The people are now protesting after the allegations of the bloodshed by the
government forces.
These demonstrations should be our aid to make our coup and replace the
government. We have to ignite rage, incite and exploit that bloodshed and make it
our way to come back home and spread our Islamic principles to rule over the
political scene in Syria.
It is time to come back home and rule the Syrian Muslim people who live under
the umbrella of the secular regime that supports and protects the principles of
tolerance, and guarantees the freedom of thinking and embracing whatever
belief the people choose. Such a freedom was the main reason that made the
other non-Muslim sects of the Syrian people able to step forward and have a
rank and a good contribution in the Syrian life, and also share the wealth with
the Muslims on their own land.
It is time for us to come back and force all the other non-Muslim sects to
shrink and step back. These sects are the infidel Christians, the criminal
Alawites and the infidel Druzes.
It is time for us to come back and rule Syria under the name of Allah – the lord of all
lords – and his holy Quran, and to impose the Islamic principles on all who oppose
us without discrimination.
It is time for our principles to spread among the Syrian Muslims, to bring back the
well and the glory of Allah after they have been lost because of these infidel regimes.
So we support the revolution in Syria with all what we have (money, speech,
writings and media conferences), because it is the last hope for our principles to gain
success, and the only way to overthrow the Baath-Regime, even if that has to cost
thousands of lives of innocent people. We have to push the young Muslims to go
down the streets in order to ignite this revolution, even if that would lead to their
death, because that death means the freedom to those who will come after, and a
victory for us. We also assure the right of those people to protest and defense
themselves, even if that would cause the death of many policemen and army
officers who are basically infidels, they caused a lot of corruption and destruction
in our land, so death will be their fair punishment for what they committed.
It is also too important to remind the Syrian Muslims of the intentions of the
other sects and their plans against Islam, and against our freedom, so we do
not recommend any sort of collaboration even under the most difficult
circumstances, because they – in their instincts – have bad feelings and bad
intentions for Islam and for his people. We have to make sure that the
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revolution will be pure Islamic, and with that no other sect would have a share
of the credit after its success.
We pray to Allah to support our people in Syria and lead them to victory.
Muhammad Riyad Al-Shaqfa, the general supervisor of the Syrian Muslim
Brotherhood
Written by Dr. Muhammad Riyad Al-Shaqfa
the General supervisor for the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood
Monday, 28 March, 2011
Document Ends.
This document will be periodically updated as issues are clarified and more
information becomes available.
************************************************************************************************
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APPENDIX TWO Hand in Hand for Syria: Their Unaudited Accounts Raise Even
More Moral Probity Questions.
By Dr Declan Hayes
Hand in Hand for Syria, as previous articles such as this lengthy one
http://www.taigs.com/Syria/Hand-in_Glove.pdf in this folder
http://www.taigs.com/Syria/ explained, is a very controversial British-based charity,
linked to hard-line Syrian rebel extremists, that has some very hard questions to
answer about its finances.
Not only do those very serious questions remain unanswered but their only
“accounts” submitted to the Charities Commission, covering the period 20 December
2011 to 31 October 2012, lead to further questions and more concerns as to whether
this group is, as has been claimed, hand in glove with the Syrian rebel terrorists.
Going through their short submitted summary accounts, all of the concerns voiced in
that earlier document are upheld as these accounts do not seem to be worth the
paper they are written on, let alone the £4,000 that was supposedly paid to
manufacture them:
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The first page tells us these are unaudited accounts. No reason is given as to
why the opaque Hand in Hand group did not have their accounts audited and
why they spent a whopping £4,000 procuring an unaudited and therefore
essentially worthless summary.
Line three of page 3 tells us that the “charity’s trustees consider than an audit
is not required”. There is no explanation as to why these colourful trustees
arrive at that surprising conclusion; it is not as if these characters can be
simply taken at their word.
Although the same page goes on to say that explanations will be sought for
“any unusual items or disclosures”, the short and pricey report does not list
any such items or disclosures. Given the nature of the work Hand in Hand for
Syria purport to perform and the countless anomalies alluded to in our earlier
report, the fact that there are no such items is very strange.
The same page then explains that, unlike an audited report, this report does
not purport to give “a true and fair view” but, on the whole, it just confines itself
to the barest statements they feel will be acceptable to the Charities
Commission. On the face of it, that is appalling value for £4,000.
Page 1 of the report proper tells us that Dr O Gabbar is, in addition to the
original three, also a trustee. Our earlier report cited a number of others who
were cited as trustees or directors as the need arose. There is no explanation
as to why they are so cavalier in designating the others as directors or as to
why Dr Gabbar’s was not given to the Charities Commission at the time the
other three names were submitted.
The same page also tells us that the “trustees have a duty to identify and
review the risks to which the charity is exposed and to ensure appropriate
controls are in place to provide reasonable assurance against fraud and
error”. The report then says that “substantial risks exist in operating inside
Syria, especially in those areas controlled by government forces”. This is an
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extraordinary statement. Whatever one thinks about the Syrian government –
and the Hand in Hand for Syria people have made their sympathies to the
terrorists very plain – there is some form of accountability in “those areas
controlled by government forces”. As the kidnappings and executions of aid
workers in rebel-held areas make plain, there is no such accountability in the
rebel-held areas Hand in Hand for Syria primarily operate in.
It is likewise extraordinary that the report lists no forms of financial or logistical
risk; although such factors should be central to a report such as this, they are
not even mentioned. It seems the only risks they fear are the risks of being
found out by keen-eyed auditors, police or investigative journalists.
The same page also makes plain that Hand in Hand for Syria work primarily in
the medical field. They have claimed to operate expensive hospitals and
advanced medical units all over Syria on the relatively paltry budget the
following pages summarise.
Page 4 of the report proper tells us that, for the period 20 December 2011 to
31 October 2012, Hand in Hand for Syria claims to have raised £472,163 in
cash and kind, of which they expended £373,346, with the remaining £98,817
being carried forward. There is no mention of monies held in euros, Syrian
pounds or Turkish lira, an extraordinary “oversight”, given the locus of their
work.
They claim to have spent £18,397 (=£14,394 +£4,003) or 3.9% of the total
generating this amount. Assuming the figures are true, that seems remarkably
efficient for a new organisation, assuming, of course, this unaudited figure has
not just been plucked out of the air.
They claim a further £4,000 was spent on governance costs, on their financial
report in other words. One would imagine that an audit could have been
conducted for the same amount as most other charities with less revenues
seem to easily manage to get their accounts audited.
Page 5 tells us that £83,317 was kept as cash in the bank. Although charities
often keep such amounts in their accounts, one wonders why, given the
gravity of Syria’s situation, Hand in Hand for Syria did not use that money for
emergency relief.
Page 6 tells us that motor vehicles will be depreciated at a rate of 100% over
a year. Given how acute the need is for ambulances and the other support
vehicles they had claimed to have brought to Syria, it is incredible that they
would completely write off vehicles after less than a year. This is truly
unusual.
The same page also tells us that gifts in kind are reflected in the accounts at
their fair value. This is important as Hand in Hand for Syria sent a large
number of valuable convoys to Syria.
Page 7 tells us that wages and salaries were a paltry £2,000. If they trying to
tell us they coordinated all that aid on less than a shoestring, then they must
be truly incredible.
The same page tells us that they spent £19,500 on vehicles and wrote them
all off after six months. That they would give away valuable vehicles after only
six months is likewise incredible and needs to be fully explained. Given the
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amounts of ambulances and other vehicles they claim to have acquired, much
more detail is needed to explain why their vehicles cost only £19,500, which
would most likely not even buy one road-worthy second-hand ambulance.
 Page 8 tells us that the trustees raised £40,894 before Hand in Hand for Syria
was formally established. The trustees should explain why others felt
compelled to give them this large amount of money and if other organisations
such as the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood helped them establish themselves. It
is hard to believe that a disparate group of individuals could raise the large
sums Hand in Hand for Syria has got and get the huge amounts of publicity
Hand in Hand for Syria has garnered without a major ideological organisation
or a major ideological benefactor backing them.
 The previous report showed who those ideological backers were – seasoned
terrorists who are banned on security grounds from entering a number of
countries, including Britain.
 Page 9 tells us that gifts in kind only amounted to £10,300. Are Hand in Hand
for Syria seriously telling us that the huge aid convoys they took to rebel-held
Syria were only worth that amount and that it cost next to nothing to bring
those convoys from Britain to Syria?
 The same page tells us that they spent £336,152 on charitable activities,
including £74, 502 on “medication”. Yet their website boasted it had state of
the art facilities, including neo natal units and kidney dialysis units a few miles
from the Syrian front lines. Hand in Hand for Syria must explain these
anomalies and where the financial figures are for those hospitals and the
hundreds of staff they employed and the expenses of giving their Syrian
operatives further training in Turkey.
 The same page tells us transport and shipping amounted to only £132. That
being so, the costs of bringing their huge convoys from Britain to Turkey and
Syria must be accounted for elsewhere. Hand in Hand for Syria must account
for this to the police, to the Charities Commission, to their benefactors and to
the people of Syria.
 Bank charges were £2,297. As most banks allow charities to operate for free
and money transfers could not account for that, especially as the trustees’
families are reputed to be in the shadier side of money transfers and so would
be expected to know how to minimise such costs.
Summary: The police, the Charities Commission and investigative journalists must
hold Hand in Hand for Syria to account if, as seems the case, they have misled their
donors and the peoples of Britain and Syria. Hand in Hand for Syria has been able to
get great national and local publicity in Britain, they have claimed to have raised
millions of pounds and they are not accounting for it properly. They are doing this in
an environment where genuine charity workers have been kidnapped and murdered
by the Syrian rebels Hand in Hand for Syria willingly work closely with.
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Appendix 2a: A Short Analysis of the Audited accounts for the Accounts and
Annual Return of Hand in Hand for Syria for the year ended 31 Oct 2013 which
were received by the Charity Commission 214 days late on Holy Thursday, 2nd
April 2015, and reviewed by me on Easter Monday, 6 April 2015.
Overview: The above snapshot, which is on the Charity Commission webpage,
leads to some questions. How, for example, can two full-time staff manage to
successfully coordinate 200 volunteers and handle a transnational and
transcontinental operation with a budget of in excess of £2.5 million? Why are the
numbers so rounded (200 employees, umpteen zero entries and so on)? Why is
there £0 provision for long-term planning?
Comparisons: It is normal practice to compare the audited accounts for at least two
financial years and to compare one charity or business, Hand in Hand for Syria, with
another. However, due to the fact that there are accounts for only one financial year
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and because of the sheer number of further and related preliminary questions, that
will not be done in this case. This short analysis will simply ask some standard
questions and, as is also customary, leave further, deeper analysis for another day
and, hopefully, by different people and bodies.
Contents, Layout, Approach: The examined submitted accounts consist of 19
unnumbered pages in PDF format. These unnumbered pages may be sub-divided
for ease of examination as follows: a title page, a table of contents page, a
preliminary page, an objectives and activities page, five pages on the activities and
performance of Hand in Hand for Syria for the year in question from its trustees, two
pages from the auditors, two pages of the financial accounts, six pages of notes to
the accounts. Each of these sections will now be examined in turn.
Title page: This simply gives us the title and tells us the accountants and auditors
are based in Surrey, rather than in Leicester where the trustees seem to be based.
Table of contents page: Nothing to say on this,.
Preliminary Page: There are several points of interest here:
1. Why were the accounts submitted so late when trustees and spokespeople
had boasted about their efficiency?
2. Why is Hand in Hand for Syria headquarted in London in the offices pictured
above, when all their listed trustees are in Leicester and their accountants and
auditors are in Surrey? Has the extra, possibly necessary travel and rent been
factored in to their costs?
3. We are told that Hand in Hand for Syria was established as recently as 20
December 2011. What do they attribute their extraordinary rise to?
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4. Do the accounts and attendant reports give sufficient detail on the risk
management factors we are told “the trustees have a duty to identify and
review?”
5. Regarding risk management, Can Hand in Hand for Syria produce relevant
receipts and tenders to show they provided “reasonable assurance against
fraud and error”
6. Regarding risk management, why does Hand in Hand for Syria say that
“substantial risks exist in operating in Syria, especially in those areas
controlled by government forces”? Did Hand in Hand for Syria do a health,
safety and welfare analysis on this? Are they saying that charities or people
like me who enter government-controlled areas are taking on more risk than
aid workers who have been murdered in rebel-controlled areas?
7. Regarding risk management and the statement that “the trustees are very
mindful of the risks taken by those carrying out the work in these locations”,
why is there no mention in the report of the fifteen hand in hand for Syria
volunteers reportedly brutally tortured and murdered in government-controlled
areas? Can Hand in Hand for Syria supply us with details so that the
perpetrators may be held to account and the relatives of the murdered
comforted?
8. Regarding the risk management paragraph, what provisions have bene put in
place to handle the foreign exchange risks and to maximise return on cash in
hand? Who is advising hand in Hand for Syria on those important matters?
9. Regarding the risk management paragraph, what day-to-day financial controls
are in place in Turkey? Are there bank accounts, petty cash provisions? Who
signs off on big ticket items or projects?
10. With regard to the Objectives and Activities page and its last paragraph’s
statement that almost all Hand In Hand for Syria’s work “was carried out on a
voluntary bases”, where is the command, control and co-ordination team who
funds this incredible enterprise and who put it all together?
Trustees’ Report: This section consists of five pages, which lead to a very large
number of questions. For ease of digestion, it will be broken down, as far as
possible, into its constituent parts and will be referenced pages 1-5 in the paragraphs
which follow.
Trustees’ Report, page 1: This page, which is the fifth page of the document, may
be broken into three further sections, an opening section, a section on Atmeh and a
section on Atareb, which will be covered in page 2.
Opening Section page 1: This section tells us that “All operations in and from
Lebanon were moved to Turkey where the office, which was set up in July 2012, was
managing all activities and was run by 3 people and 2 in our warehouse inside
Syria”. Could Hand in Hand for Syria:
1. Give details of their Lebanese operations, what contacts, bank accounts and
other logistical prerequisites were put in place to get it up and running, what
actions they engaged in, what personnel, what contracts and with whom they
had in place in Lebanon for warehouses, clinics and similar facilities and the
paper trail for how they wound those contracts down?
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2. Give details salary, insurance and other details regarding the three employees
mentioned above, as well as the other nine or so mentioned as being later
employed? Is there a cash trail for those paid salaries and can independent
researchers get access to it?
In the second last sentence of this section, Hand in Hand for Syria state: “We were
heavily reliant on volunteers in Syria during the early stages and as the conflict
carried on we had to set up a proper structure and employ people and set offices up
inside Syria in order to be closer to those in need”.
1. Can Hand in Hand for Syria give details of who “we” is and how “we” had the
command, control and co-ordination facilities as well as the day-to-day local
knowledge to set up such enterprises within terrorist-controlled Syria?
2. Can Hand in Hand for Syria produce the financial and other paper trails to
show how this enterprise was effected?
3. How were people employed? Was there a selection process? What
percentage were from minority and other disadvantaged groups? Who
interviewed these people who were hired? What structures were put in place
and by whom to protect against fraud and other abuses?
4. How was all this achieved without directly employing more field managers and
having clear lines of management and reporting between the various layers of
Hand in Hand for Syria?
This section concludes with the following sentence: “We also relied on volunteers
in the UK and only had I employee during this time”. With regard to this sentence,
can Hand in Hand for Syria:
1. Confirm that there was just one employee in the UK at that time?
2. Give details as to how that employee was hired (by open competition or
not), give contract details, including holiday pay, salary, insurance
contribution, location, duties, line manager and so on?
Trustees’ Report, page 1, ATMEH HOSPITAL
The next section of page 1, which is the fifth page of the document, concerns their
activities in Atmeh. Before considering this part of the report, we should read this
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article http://tinyurl.com/krd8qe2 from where the above map showing that Atmeh sits
directly on the Turkish border was taken. The importance of its position is to show
that being demonstrably active in Atmeh is no evidence whatsoever that a group has
penetrated any distance whatsoever into Syria. This is an importance point when we
try to gauge whether Hand in Hand for Syria can truly claim to be active in 90% of
Syria as their website’s front page still claims here
http://www.handinhandforsyria.org.uk to be as of 6th April 2015: “We cover 90% of
Syria, taking aid to those in greatest need”.
Easy Strokes: Although many of the photos in the http://tinyurl.com/krd8qe2 article
show the very squalid conditions the ordinary refugee lives in, it also makes it plain
that it is “the men with guns” who literally call the shots and who control the entire
area. Not only that but it reminds us that British aid worker David Haines was
kidnapped there in March 2013 and beheaded in another area Hand in Hand for
Syria claim to operate in.
1. Can Hand in Hand for Syria inform us what they know about the kidnapping
of David Haines from Atmeh camp in March 2013?
2. Can Hand in Hand for Syria inform us all why there is no mention of the
kidnapping of David Haines from Atmeh Camp which happened in the very
middle of the time period this report covers?
3. Given the fate of David Haines and other British aid workers like him in the
terrorist-controlled areas Hand in Hand for Syria operate in, can Hand In
Hand for Syria explain why they regard government-controlled areas as risker
than areas where British citizens are beheaded as a matter of course?
Regarding the five or so paragraphs on Atmeh camp in the report:
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1. Can Hand in Hand for Syria explain why they believe, according to the first
paragraph of this section, that Atmeh camp is hard to reach, given that it
almost straddles the Turkish border?
2. Can Hand in Hand for Syria give financial, personnel and paper trail details
about the “many months of hard work and preparation” that went into
establishing their hospital in Atmeh?
3. Can Hand in Hand for Syria confirm who, if anyone, were their partners in this
enterprise and what funding and other contributions those other may have
made?
4. Can Hand in Hand for Syria conform how many terrorists used their hospital
facilities and if they paid for same and, if so, how?
5. Can Hand in Hand for Syria if they have differential charges for terrorist as
opposed to non-terrorist patients in this and other hospitals they control?
6. Can Hand in Hand for Syria confirm whether they are just quoting the
numbers of Syrians (100,000) who live in the surrounding areas or if those
100,000 Syrians actively use their facilities?
7. Can Hand in Hand for Syria confirm if they are claiming credit for running the
camp or if they just mention how many people Atmeh camp cater to by way of
providing tangential information?
8. Can Hand in Hand for Syria confirm if they state: “Unsanitary conditions and
overcrowding mean that hepatitis, respiratory infections and diarrhoea are
now rife in the camp, to which young children and new-born babies are
particularly vulnerable” by way of providing tangential information or of they
are providing serious help in combatting those expected problems? If the
latter, can they provide the necessary paper trails?
9. Can Hand in Hand for Syria confirm whether they are also claiming credit for
servicing the medical needs of the “IDPs in other towns and villages” they
mention or if they just mention them by way of providing tangential
information?
10. Can Hand in Hand for Syria provide the architect’s plans for the hospital they
built as well as the tendering process for it and for the builders who put the
entire complex together?
11. Can Hand in Hand for Syria confirm that the original structure had only 17
beds and, if so, what percentage of the needs of the surrounding 100,000
Syrians do they think 17 beds and a handful of machines met?
12. Can Hand in Hand for Syria explain this sentence: “Several months after
opening the children hospital, we started thinking about setting up a specialist
centre that would provide specialist care for women”? In particular, what do
they mean by “we started thinking about” and “specialist care”? Were they
drawing up actual plans with architects, builders, financiers and project
managers or where they just chatting between themselves? Also, given the
very basic needs of the people of Atmeh, was that the right place for a
specialist unit when such facilities might have been better provided in Turkey
or in those more stable parts of Syria not controlled by terrorists and their
fellow-travellers?
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13. Can Hand in Hand for Syria elaborate on this sentence? “We then built a new
floor above the children hospital fit for the purpose”. Did this building occur
when the floors below were still in use and what provisions did they make for
the disruption, pollution, dust and other irritants the construction work caused?
Can they provide evidence as to who signed off on the safety and other
aspects of that project as well the financial and architectural details? Can they
also provide funding details and confirm whether this was a joint project or not
and, if so, what financial and brainstorming roles did Hand In Hand for Syria
play?
14. Can Hand in Hand for Syria provide further information regarding this
sentence: “We have received some support in terms of Medication and
equipment from International Donors and partners in the past but mainly funds
coming from private donors and pledges”? Does this sentence mean Hand in
Hand for Syria run the hospital and that it is, in essence, theirs? What does
“some support” mean and will Hand in Hand for Syria quantify that in
pecuniary terms so we can better judge the level of support they enjoy in
terms of efficiency and other standard metrics? Can Hand in Hand for Syria
tells us who their private donors are and how precisely they contribute and
how much? Can Hand in Hand for Syria confirm what percentage of the
pledges they receive are honoured and what percentage are not honoured?
15. Regarding the following “sentence”, can Hand in Hand for Syria elaborate
further: “Cost of personnel is where the biggest chunk of the funds goes to as
50% goes towards covering wages”? Can Hand in Hand for Syria give a
breakdown and an Excel or other paper trail of the 50% “chunk of the funds”
that goes on personnel as well as the 50% that is expended on other matters?
Can Hand In Hand for Syria confirm how efficient they think those ratios are
against standard metrics?
Trustees’ Report, pages 2/3 ATAREB HOSPITAL
Regarding the half a page or so in the report on Atareb Hospital, which follow directly
the Atmeh section and are covered in pages 2 and 3:
1. Can Hand In Hand for Syria comment on the various pieces in our main part,
those from our local correspondent included, concerning Atareb Hospital?
2. Can Hand In Hand for Syria comment on the omission of the events covered
in BBC Panorama’s controversial Saving Syrian Children from their annual
report? Were those horrific events not worth a mention or were they just
another day at the office for Hand in Hand for Syria?
3. Did Hand in Hand for Syria sign a contract and pay the Syrian authorities a
rent for the use of their premises? (First sentence bottom of page 2).
4. When precisely in June 2013, did “the community” approach Hand in Hand for
Syria for help? Who precisely in “the community “ approached Hand for Syria
and why did those members of the community approach Hand in Hand for
Syria as opposed to some other group? Did the terrorists gangs controlling
Atareb at the time give their permission for Hand In Hand for Syria to operate
there and did the terrorists vet Hand In Hand for Syria personnel?
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5. Regarding the first sentence on page three, and with regard to the comments
of our local correspondent, can Hand in Hand for Syria confirm that they and
not others initiated the hospital on the stolen property?
6. Regarding the same sentence, can Hand in Hand for Syria agree that a 9month deal is too short a contractual term to have a well-functioning hospital
and if such seat-of-the-pants planning is appropriate or worthier of support
than the approach of the more established charities?
7. Can Hand in Hand for Syria explain why they did not begin advertising for new
funders as soon as they began the 9-month deal, rather than waiting till the
nine months had almost expired?
8. Can Hand in Hand for Syria give details of who those INGOS who funded
them were and who the “international donor” was? Can Hand in Hand for
Syria explain why those people and groups funded Hand in Hand for Syria as
opposed to some other, more established and respectable group?
9. Given its cost, can Hand in Hand for Syria explain the presence of and the
emphasis on a kidney dialysis unit at this mini-hospital as every medic I
consisted on the issue expressed amazement at presence of this facility at a
small outpost so near to the centre of the fighting?
10. Regarding the lengthy list of facilities listed, which range from the kidney
dialysis unit and three fully equipped operation rooms to a “kitchen for staff
and patient needs,” were all of those bought or tented or were they simply
looted form the government hospital and, if so, what provision has been made
to repay the Syrian authorities for the use of their equipment and the damage
done to it?
11. Given the relatively impressive list of facilities Atareb hospital has/had, what
percentage of those facilities were used by the terrorists who controlled
Atareb at the time?
12. How did Hand in Hand for Syria interview, screen and then employ the 98
employees, surgeons, doctors and nurses included, of this hospital?
13. Has the Finance Officer Hand in Han for Syria employed at this hospital kept
hard and soft copy financial and other records and, if so, will Hand in Hand for
Syria make those records available for forensic examination?
14. What percentage of the 900 monthly emergency cases and “60 conflict
related surgery” cases involve terrorists and how are they, their sexual
advances and their other obnoxious behaviour handled?
15. Can Hand In Hand for Syria confirm whether the ten surgeons employed
handle the 280 monthly operations and if the 23 nurses include the necessary
specialists surgeons would need and how that impacts on those services
deprived of those nurses and surgeons?
16. Can Hand In Hand for Syria give further details on the “100 Obstetrics cases”,
the “50 Caesarean” and the role of the three midwives in all of that?
17. Does Hand in Hand for Syria agree that the sheer complexity of an operation
such as Atareb would tend to support the line taken in my original work as
well as those of my local correspondent and ergo, to raise some further
reasonable questions about their own version if not, why not?
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Trustees’ Report, pages 3/4 “JOSEPH CHILDREN HOSPITAL”
The first sentence of this section reads as follows: “The Children's Hospital Al Amal
(also called Joseph Hospital) is located in the Jebal Zawiya region of Idlib
Govemorate in the town of Joseph which is one of 40 villages in the region”.
Al Amal simply means Hope in Arabic so that particular piece of information gets us
nowhere. Nor, apparently does Joseph, which seems a strange name to have in an
al Nusra controlled region. Though the area in question did have a very sizeable
sprinkling of Christians and other minorities, the Christians were largely murdered or
driven out by the new masters, who stole and looted all they had. Further, the entire
Jebal Zawiya has been and continues to be the scene of very intense fighting with al
Nusra terrorists using very advanced American, Turkish and Saudi supplied
weaponry and the Syrian air force replying in kind. Given its volatility, it is currently
not the place to be establishing the type of long-term project a hospital epitomises.
Regarding the section on “Joseph Children Hospital”:
1. Can Hand in Hand for Syria explain whether the 200,000 catchment area is
given simply by way of tangential or background information?
2. Can Hand in Hand for Syria explain when and why the “village Counsel”
and/or “the community” approached Hand in Hand for Syria for help? Who
precisely in “the community “ approached Hand for Syria and why did those
members of the community approach Hand in Hand for Syria as opposed to
some other group? Did the terrorists gangs controlling the area at the time
give their permission for Hand In Hand for Syria to operate there and did the
terrorists vet Hand In Hand for Syria personnel?
3. Can Hand In Hand for Syria explain how referrals are given to Joseph
Hospital and what network transmits those referrals?
4. Can Hand In Hand for Syria specifically quantify the “many referrals” Joseph
Hospital gets explain and, are there paper, virtual or phone records to verify
them? Has the accountant employed there kept these relevant records?
5. Regarding the statement that Joseph Hospital has 18 in-patient beds and four
qualified paediatricians (in addition, presumably, to some others) but only
three nurses, can Hand in Hand for Syria explain how they can hope to
service such a large constituency?
6. Given Joseph Hospital has only 18 in-patient beds, can Hand in Hand for
Syria confirm the mean and model patient stays so that the efficiency of this
hospital may be better gauged?
7. Can Hand in Hand for Syria comment on the other employees? Is the
pharmacist, for example, employed full-time? Why, for example, does a small
hospital need or have two warehouse managers?
8. Are the three emergency nurses employed full-time? How do they fit into the
overall structure? Do the, for example, help out when there is no emergency
or are there always emergencies happening?
9. Regarding the information on page 4: who processes the 1700 patients seen
per month, which amounts to a daily average of about 57: Can Hand in Hand
for Syria if the registrars process all of those cases or if they have help, and
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how do they maintain an orderly system in the face of pressure form
undisciplined gunmen and killers?
OTHER MEDICAL SUPPORT PAGE 4
The next fifteen lines gives some sketchy details of “other medical support” Hand in
Hand for Syria provide. These will now be discussed in turn:
We support Alquraya Women & Children Hospital in Deir Ezzor Governorate
and the project began in April 2013: Though this is the only sentence given here
on this particular project, it warrants considerable comment. With the exception of
some parts of Deir Ezzor City and surrounds, which are under the command of elite
Syrian Army soldiers, the rest of Deir Ezzor Governate is firmly under the control of
the Islamic State terrorists, who behead British aid workers as a matter of course.
That being so, can Hand in Hand for Syria give further details of their operations
there and how they have not fallen foul of ISIS?
Hand in Hand for Syria should also explain how precisely “we support Alquraya
Women & Children”. Is it largely tokenistic or is it very material, tangible and
quantifiable, with a paper trail?
We helped with the setting up of a new hospital on the outskirts of Damascus
by providing the equipment for a surgical wing and the orthopaedic unit. The
hospital provides emergency support for civilians caught up in the conflict. So
run the next two sentences in this section before they flit on to another of their Syrian
outposts. With regard to these two sentences:
1. Can Hand in Hand for Syria confirm if, as seems likely, this “new hospital on
the outskirts of Damascus” is in a terrorist-controlled area?
2. Can Hand in Hand for Syria confirm how they provided “the equipment for a
surgical wing and the orthopaedic unit” and who contacted them to provide
this equipment?
3. Can Hand in Hand for Syria confirm that “The hospital provides emergency
support for civilians caught up in the conflict” and that it does not provide
services to terrorists?
4. Can Hand in Hand for Syria explain why they gave this valuable equipment to
the “new hospital on the outskirts of Damascus” and why they did not use it in
one of their own hospitals?
Rehabilitation Centre in Orem (Aleppo governorate) in order to accommodate
those whose condition does not allow them to go home but is not critical
enough to stay in a hospital. We provide them with Physiotherapy during their
stay and take them to hospitals to finish their treatment. So run the next two
sentences in this section before they flit on to another of their Syrian outposts. With
regard to these two sentences:
1. Given that Orem is controlled mostly by the Al Nusra terrorist franchise, with
remnants of the Free Syrian Army franchise also being present, can Han in
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Hand for Syria explain how they could (help?) institute such a long-term
rehabilitative project and how they can manage to help keep it operative?
2. Can Hand in Hand for Syria confirm which hospitals they take these patients
to and who commands, controls and coordinates that part of their operation?
3. Can Hand in Hand for Syria provide a paper trial for all of this fascinating
work?
During the same period, we did support projects in areas like Alqussayr Horns in addition to reaching out to I52 makeshift hospitals /clinics with
supplies and consumables. So runs the next sentence in this section before they
flit on to another of their Syrian outposts. With regard to this sentence:
1. Can Hand in Hand for Syria give further details of their actions in Alqussayr
and, in particular whether they evacuated it prior to the Syrian Arab Army
wresting control of it back from the terrorists in June 2013, a date which falls
within the scope of their report for the year ending 31 October 2013?
2. Can Hand in Hand for Syria confirm whether they witnessed and/or
documented any of the documented atrocities such as gang rape that the
terrorist rebels committed on the Christians of Alqussayr and, if not, why not?
3. Can Hand in Hand for Syria confirm if they treated any women, girls or young
boys who were raped by the terrorists in any of their facilities in Alqussayr or
elsewhere and, if so, can they supply details so that the perpetrators and their
accomplices may be brought to justice?
4. Can Hand in Hand for Syria confirm how precisely they “reached out” “to I52
makeshift hospitals /clinics with supplies and consumables” and how, in
accordance with their risk management duties, they guarded against “fraud
and error”? Did they use intermediaries and, if so, were they vetted and paid?
Can Hand in Hand for Syria produce a paper trail for all of that?
The support took the form of supplies of medical consumables and medication
where possible in addition to equipment. So reads the next sentence. As it is
largely superfluous and redundant as well as being uninformative, it will be passed
over without further comment.
We received a lot of equipment from the UK, France & Germany which went
into our warehouse inside Syria before they were sent to clinics and /or
hospitals following a needs assessment. So runs the next sentence in this
section. With regard to this sentence:
1. Can Hand in Hand for Syria explain why groups or individuals in France and
Syria donated “a lot of equipment” to them rather than to similar or more
established groups in France and Germany?
2. Can Hand In Hand for Syria give details of precisely how much equipment
was given, whether it was sent to only one Syrian warehouse, as stated, or
whether it was sent to more than one Syrian warehouse and how it was
moved from those three European countries to Syria?
3. Can Hand in Hand for Syria confirm that, given its warehouses are all in areas
controlled by the terrorist murder gangs, that none of this material went to
those, the vast majority of citizens, in need in government-controlled areas?
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4. Can Hand in Hand for Syria explain who precisely did the “needs assessment”
of this equipment, where precisely that assessment was done and if the
assessors were paid for their work?
During the same period, we went to the Medical Equipment Auction and
bought a lot of ex-NHS equipment that did fill a 400 container and had some
left to be sent in another one. All equipment were in perfect working order and
did go into our warehouse where our Medical Engineer checked them before
we were able to support other facilities with them. So run the next two sentences
in this section. With regard to these two sentence:
1. Can Hand in Hand for Syria confirm they have receipts for all of this?
2. Can Hand in Hand for Syria confirm who precisely secured these items as
only one of the apparent trustees seems to be medically qualified?
3. Can Hand in Hand for Syria specify what precisely they bought, besides
telling us they bought “a lot of ex-NHS equipment”.
4. Can Hand in Hand for Syria confirm how they knew all the equipment was in
perfect working order before “our Medical Engineer checked them”?
5. Can Hand in Hand for Syria give details of the criteria they use to decide
where and why to give this valuable equipment to other outfits and the means
and people used to make such transfers?
Non-Medical Projects:
-Women empowerment project by providing training for women in order to sew
and knit; Opening and supporting 2 schools in addition to providing nonfinancial support to 9 schools; Books and magazines for children; Classroom
kits; Wash & Hygiene by providing the following: hygiene kits, chlorine tablets,
water testing, water filters, water containers; and leaflets to educate people
with regards to issues around personal hygiene.
So runs the next piece of the trustees’ report. With regard to this section,

Will Hand in Hand for Syria admit that these projects, though important, looks
very tokenistic when compared to their earlier claims of building and staffing
hospitals?
 Can Hand in Hand for Syria give details of the schools they “opened and
supported”? Where are they and what is the curriculum? Do these schools
include those on the government side of the lines they claim to operate?
PARTNERSHIPS
The rest of this page is given over to its partnerships. This section begins as follows:
“We have partnerships, agreements, MOUs with quite a few INGOs who do not
wish to be named for security reasons. We had 7 International NonGovernmental Organisations as partners during this period. Several projects
were implemented and fed back to them including all the relevant financial,
beneficiaries, assessments and post distribution monitoring information.
These did range between Medical, Food, Shelter, Winter and Summer kits &
Hygiene. An excess of £1,000,000 worth of aid was distributed and reported
back to the relevant INGO”.
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With regard to this section:
1. Under what conditions will Hand in Hand for Syria name those organisations it
collaborates with?
2. Will Hand in Hand for Syria acknowledge until they name those organisations
and show the MOUs and other relevant paperwork, that independent
observers have to be, at the very least, sceptical if not very suspicious of their
claims?
3. Can Hand in Hand for Syria make public “all the relevant financial,
beneficiaries, assessments and post distribution monitoring information” they
claim to have fed back to their partners and, if not, why not?
4. Can Hand In Hand for Syria confirm if those partners include any of the
organisations named in the main body of this report and can they produce the
relevant paperwork?
5. Will Hand In Hand for Syria acknowledge that the distribution of more than
“£1,000,000 worth of aid” deserves more than the very perfunctory
explanation provided here?
“Support for our hospitals was also secured, for example Atareb Hospital is
benefiting from a 9 months support to the Emergency Unit and the Operating
Theatre which includes Salaries / Incentives and the setting up of the ICU. The
fund is coming from an International Donor through an INGO”. With regard to
these, the next two sentences of this section:
1. Will Hand in Hand for Syria say why they repeat the information about Atareb,
which has already been assessed?
2. Can Hand in Hand for Syria name the “International Donor and INGO” as,
without such verification, such claims have to be treated with scepticism and
suspicion?
“Other INGOs did support the purchase of some of the medication and
equipment leaving us to cover the incentives. The usual reports were also fed
back to them”. With regard to these, the next two sentences of this section:
1. Can Hand in Hand for Syria name those INGOs and provide the paperwork
for forensic examination?
2. Can Hand In Hand for Syria clarify what does “leaving us to cover the
incentives” mean?
3. Can Hand in Hand for Syria confirm how these two-way exchanges of
equipment and supplies are handled and provide the relevant paperwork to
ensure there was no serious fraud or errors committed?
4. Can Hand in Hand for Syria supply copies of “the usual reports” which were
“fed back” to their partners?
One of our partners from the UK is Shelterbox who is providing us with a
constant supplies of Tents, Water Filters, Kitchen Sets, Ground Sheet and
many more items and sends us exactly what we need. The support we have
received from them exceeds £200,000 worth of Gifts / Goods in kind. With
regard to this, the next sentence of this section:
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1. Can Hand In Hand for Syria why they feel confident enough to reveal the
name of Shelterbox but not those of its other partners?
2. Can Hand in Hand for Syria show that none of these dual use items were
given either directly or indirectly to terrorists and furnish us with the
appropriate paperwork?
ACHIEVEMENT AND PERFORMANCE: Charitable activities: So reads the
heading to page eight of the entire document, the second-last page before we reach
the auditor’s statement.
Shelterbox would raise the funds, purchase the aid and arrange for it to be
shipped to Syria where we take over and distribute to the neediest people
inside Syria following a needs assessment. Some of our partners were happy
to go into areas deep inside Syria like Home where food baskets were
procured locally and distributed. Similarly in Deir Ezzor where Hygiene Kits,
Water Filters, Kitchen sets and many more items were procured from Turkey
and transported and distributed in the eastern region. We also received aid
from Hope & Aid Direct, a charity that provide aid in Eastern Europe where a
40 fi container was sent from carefully selected supplies of donated items.
With regard to this, the first paragraph, in this section:
1. Can Hand In Hand for Syria explain why it is so vague and why no financial
figures are mentioned, let alone explained?
2. Can Hand in Hand for Syria explain why it is that they claim to deliver some of
the material ,such as those from Shelterbox to the Syrian end user but that
some of their partners deliver other goods?
3. Can Hand in Hand for Syria clarify whether, as they claim in their website and
elsewhere, they deliver all goods to the Syrian end user themselves or
whether, as they claim here, others help them in that regard?
4. Can Hand In Hand for Syria clarify whether they deliver the goods mentioned
here to the ISIS controlled governate of Deir Ezzor or whether one or more of
their partners do and, if the latter is the case, which of their partners do so?
5. Given that Hope & Direct Aid is, by Hand in Hand for Syria’s impressive
standards, a relatively modestly sized group, can Hand in Hand for Syria
quantify the amount of help they secured from Hope & Direct Aid?
6. Can Hand In Hand for Syria clarify what criteria were used and by whom to
select the items to transport in the 40 ft. container mentioned above and what
goods survived the final cut? Can Hand In Hand for Syria provide the relevant
paper trail?
Other projects are listed but not limited to the below:- School bags appeal Flour shipment and supply to Deir Ezzor Ik Horns.- Buying Flour in areas
heavily affected by the conflict.- Food distribution in Deir Ezzor, Horns,
Damascus, Idlib & Daraa - Careful distribution of Baby Milk in Horns in
association with Human Aid - Fully support 2 schools inside the city of Horns 254
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Support schools in Idlib and Hama provinces with school bags and classroom
kits.- Eid Party for the children in Damascus - Support bakeries in order to
provide free bread or subsidise the cost. So runs the next piece of this section.
Although most of these “petty cash” projects, though important in themselves, are
not worth commenting on or questioning here, there are a few which stand out:
1. Can Hand in Hand for Syria confirm that they distributed the food mentioned
themselves in Damascus and Deir Ezzor and if either the Syrian Arab Army or
ISIS presented them with any quantifiable and verifiable difficulties?
2. Can Hand In Hand for Syria confirm if any of the 15 operatives they lost in
government controlled areas were as a result of these operations?
3. Can Hand In Hand for Syria provide further detail on the two schools inside
the city of Homs which they fully supported? Were those two schools in the
relatively small old quarter of Homs, which the Syrian Arab Army regularly
shelled during the entire year in question or were the schools in the rest of the
city, which was under the control of the Syrian Arab Army fir the whole of the
year in question? Alternatively, were the schools in the outlying El Waer area
which al Nusra and allied terrorist criminal gangs still control?
4. If those schools were in the old city of Homs when the criminal terrorist gangs
controlled it, will Hand in Hand for Syria confirm who invited them in and when
and if they evacuated the schools? If the two schools are or were in the
outlying El Waer area, will Hand In Hand for Syria admit that they should not
have been described as being “inside the city of Homs”.
Coordination
So reads the heading to the next section which consists of three separate
sentences which are reproduced hereunder and which lead to a number of
further questions.
We regularly attend and feed into different coordination groups in order
to better reach areas that are desperate for help and avoid duplication.


Can Hand In Hand for Syria give details, including a paper trail, of
those meetings as well as the names of the various groups they
interact with?
Can Hand in Hand for Syria see that their failure to give even the
sketchiest details on their partners casts doubts on their entire
operation and makes independent and fair-minded researches think,
rightly or wrongly, they have something to hide?
We work closely with UN OCHA and feedback using the 3W & 4W forms.

Can Hand in Hand for Syria confirm that these forms are like those
referred to here http://tinyurl.com/n4mncqx and are of no real
consequence when assessing how closely or not a crew works with
UNOCHA?
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
If that is the case, will Hand in Hand for Syria agree that it is misleading
of them to say “we work closely with UN OCHA and feedback using the
3W & 4W forms” as the casual reader might infer Hand in Hand for
Syria were doing something more than filling up forms.
We are in the Steering Committee for NGO Forum in Turkey which
includes 38 INGOs operating from Turkey and this is another good way
to coordinate our efforts and discuss new partnerships and agree on
areas that can be covered.
1. As all of these groups work from Turkey, can Hand in Hand for Syria
confirm how free each of them is from political or other pressure from
both Turkey and the proxy murder gangs such as al Nusra, the Free
Syrian Army and ISIS Turkey has let loose on Syria.
2. Can Hand In Hand for Syria provide more information and a paper trail
on these groups and their meetings so that their independence and
denominational and political leanings may be better assessed?
3. Will Hand In Hand for Syria admit that, without such detail, these
comments amount to little more than glib platitudes?
Capacity Building: So reads the heading to the next section. It begins as follows:
Our partnerships allow us to learn from each partner the different reporting
requirements and also invest in our staff. We have the advantage of being
trained by their staff and get our expenses covered like staff incentives and
office rent etc. With regards to these two sentences:
1. Can Hand in in Hand for Syria confirm if they are learning British reporting
requirements from their partners in Turkey and Syria, who those partners are,
how they are competent to advise on these matters and why such work is not
done through a proper British-based governance structure?
2. With regard to the events covered in BBC Panorama’s controversial Saving
Syria’s Children programme, can Hand In Hand for Syrian confirm if their
Atareb or other employees were on such a trip on the day the attack
happened and, if so, who organised that trip and who replaced them for the
day at Atareb Hospital?
3. Can Hand In Hand for Syria confirm why they need such help from these
anonymous groups?
Recently, we hired a consultant with 17 years of experience in the
Humanitarian Field to come and train all the teams on all aspects of
humanitarian work and project management including different reporting
requirement. The recruitment is a long term one and provide on the job
training. With regard to these two oddly-structured sentences:
1. Can Hand in Hand for Syria confirm who they hired and on what conditions
that person was hired?
2. Can Hand in Hand for Syria confirm if this person is one of their (two only?)
permanent employees, given that “the recruitment is a long term one and
provide on the job training”.
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3. Can Hand in Hand reveal the identity of this mystery employee and how that
person is qualified “to come and train all the teams on all aspects of
humanitarian work and project management including different reporting
requirement”, as this seems a pretty tall and very wide brief for any one
individual to be able to competently discharge?
Education and Community empowerment: So reads the heading to the next
section which runs to about nineteen lines in all. The first ten lines boasts of how
Hand in Hand for Syria distributed UNESCO books, Korean pens as well as
“numerous book bags and educational materials to schools inside Syria provided by
private sponsors and shelterbox”. Because these belong in the “petty cash” category,
they will not be commented upon further.
The section continues as follows: “In 2013 Hand in Hand for Syria set up two
schools in the city of Horns for orphans, providing fee education to 250
orphans (aged from nursery up). Hand in Hand for Syria also sponsors 42
families taking care of orphans in the North of Syria”.

Can Hand in Hand for Syria confirm if those two Homs schools are the two
mentioned earlier and can Hand in Hand for Syria answer the questions
asked about them?
 Can Hand in Hand for Syria provide details as to how they hired staff and how
they checked the employees against sex abuse and similar registers?
 Can Hand In Hand for Syria provide details, including a verifiable paper trail,
on these schools so that donors and others can be assured neither their
employees nor any of the terrorists sexually or otherwise abused the children?
 Can Hand in Hand for Syria explain how the 42 families selected for
sponsorship were chosen and if any nepotism was involved? Can Hand in
Hand for Syria clarify if minorities are included in these 42 families and if the
efficacy of this enterprise can be independently verified?
 Can Hand In Hand for Syria verify what financial provisions have been made
to cater for these families both over the shorter and longer terms?
This section continues as follows: In 2013 we also took a turn towards providing
opportunities for those who had lost their bread winners to support
themselves. We have facilitated and funded the opening of several workshops
and food kitchens in parts of Syria, which have been the worst hit in recent
events. Each project is run by local people and employs up to 15 people, The
projects offer the chance to rekindle skills (or to learn new ones) and provide
routine, constructive ways to employ time, and opportunities for
companionship and teamwork. They also generate an income, which has been
earned rather than handed out.
With regard to this section:
1. Can Hand in Hand for Syria be more specific and more precise?
2. Can Hand in Hand for Syria clarify with whom did they take turns providing
these opportunities?
3. Can Hand in Hand for Syria clarify in what specific areas such as woodwork,
knitting or computer programming have these specific projects been initiated?
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Who assessed the viability of those projects? What seed capital and
mentoring system was put in place for them? Who monitors and controls
them? What are the commercial success and failure rates of those projects
and how do they compare with similar projects elsewhere? How are the
internal human resource management of enterprises with up to fifteen people
handled?
ACHIEVEMENT AND PERFORMANCE: Charitable activities reads the title of the
last page of the Trustee’s report, which sits just before the auditor’s remarks. This
page begins as follows: Hand in Hand for Syria also organised an Eid party in
August 2013 for children in Damascus who have been greatly impacted by the
crisis that severely affected their local areas. 1000 children attended this
festival. In addition to this Hand in Hand for Syria distributed meat according
to the annual religious tradition to needy families in 2013, Hand in Hand for
Syria ensured that this meat was bought locally to help the local economy as
well as provide a hearty meal to families living in areas where meat is very
rarely seen.
Although this is again petty cash stuff when juxtaposed with their hospitals, it does
lead to a number of further important questions:
1. Are Hand In Hand for Syria claiming they had 1,000 children at a party in
government-controlled and that the authorities heard nothing about that party,
which happened around the time of the nearby Ghouta chemical gas attacks?
2. Who authorised this party and were the children accompanied by their
guardians?
3. Were those in charge of the party vetted regarding child sex abuse and the
like?
4. If this party was not held in government-controlled Damascus, taking in mind
the claims made on their website and elsewhere, what specifically do Hand in
Hand for Syria claim to do in government-controlled areas, those in
Damascus included?
Convoys and containers: reads the title of the next small section of the
Trustee’s report. Its nine lines give summary details of materiel they “sent to
Turkey”, no doubt for use and distribution in terrorist-controlled areas of the
Syrian Arab Republic. Although the section concludes with this sentence: “Hand
in Hand for Syria also assisted and helped to facilitate two Medical Aid convoys
from the UK to Syria in 2012-2013, it gives no detail of what other groups took
part in that convoy (the interested reader is referred to the main piece here).
FINANCIAL REVIEW Reserves policy is the title of the next section which runs
to only one sentence as follows: During this first period of activity the
trustees sought to distribute the majority of the funds received by the
charity to the many needy beneficiaries within and outside Syria.
This single sentence indicates an approach that is very much at variance with
how mainstream and more established charities, which build up reserves for the
inevitable rainy day, work. The impression given here is that, as with the belated
Atareb fund-raising fiasco, Hand in Hand for Syria intend to work form one
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artificial or genuine crisis to the next. If so, this would indicate that they should not
be the charity of choice for established or financially conservative groups wishing
to help civilians caught up in the parts of Syria under terrorist control.
FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS is the title of the next section which runs to two
sentences as follows: It has become clear that the impact of the war in Syria
will not be temporary and since the year end date the trustees have taken
steps to build a more substantial infrastructure to carry out the ongoing
work. This has principally involved the creation of a support function in
Turkey, and the identification of non-field hospitals within Syria for which
ongoing support is provided, as well as the continuation of emergency aid
provision.
Though this section says that Hand in Hand for Syria are planning for a longer
term commitment, the evidence seems to indicate, their formidable aid and
publicity garnering skills notwithstanding, that they are not the best vehicle to aid
non-terrorists from Turkey, which is the safe haven from where very much of the
terrorism emanates. Although they are headquarted in Turkey besides the
terrorists of the Free Syrian Army, they have, to date, shown no demonstrably
great aptitude for developing the necessary logistics and command, control and
coordination functions necessary to make an impact on the plight of the civilians
trapped under the yoke of the various terrorist groups plaguing Syria.
The statement that they now wish to focus on non-field hospitals indicate that,
whether by accident or design, they have hitherto concentrated on supplying and
kitting field hospitals for the various terrorist groups, including the Free Syrian
Army, whose flag is at the heart of the logo of Hand in Hand for Syria.
The analysis of the trustees’ report to date indicates that the conclusions of the
original report stand and that, for example, Hand in Hand for Syria cannot
reasonably claim to operate in 90% or even 70% of Syria. They seem largely
confined to the most secure areas the terrorists of the Free Syrian Army and
allied death squad franchises control.
STATEMENT OF TRUSTEES RESPONSIBILITIES reads the next and final
heading before we reach the auditor’s statement. It consists of 18 lines and,
though most likely following a stock format, it makes three important points we
are directly concerned with. These are that:

The accounts must be “a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the
charity.”
 “The trustees are responsible for keeping proper accounting records.”
 The trustees “are also responsible for safeguarding the assets of the
charity and hence for taking reasonable steps for the prevention and
detection of fraud and other irregularities”.
With regard to those three points:

Any accountant or auditor will say that the accounts of any company may be
“a true and fair account” but are not “the true and fair account” because of
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such things as different depreciation methods. That being so, the fact that
these accounts have been audited is no more the end of the story than the
accounts of Enron or various failed banks were audited.
 Because the trustees are responsible” for keeping proper accounting records”,
they should be able to present such accounts if called upon by the appropriate
bodies to do so.
 Because the trustees are also responsible for deterring or minimising fraud,
terrorism-related fraud in particular, they have a patriotic as well as a civic
duty to come clean on the many areas under dispute. There can be no
equivocation on that. Hand in Hand for Syria must clarify each and every area
that is opaque or less than fully transparent. Failure to do so must have
consequences.
REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT AUDITORS TO THE TRUSTEES OF
HAND IN HAND FOR SYRIA reads the next section which takes up the next two
pages of the entire document. This is, as one might reasonably expect, a very
banal offering. In it, the auditors state their duties to the trustees of Hand in Hand
for Syria and state, inter alia, that they have found no major or significant
accounting discrepancies and that there is nothing untoward or apparent that
they have a legal or other duty to report.
The auditors’ statement notwithstanding, the accounts are a matter of significant
public interest and so must be examined to see what, if anything, can be clarified
or improved upon. This examination is standard operating procedure for all such
charities and Hand In Hand for Syria and its allies should be no exception.
THE FINANCIAL ACCOUNTS: These comprise the remaining eight pages of the
document and will now be analysed, subject to the caveat that it is normal to
examine two or more audited years at a time, a chore which is impossible in this
case as Hand In Hand for Syria have only submitted audited accounts for one
year. The statement of financial activities takes one page, the balance sheet a
further page and the notes to the accounts the remaining six pages of the
document. The first two of these, the statement of financial activities and the
balance sheet will be each examined in turn and the notes to the accounts will be
referred to when needed and will then be examined separately, keeping in mind
that, with financial statement analysis, the devil is generally in the detail,
something Hand in Hand for Syria are less than generous with.
Statement of financial activities for the year ended 31 October 2013.
The relevant details are covered in six columns, which red left to right as follows:
Item; Relevant note to the accounts; unrestricted funds, restricted funds, total
funds for the year ended 31 October 2013, total (unaudited?) funds for the period
30 December 20111 to 31 October 2012.

Restricted funds amounted to £390,764 and all of that was spent on either
medical and infrastructure support, or Distribution of food and other relief
supplies. No further detail is given and nor are there any relevant notes to
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the accounts as to how these funds were generated and what, if anything,
it cost to generate them.
 Unrestricted income is listed as £472,163 for the period ended 31 October
2012 and £2,117,649 for the year ended 31 October 2013. Note 2 to the
accounts tells us that, of the total amount of income (both restricted and
unrestricted) for the 2012/3 year, £1,514,570 was in donations and
£993,843 was gifts in kind for charitable distribution.
 The accounts next tell us that the cost of generating the (unrestricted?)
funds was £23,627 and £0 for the restricted funds for the 2012/3 year and
£14,394 for the 2011/2 period. This means that the cost of generating the
fuds was an incredible 1.12%, significantly much lower than most
comparable charities and lower again if we added in the donations in kind.
Hand in Hand for Syria should explain to the wider charity community how
they can perform such find-raising miracles over such a short period of
time.
 The next figure we are presented with is sundry trading costs, which clock
in at a very modest £2806 for the 2012/3 year and a slightly less modest
£4003 for the 2011/2 period. Although note 4 to the accounts has a rather
redundant looking line on this and though the higher 20111/2 cost may be
put down to start-up costs, given the scale of Hand in Hand for Syria’s
operations, these figures are not of major account.
 The next two lines are much more interesting. For the 2012/3 year, they
show an expenditure of £910,156 on medical and infrastructural support
and an expenditure of £1,427,674 for distribution of food and other relief
supplies, with the corresponding figures for the 2011/2 period being
£56,300 and £294,649 respectively. The respective figures for the
restricted funds for the2012/3 year are £216,031 and £174,733
 Those figures seem truly amazing as they imply that, for both years, with
the combined restricted and unrestricted funds, the emphasis has
overwhelmingly been on non-medical relief by a very large factor.
 Those figures are further amazing when we read the trustees’ report
where the big ticket items seem to be exclusively on medical related help
and not on any other form of humanitarian help. Hand in Hand for Syria
should clarify these apparent very large discrepancies.
 The rest of the page seems uncontroversial enough by comparison with
governance costs (accountancy and auditors’ fees and no other expenses)
listed, as well as funds carried forward for both years.
 Though the rest of the page is uncontroversial, trustees’ expenses as well
such items as travel and other expenses for speakers and for trustees and
other officials between Leicester, the London offices and the Surrey
accountancy offices could have been included for the sake of
completeness. The cost of such items as the website could also have
been included for the same reason.
Balance Sheet at 31 October 2013
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The next page gives relatively sketchy details concerning the state of Hand in Hand
for Syria’s balance sheet as at 31 October 2013. The information is arrayed into six
columns reading left to right as follows: the item in question, the relevant note to the
accounts, the amount of the unrestricted fund for the 2012/3 year, the equivalent
restricted fund (£0 in all cases), the total funds for the 2012/3 year and the total
funds for the 2012 year.










The first relevant row summarises Hand in Hand for Syria’s tangible assets,
which are £19,500 for the 2012 year and £0 for the 2013 year. It is truly
amazing that Hand in Hand for Syria have generated such huge funds and
can run such complex operations with no fixed assets and it is something I do
not recall coming across before.
A standard financial analysis tool is return on fixed assets. In the 2013 case,
the analyst would have to divide by zero, giving an infinite return. As such a
result would be a thing of wonder, Hand In Hand for Syria can reasonably
expect their accounts to figure in financial analysis class rooms and text
books worldwide.
Referring as requested to note 11, the reader is told that Hand in Hand for
Syria had vehicles worth £40,337 but that they write them off as a matter of
accounting policy over a period of six months on entry into Syria and so they
do not warrant a mention in their accounts.
This depreciation policy seems amazing and does not seem to accord with
HMRC’s domestic guidelines. One has to wonder how and why they do not
keep such vehicles on the books and get their local employees or helpers to
use them when the six months is up.
Not only does this policy seem bizarre but, going on the figures, Hand In Hand
for Syria seem to operate a very small car pool for the size of their operations.
Given how useful such vehicles would be for terrorists and the welldocumented use of ambulances and other charity vehicles by the terrorists to
commit criminal acts, murder included, it seems amazing that hand in Hand
for Syria are not more protective of such dual use assets?
Given that Mr al Dairi, their trustee who ensconced himself on the Syrian
border by the headquarters of the terrorist Free Syrian Army, claims he
provided all his Syrian based personnel and units with expensive satellite
phones, one might wonder where they are on the balance sheet and over how
long a period do Hand In Hand for Syria discount them?
One might also query what Mr al Dairi uses as transport in Turkey and
whether his vehicle in on the Hand in Hand for Syria books and, if not, why
not.
We are next given the current assets figures which are listed only as “cash at
bank”, with the figures being £83,317 for the 2012 year and £249,051for the
2013 year. Though those figures do not look amiss, one has to wonder why
there are no other current assets besides their various bank accounts.
Creditors, amounts falling due within the year are a modest £4000 for the
2012 year and £16,536 for the 2013 year with, one assumes and note12
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helping some way to clarify, that auditors’ fees take up the lion’s share of
these meagre amounts.
 That said, the very modest figure of £1,730 for taxation and social security for
the 2013 year needs further explanation as it would imply the wage bill is
modest in the extreme and would force the reader to wonder how Hand In
Hand for Syria can be so effective on less than the proverbial shoestring and
on much less than comparable charities would be forced to spend to maintain
a similar degree of effectiveness.
 As there are, oddly perhaps, no current liabilities, net current assets equal
total funds and, note 13 apart, we are almost finished this page.
 Note 13 is primarily of internet as it lists a sum of £390,764 for emergency aid,
a not unremarkable contingency given Syria’s perilous state but a state for
which, unlike other charities, no ongoing contingency fund has been provided.
 The same page next tells us that the Board of Trustees approved the financial
statements and signed them off, with trustees F Sahloul and F al-Dairi
appending their signatures.
 As one of these trustees resides in Turkey and the other in Leicester, it has
not been made plain how both signed them or if any travel was entailed
between Turkey and Leicester and between Leicester and Surrey where the
auditors are based.
NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS
The notes to the accounts, thirteen in all, form the remainder of the document.
Because most of the relevant ones were discussed in the preceding pages, we will
now concentrate on some others that are of import.



Note six, for example, tells us that £5,537 was given to Humanitarian Group
for Syria. No further details are supplied, making one wonder why this
amount was given and who that group are. Although we have earlier
discussed them, this link http://bit.ly/1y9o7k9 as the above screengrab
shows, links a number of groups together as follows. Now, the Charity
Commission is not a member of that group and its members or their
supporters should not pretend they are. This will, of course, be appropriately
reported.
Note 7 discusses management and finance expenditures totalling £253,679
and allocates this huge amount to either management or finance, depending
on the basis of time allocated to each activity. In the absence of a paper trail
of expenditures, that does not seem an adequate explanation of this large
expenditure.
Although there seems to be no mention of note 7 on either the statement of
financial activities or the balance sheet, it seems to refer to the charitable
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


activities in the statement of financial activities where the relevant figures
comprise 16.72% of the total cost of providing medical and infrastructure
support and 7.11% of the total cost of distributing food and other relief
supplies.
These figures of 16.72% and 7.11% need more explanation from Hand in
Hand for Syria both in terms of their absolute percentages and in terms of
their numbers relative to one another and to relevant comparables. Their ad
hoc nature also needs explaining as does the question as to whether there is
a relevant paper trail for them.
Note 9 also needs further explaining so that we know which trustee is being
paid and where. Considering we are assuming that the trustees double, at
least to an extent, as managers, the £27,316 salary quoted here seems
modest in the extreme and no doubt financial ratio classes and textbooks
worldwide would be interested in this remarkable return on funds for civil
society.
Note 10 on staff costs of an impressively low £2000 for the period 20
December 2011 to 31 October 2012, and £72,061 for the year ended 31
October 2013 need some more explanation such as details on the four staff
hired, their respective salaries, how they were hired and whether
background police checks were done in them. The same applies to their star
trainer that the trustees mentioned in the report.
APPENDIX THREE: Further Screengrabs without Comment of various pages
concerning Mr El Arefe’s connections with Hand in Hand of Syria and groups
associated with it.
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APPENDIX FOUR: The Fallen: Lest We Forget
Alan Henning, the British aid worker beheaded by ISIS terrorists in al Raqqa where
Hand in Hand for Syria claim to operate.
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Dr Hallam in a screengrab from Panorama’s controversial Saving Syria’s Children
documentary. In the background can be seen the flag of the terrorist Free Syrian
Army.
Screengrab of a Hand in Hand for Syria aid truck. The flag of the terrorist Free
Syrian Army is openly displayed and the burly man on the left has a Hand in Hand
for Syria hoodie emblazoned with the same terrorist flag embedded in Hand in Hand
for Syria’s logo.
Brothers in Arms: A group of masked and armed terrorists pose together with the
flags of the terrorist ISIS and Free Syrian Army prominently displayed. These groups
have conducted many joint atrocities together in Syria. Hand in Hand for Syria claim
they can operate freely in areas these gangs of gunmen control.
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Innocents Abroad: The pictures above shows Greta Ramelli and Vanessa Marzullo,
two young and naiive Italian supporters of the Free Syrian Army terrorist group who
were kidnapped in Aleppo before being violated and, as has happened to so many
others, sold to the ISIS terror gang. The second picture shows supporters of the Free
Syrian Army and of Israel protesting together. The point of these photographs is not
to point to collusion between Israel and Syrian terrorists on the one hand and/or the
terrorists of the Free Syrian Army and ISIS on the other but to say that Hand in Hand
for Syria, on the advice of Nelson’s, should follow the British government’s sound
and solid advice and not be encouragining innocents like Ramelli and Marzullo to
enter terrorist-controlled areas where fates worse than death await and nor should
Hand in Hand for Syria be soliciting contributions to enable others to perform such
reckless acts.
The above is one of many screengrabs showing Hand in Hand for Syria officials and
their associates protesting against the Syrian government. This youtube video
http://tinyurl.com/lnujf64 pleads with Hand in Hand for Syria to produce at least one
instance where they have condemned the atrocities of the Syran rebels, with whose
supporters they primarily appear to consort. The video says they have not found one
single instance of Hand in Hand for Syria criticising, let alone condemning the
terrorist outrages.
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In response to the video, a poster commented as follows: They seem to be nonIslamist but avoid or attack the Syrian Government and coordinate with Muslim
brotherhood-linked terrorist groups. They are secretive about their links inside the
country and their claim to be 'active in 90% of the country' is clearly false. I wrote to
them (24/12/14) asking 'Hi - do you coordinate with the Syrian Ministries of Health
and Social Welfare? Thanks', and got this evasive answer the same day '‘We
coordinate with all parties working on the ground and actively take part in different
working groups in order to ensure aid reach those in desperate need and to avoid
duplication. We are also involved with the UN and it's agencies …’ Moonthana
Ahsana.
Although the Syrian Minister for Health and Social Welfare obviously do not work fulltime on the ground, very many people and organisation do in government-held Syria.
Irrespective of Moonthana Ahsana’s “evasive answer”, Hand in Hand for Syria have,
as already shown, made it abundantly clear that they operate covertly, if at all, in
government-held Syria and therefore do not “coordinate with all parties working on
the ground and actively take part in different working groups in order to ensure aid
reach those in desperate need and to avoid duplication”. Of course, Hand in Hand
for Syria can easily clarify this matter as can Ms Ahsana. Nelson’s should inform
Hand in Hand for Syria that their blatant failure to obey the Brtiish Government’s
norms for operating in Syria is a major governance failing and one they must be held
accountable for.
Prisoner in a Free Syrian Army torture chamber. The prisoner is being tortured,
par for the course for their prisoners. The original article/letter discussed the token
medical treatment prisoners of the Free Syrian Army receive. Hand in Hand for Syria
should inform all interested bodies of what, if any treatment, they have given to those
the Free Syrian Army have abducted, or if they bother treating such people at all.
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A Free Syrian Army terrorist slits the throat of a Syrian Christian and another
makes sure to capture it on camera for propaganda and voyeuristic reasons.
Independent researcher Rinaldo Francesca claims he has not found one instance of
Hand in Hand for Syria condemning such activities, even though he has found plenty
of them condemning the Syrian government and its officials. It should be noted that
such atrocities and grizzly summary executions were an integral part of the rebels’
modus operandi from the very beginning, when the Free Syrian Army was Syria’s
main terrorist grouping and when rival gangs like al Nusra and ISIS had yet to
establish themselves.
It is now accepted that the rebels fund themselves, at least in part, by harvesting,
most likely with the help of trained medics, the organs of their captives. Although
there is no suggestion Hand in Hand for Syria had any hand in this, independent
researcher Rinaldo Francesca claims he has not found one instance of Hand in
Hand for Syria condemning such activities, even though he has found plenty of them
condemning the Syrian government and its officials.
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Free Syrian Army commander Abu Sakkar eats the organs of a captured Syrian
soldier. The BBC later interviewed Free Syrian Army “celebrity” Abu Sakkar in an
“exclusive” here http://tinyurl.com/ppw3f57 about his culinary experiences. When
asked to comment, Free Syrian Army leader Salim Idris asks: Why do our friends in
the West focus on this? The reason I suspect that even the Western friends and
enablers of The Free Syrian Army focused for a while on that particular atrocity is
that, even for them, cannibalism is hard to stomach. That Salim Idris cannot
comprehend that is, at first glance, quite amazing until we recall that Idris took
personal command of the August 2013 invasion of Latakia which included the
abduction of several hundred local women and children, most of whom remain
missing, either dead, sold into sexual slavery or stripped down for organ harvesting.
That being so, there is, in essence, no moral difference between Mr Sakkar and Mr
Idris. If anything, Idris is worse than the cannibal who chose to serve Idris and who
the BBC regard as a prize catch for their News bulletins.
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Free Syrian Army cannibal and BBC superstar Abu Sakkar: This authoritative
German-language blog http://tinyurl.com/q6lc4b6 reports that this Free Syrian Army
barbarian alive, well and committing more war crimes in Idleb with the Free Syrian
Army, whose flag forms part of the logo of Hand in Hand for Syria. Graphic
Warning: Given it deals with the Free Syrian Army, much of its content is quite
distressing.
War Crimes of the Free Syrian Army Godfathers: The photos above show Free
Syrian Army godfather Salim Idris (above top left with the flag/logo of the terrorist
Free Syrian Army emblazoned into it) personally overseeing war crimes in Latakia.
These war crimes included the abduction of hundreds of local women and children
(bottom picture), most of whom remain missing, either dead, sold into sexual slavery
or stripped down for organ harvesting. The photo top right, shows Free Syrian Army
godfather Ahmed Jarba inspecting the sacked Armenian town of Kesab; such was
the infamy of this savage assault that even America’s leaders were moved to
condemn the Free Syrian Army’s destruction of Kesab, the execution of dozen of its
citizens and the kidnapping of its elderly residents as war crimes.
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Latakia War Crimes of the Free Syrian Army whose flag was emblazoned on the
logo of Hand in Hand for Syria: See here http://tinyurl.com/puazut8 for a
comprehensive account. War criminal Sam Idriss, who personally supervised the
slaughter, now prefers the al Nusra franchise over that of the Free Syrian Army,
which perpetrated some of the worst war crimes of the Syrian conflict.
Latakia Sex Slaves: The Free Syrian Army, whose flag forms part of the logo of
Hand in Hand for Syria, sold these women and children as sex slaves and as human
body spare parts to the al Nusra franchise, which power broker Sam Idriss now
supports.
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British Conservative Party entertain notorious terrorist leader Ahmad al Jarba,
whose war crimes in Kasab have been even condemned by American war hawk
Samantha Power. Jarba is pictured above during the Rape of Kasab, surrounded by
Free Syrian Army and ISIS terrorist leaders. Hand in Hand for Syria are, whether
they like it or not, part of the march of these disgusting people towards respectability,
towards power and towards yet more atrocities. The fact that this further massacre
of Armenians was given respectability as we get ready to commemorate the 100th
anniversary of the Armenian genocide makes it all the more galling, much more so
than the innocuous turns of phrase of the Syrian President Hand in Hand for Syria’s
media sympathisers find repellent.
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Although this Al Jajeera link http://tinyurl.com/lshu7vg points to the notorious
Turkmen fifth columnists Jarba is photographed with as being amongst the primary
culprits for the sack of Kesab, independent researcher Rinaldo Francesca claims he
has not found one instance of Hand in Hand for Syria condemning such activities,
even though he has found plenty of instances of them condemning the Syrian
government and its officials. I expect to find out even more information on these
atrocities when I return to Syria at the end of April.
CRIMES AGAINST WOMEN
What am I bid? The photos above show a leading Free Syrian Army extremist
supporter calling for the mass rape of women, and young Yezidi girls being sold into
sexual slavery in the rebel stronghold of Raqqa where Hand in Hand for Syria and at
least one group affiliated to them both claim to operate. Countless reports indicate all
rebel groups regard the possession and abuse of such “war booty” as their right.
The letter/article Nelson’s complained about discussed the rather blase attitude
some workers associated with Hand in Hand for Syria had towards the victims and
perpetrators of the sex crimes of the Free Syrian Army and related terrorists. These
crimes include, as the photos indicate, supporters and/or spokepeople for the Free
Syrian Army terrorists advocating raping or otherwise abusing women or other
vulnerable Syrians and selling women as well as young girls and boys as sex slaves
in towns like Raqqa that Hand in Hand for Syria and its affiliates claim to operate in.
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Independent researcher Rinaldo Francesca claims he has not found one instance of
Hand in Hand for Syria condemning such activities, even though he has found plenty
of them condemning the Syrian government and its officials.
Lema Habeel (above left) Burnt alive by Free Syrian Army, Hama, Syria, late March
2015.
Burnt Alive: Lema Habeel and other victims are the Free Syrian Army are laid to
rest, Maboujah, Syria, April 2015.
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Free Syrian Army executed school teacher Roula Alzeir (above, centre) in front
of her children because he met the Syrian President (above left) and his wife( above
right), Idlib, Syria, April 2015.
The Moderate Free Syrian Army Looting Idlib: This was their modus operandi in
Kessab and other towns. It works like this: Turkish Intelligence draws up the battle
plans. Then the Coalition of the Killing – the various death squad franchises enlisted
for the task at hand – do their worst in accordance with the roles ascribed them. The
Chechens and Tunisians do a good deal of the heavy fighting, the Free Syrian Army,
along with the Turkmen and other riff raff, concentrate more on the photo
opportunities as well as the wholesale looting that takes place. The looting is an
important part of Turkey’s overall strategy, which is to bankrupt the “liberated” areas
and to turn them into protectorates, depending on looting, extortion and, above all,
Turkey’s good graces.
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Free Syrian Army Do the Looting: After Jordan allowed al Nusra terrorists launch an
attack on the border crossing with Syria in April 2015, the crossing quickly fell, with
considerable loss of (Syrian) life. As al Nusra beheaded their prisoners, the riff raff of
the Free Syrian Army terrorists, as they had previously done in Kessab, Aleppo, Idlib
and elsewhere, looted all round them.
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BRITISH FRIENDS TO ROYALTY, HOSTAGES IN SYRIA
John Cantlie, friend of the Royal Family: Held by London “Cockney jihadists”,
including an English NHS doctor, who Hand in Hand for Syria say we should not
concern ourselves about.
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The above photos show a number of British subjects who were kidnapped by the
Free Syrian Army and sold as war booty to ISIS. These unfortunate victims shown
above include the following: Alan Henning, an apolitical, selfless and voluntary
British aid worker who was decapitated by ISIS on 3 October 2014, after being sold
to them by his Free Syrian Army kidnappers; David Haines, a British aid worker, who
met the same grizzly fate on 13 September 2014; and John Cantlie, a personal
friend of the Royal Family, who remains unaccounted for at the time of writing. These
three British subjects were kidnapped in areas controlled by different rebel factions
and at least two of them were brutally slaughtered in Raqqa, the ISIS stronghold
where Hand in Hand for Syria claim to be active in. Independent researcher Rinaldo
Francesca claims he has not found one instance of Hand in Hand for Syria, which
claims to operate openly in all of those areas, condemning such activities, even
though he has found plenty of instances of them condemning the Syrian government
and its officials.
DEATH TO THE CROSS WORSHIPPERS
Bishops Yohanna Ibrahim and Boulos Yazigi: Believed kidnapped, tortured and
murdered by the Free Syrian Army, whose flag is on the logo of Hand in Hand for
Syria. The original war cry of the moderate Free Syrian Army rebels was Alawites to
the tomb; Christians to Beirut. Because the moderate rebels now rape and behead,
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as a matter of routine, Christians, Druze and other minorities, I feel my life as a
Christian has been imperilled by the actions of Hand in Hand for Syria.
Father Ibrahim Farah: Kidnapped in Idlib City by Free Syrian Army, late March
2015.
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Catholic priest Francois Murad, kidnapped and beheaded by terrorists aligned
to the Free Syrian Army whose flag formed part of the logo of Hand in Hand for
Syria, which operates openly in the area of Syria he was slaughtered in. I too am a
Catholic and am very well aware what the Free Syrian Army terrorists think of us.
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Egyptian Copts, Cross worshippers as the Syrian terrorists call them, being
lined up and slaughtered on a Libyan beach by ISIS allies for no other crime than
being Christians. Prince Charles and, I pray, other members of the Royal Family, has
quietly donated a sum of money to the relatives of these victims in tribute, no doubt,
to their suffering and that of their co-religionists but also as a tribute to John Cantlie,
a personal friend of the Royal Family, and who remains unaccounted for at the time
of writing. Independent researcher Rinaldo Francesca claims he has not found one
instance of Hand in Hand for Syria, which claims to operate openly in all of those
areas, condemning such activities, even though he has found plenty of instances of
them condemning the Syrian government and its officials.
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APPENDIX FIVE: Hand in Hand for Syria Twitter and other screenshots. These
are given to allow the reader form a more rounded picture about Hand in Hand
for Syria and the work they do.
Here, Hand in Hand for Syria say they will not disclose any of the addresses of the
hospitals they say they run. Yet, they expect to be allowed raise funds without even
the most superficial independent scrutiny.
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Here, Hand in Hand for Syria highlight their Aleppo and Idleb depots which are most
likely in areas controlled by al Nusra and the even more extreme Khorasan group as
only the most fanatical of terrorists remain in control there. Hand in Hand for Syria
seem to have no problem collaborating with these cut throats and in driving trucks
and materiel in and out of Aleppo or Idleb. I have no similar screenshots available of
their activities in government-controlled areas.
In the above screenshot, Hand in Hand for Syria argue that donations are better
given to them than to the larger charities which follow the rules, who practice due
diligence, who do not operate clandestinely in Syria and who try not to put their
volunteers and staff at risk.
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APEPENDIX SIX: Savaging Syria’s Sister Agnes
By Dr Declan Hayes
My good friend, the late Shiekh, Cheikh Mohammad Izzat Al Matroud,
assassinated by Free Syrian Army terrorists, late March 2015. They lured him to
his death because they knew he was a peace negotiator prepared to walk the extra
mile to save any life he could. He leaves a widow and young family. Those named in
the article which follows must take their share of the blame for his murder.
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Savaging Syria’s Sister Agnes
By Dr Declan Hayes
This article surveys the sinister figures who pressurised the British-based Stop the
War Coalition (stopwar.org) into blackballing Syrian-based nun and Stop the Syrian
War activist Fadia Laham, better known as Mother Agnes Mariam of the Cross. The
article is useful in that it shows that a small clique of fantasists and Internet trolls can
bully real-time organisations to abandon their supposed moral positions for the sake
of placating a brace of worthless narcissists. Although the article demonstrates that
these trolls, many of whom are under prolonged psychiatric care, have no real
credibility, it does show that groups allied to them, such as the extremist Syrian
Muslim Brotherhood, are a real and credible threat not only to life and limb in Syria
but in Britain and Ireland as well.
The Facts in Brief: A group of us invited Laham to London and Dublin in late
November 2013 to address politicians, church leaders and concerned citizens about
the violence besetting Syria. When members of stopwar.org heard she would be in
London, she was invited to speak at their conference. Laham accepted and her
details circulated as part of their publicity.
At the same time, Clare Daly, the prominent left-wing Irish MP, agreed to host her at
Leinster House, Dublin’s parliament, on Wednesday 27th November. Finally, a public
meeting chaired by me was advertised for Sunday 24th November in a North London
hall run by followers of Mahatma Gandhi, where Laham was scheduled to speak with
Mairèad Maguire, the Irish Nobel Peace Prize winner and Dr Halla Diyab, a
prominent media personality and opponent of the Syrian government.
Figure 1: Public Enemy Number 1. Fadia Laham is in the top-left corner. Pro-war
activists persuaded Owen Jones and American book seller Jeremy Scahill to
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withdraw from the meeting if Laham was allowed to speak. Laham withdrew to
preserve the peace.
That is when things turned very ugly. The London hall, Dr Diyab and the Dublin office
of Clare Daly were all subject to non-stop anonymous phone calls and emails
demanding that they distance themselves from Laham and that the meetings
scheduled with her be cancelled. As a result of this intimidation, which included
Leeds University extremist Christine Gilmore abusing Sr Catherine Wynbourne, a
columnist with the Catholic Universe newspaper, one of our organisers sent an email
dated Friday 24 November to the Metropolitan police warning them to expect trouble
at the London meeting as a gang of thugs “led by Christine Gilmore of Leeds Uni
who wrote in praise of arch murderer Qaradawi” had promised to do their worst. The
meeting, without overt police protection, went ahead even though Gilmore and her
henchmen did attend and disrupted it, even going so far as to intimidate the small
Syrian children who actually saved the day and maintained peace and some sort of
normality in the face of these extremists.
Figure 2: Holding the Line in Cricklewood. Syrian children faced down extremists
“led by Christine Gilmore of Leeds Uni who wrote in praise of arch murderer
Qaradawi.”
Figure 3: NHS doctor Dr Mohammed Najjar, who disrupted the Cricklewood
meeting, is an outspoken supporter of the terrorist Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.
Because this goon and his henchmen make many Syrian expatriates frightened for
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their lives and the lives of their families, he should be approached, if at all, only with
extreme caution.
Although Gilmore and her band of thugs deliberately disrupted the meeting, the real
threat came from the likes of NHS doctor Dr Mohammed Najjar who, by all accounts,
proudly displays on his smart phone a picture of himself witnessing Al Nusra behead
a Syrian soldier; he apparently even boasts about presiding over rebel kangaroo
courts sentencing prisoners to death. Although I personally tried to restrain Naijar, it
was clear to me and to all the Syrians present that he is clearly a very disturbed and
very dangerous man, who should not be approached under any circumstances by
unarmed civilians.
Figure 4 Dr Mahrous al Soud, the Manchester-based fanatic,
The same applies to Dr Mahrous al Soud, the Manchester-based fanatic, who flits
between a lucrative practice there and Syria’s front lines where, as the pictures
show, he likes to gorge himself on commandeered food, pose in battle fatigues with
armed criminals and loll about under the black flag of the ruthless al Nusra terrorist
group. These NHS doctors were the type of flotsam the brave young Syrian children
faced down at that meeting.
However, despite the best efforts of these children, the fanatics did score some
successes, at least by their own sick yardsticks. Two of the speakers at stopwar.org
threatened to withdraw if Laham was allowed to speak and the supine Irish media,
unlike their British counterparts, did not take up efforts to interview Laham; this was
unusual as Laham had previously been interviewed on Irish TV and radio and,
crucially, Amnesty International, had one of their mouthpieces on the Irish airwaves
only the day before pushing their “humanitarian bombing” line on Syria.
When the Laham visit was finished, I prepared to leave London but not before
receiving a phone call from Hampshire police, saying that Christine Gilmore had
lodged a complaint against me and that I better prepare to face the music from them
for it.
All of that, coupled with the subsequent police raid on my house, done on the basis
of Gilmore’s frivolous complaint, kept me very busy and it is only now that I am
finding the time to look at who was behind this terror campaign against me, against
Laham and, more importantly, against the children and people of Syria. They are, as
we shall see, a motley crew of mentally disturbed Internet fantasists, Muslim
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Brotherhood fanatics and utter hypocrites. And yet these sad, sick souls are who
stopwar.org, the media and mainstream politicians take their marching orders from.
Summary of what follows: Working on this http://bit.ly/1zUa2S3 and other prior work,
I review the 55 agitators who signed the dishonest letter bullying stopwar.org into
distancing itself from Laham and the Syrian peace process. Although this link
http://bit.ly/1zUa2S3 does discuss some of the signatories I do not, we serve slightly
different purposes, mine being to show the signatories are fundamentally dishonest
and so, at best, are obstacles to peace. Of those I did not discuss below, some
claim, aping Donnacha DeLong, give their trade union affiliation as if that qualifies
them to speak on Syria. I know some of these so-called trade unionists and they all
come from the utterly useless Trotsykist micro-left, who see unions, wars, students
and all else as a means to further their irrelevant political circles. Another not
insignificant minority are Arabs who support the Syrian terrorists and are not worth
discussing within a British framework except to say that they show some of the
bridges.
Owen Jones: Owen Jones, a self-styled British left-winger, was one of two
proposed speakers to intimidate stopwar.org; the other was American Jeremy
Scahill, who was in London to pimp his latest book, the narcissistic sensationalism of
which should probably feature on an episode of The Simpsons. Although Scahill was
the bigger fish, it is the toady Jones that concerns us here.
In defending his intimidation of the stopwar.org organisers, Jones’ blog explains 23, he
was persuaded to withdraw by “persistent, passionate and in some cases angry …
activists” who “were - in many cases - opponents of Western intervention. They
simply objected to the presence of this particular individual at an anti-war
conference.” This article will focus on Jones’ hidden persuaders, who share many of
Jones’ proclivities.
Jones claims he quickly “researched” into Laham’s background and then decided
she, unlike him, had no place at an anti-war conference. Jones’ blog then recites the
hoary old charges against Laham: she casts doubt on the Ghoutta massacre, the
non-existent “Syrian Christians for Peace” group have asked for her to be
excommunicated and “A Jesuit priest named Father Paolo Dall’Oglio”, (who was
denounced by the Jesuit order and by his bishop for his incendiary speeches) also
denounced her.
Jones, in typical narcissistic form, then incredibly and rather cretinously paints
himself as the victim as he claims he found himself under attack “largely from Assad
supporters” who are presumably all in favour of drowning Syria in rivers of blood,
something Jones would not countenance for, as he explains: “If a pro-war politician
had been invited to the Stop the War conference, I would have refused to share a
platform, too. That’s because an anti-war conference is an event where - despite
http://owenjonesramblings.tumblr.com/post/67573116704/mother-agnes-syria-and-freespeech
23
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differences or nuances in views - everybody is there to make common cause. We
are there as allies, as part of the same movement”.
Jones concludes his pathetic and illogical defence by saying: “Only a peaceful
resolution involving all the key parties can end this unbearable situation. But - in my
view - that does not mean anti-war activists compromising a principled stance
against both Western intervention and Assad’s murderous regime”. In other words,
“the left” and “the activists”, molly-coddled armchair non-activists like himself
included, must be harbingers of peace and bring all sides to the peace-table. All
sides of course, except “Assad’s murderous regime” or anybody like me because of
my representations to “Assad’s murderous regime” on behalf of rebel prisoners or,
heaven forbid, a nun who is actually at the coalface of the Syrian crisis, somewhere
an empty windbag like Jones knows nothing about.
Although we might be expected to laud this nincompoop’s high and lofty principles as
well as the brave “activists” who gave Jones his Damascene moment, let’s briefly
first pause to examine the wretched quality of his cliché-ridden research in terms of
plagiarism and sources, as evidenced in those bog-ordinary clichés Jones trotted
out.
Figures 5, 6: Some of the nuns who were kidnapped from Ma’lulah (pictured above
right, Easter Sunday 2014) stripped of their trademark crosses. Malik the Mole,
whose “research” journalists Owen Jones and Ian Black rely on, consistently denied
they were kidnapped, even though a massive ransom was paid for their high-profile
release.
Malik Little aka Malik the Mole: Most of Jones’ excuses are lifted from the colourful
“work” of a certain Malik Little, who also uses a number of (other?) pseudonyms
such as “NotGeorgeSabra” and “Pham Binh” to spew his bile. Had Jones more time,
he could have thrown in more of Malik’s/Notgeorge’s/Pham’s equally preposterous
accusations at her or he could have pillaged the websites of right-wing extremist
Michael Weiss for mirror-image smears such as those of the late Fr Paolo’s
assertion that Musalaha (Reconciliation), “does not exist on the ground” and his
idiotic criticism of “the role Mother Agnes played in the evacuation of 1,800 starving
civilians from the rebel-held neighborhood of Moadamiya in Damascus”, all of which
are faithfully parroted on the “left-wing” sites Jones rummaged through. But, as
Jones explains, he has a myriad of deadlines to keep and so his “research” could
only go only so far and no further and so he cannot see that the picture below is of
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Laham with the much-esteemed Sunni tribal leader Cheikh Mohammad Izzat Al
Matroud, the leader of the tribe of the Noble Sirs (al Sadat al Ashrâf), who are
related to the Prophet Mohammad via Bani Hashem.
Figure 7: Mother Agnes and Shiekh, Cheikh Mohammad Izzat Al Matroud putting
their lives on the line negotiating a ceasefire. Pro-war advocate Owen Jones is
insistent he, in the safety of his North London bed, has the moral high ground over
genuine peace activists like them.
Cheikh Mohammad, incidentally, arranged for me to go to Ma’alulah on Easter
Sunday under the protection of the Syrian Arab Army and in the company of all of
Syria’s Christian leaders, none of whom have heard of the non-existent “Syrian
Christians for Peace” Jones constantly touts for the simple reason it does not and
never has existed except in the fertile minds of extremist propagandists like Malik the
Mole that gullible fools like Jones rely on as sources. Malik the Mole, incidentally, in
his notgeorgesabra incarnation, repeatedly insisted the Al Nusra “progressives” did
not kidnap the nuns at Ma’lulah but instead removed them for their own safety. And
Jones and Ian Black, who also uses the “research” of Malik the Mole here
http://tinyurl.com/malikmole2 depend on flawed and despicable sources like that.
Cheikh Mohammad, it should be stressed, is, along with those countless other tribal
leaders and moderate Sunnis who have not yet been beheaded by the “moderate”
rebels, very heavily involved on the coalface with the Mussalaha project. Indeed, on
the night Bashar al Assad was confirmed as President, I was with him when he got a
“congratulatory” phone call from a rebel leader who was trying to negotiate through
him the surrender of his 2,000-strong faction. Not only is that good work by a
supposedly non-existent body but it is much better than what the truly non-existent
“Syrian Christians for Peace” phantoms do, in the real world at least. The fact that
Jones is prepared to take his script from crackpots wanting to destroy those peacemaking efforts makes one wonder why stopwar.org bothered inviting this nonentity,
who has absolutely no track record opposing war.
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Figure 8,9: Fadia Laham enters the rebel stronghold of Moadimaya, much to the
consternation of her dishonest critics such as right-wing zealot Michael Weiss who,
in this cretinous Malik the Mole like article http://tinyurl.com/molemalik1 claims, from
extremist rebel sources, Laham “meets daily with Ali Mamlouk, the head of Syria’s
National Security Bureau, and Jamil Hasan, the head of Air Force Intelligence”.
Because even people as biased as Weiss, or as stupid as Jones’ colleague James
Bloodworth, should see that Hasan and Mamlouk could not possibly have the time to
meet anybody, let alone a lowly nun, on a daily basis, Jones should distance himself
from his own hastily-plagiarised research, apologise for his own articles and publicly
promise not to be so obviously stupid in the future. Laham literally took her life in her
hands as several of the rebels wanted to kidnap her and were only stopped by the
local rebel leader who wanted his family evacuated. They are the facts on the
ground, something Jones does not concern his baby-faced head with at all.
Figure 10: Virtual Warriors: Like Shamiwitness, pictured here, Malik Little is a
troubled man, who gets off on preaching mass slaughter on the Internet to exorcise
his own inner demons. Syrians die in droves as a result.
Much like Shamiwitness, who was an Internet pimp for ISIS, Malik the Mole is a very
troubled man. If one trawls through his past writings, one can see he simultaneously
pretends to be British or American, depending on the circumstances and his
immediate virtual audience; he now pretends to be an Arab to get virtual street cred
on the Internet sites he infests. Gadflies like him are not totally harmless; they
spread the disease of hatred. Malik Little, notgeorgesabra, Binh or whatever his real
name is should, like shamiwitness, be held to public account for his crimes against
the Syrian people.
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In his Ho Chi Binh incarnation, Malik the Mole occupied himself with the New York
Occupy movement and the New York-based Working Families Party (I joke not) and
he wrote a number of puerile revolutionary tracts, the risible flavour of which can be
downloaded by masochists here http://links.org.au/node/2836 to explain why a
broad front of like-minded crackpots was needed to achieve revolutionary victory (or
whatever).
Although such a ludicrous Walter Mitty background should debar him both from
protesting at stopwar.org’s line-up of speakers and of being a “source” for Owen
Jones and his chums, it is noteworthy that some of his comrades in arms from those
heady battles of yore were Counterpunch contributor Louis Proyect and “Workers
Power” overlord KD Tait, both of whom also (digitally?) signed the letter of protest
against Laham and both of whom pop up with some of the other signatories in other
obscure virtual struggles at all too regular intervals; in fact, of the 55 crackpots who
signed the open letter of protest to stopwar.org, a significant minority are from
similarly irrelevant and unrepresentative micro Trotskyist-type groups, no matter
what flag of convenience they hide their bile under.
Tait, unlike Malik/Binh/George, seems to be at least British or Irish based and that is
probably why he helped set up the Syria Solidarity Movement which,
uncoincidentally, is the name of the American organisation which hosted Fadia
Laham’s Stateside visit; he like many other non-Syrians, is probably also involved in
the new www.syriansinlondon.com initiative for the same brilliant tactical reasons of
simultaneously confusing “Assad’s murderous regime” and helping the “progressive
Syrian forces”. If stopwar.org really wants to stop war, they should stop having their
policies decided by such immature clowns.
Malik the Mole’s blog http://tinyurl.com/malikmole3 discusses the “work” of fellow
signatory Trotskyist academic Gilbert Achcar, and uses it to opine on whether “the
Left” should side with the populist Muslim Brotherhood or plump for the progressive
wing of Al Nusra instead. Malik tells us that the “rebels” are “progressive compared
to the fascist and autocratic killing machines that the Muslim Brotherhood is
struggling against. …the people chanting and shouting “God is Great” in the streets
of Cairo and Aleppo against Sisi and Assad today are much the same”.
Malik the Mole’s blog tells us that, extrapolating from Gilbert Achcar’s clap trap, there
are two lessons to be had. The first of these is: “The more murderously autocratic
conditions prevail, the more democratic revolutions will need to utilize some or all of
the ‘outdated’ forms of struggle Engels referred to – barricades, street fighting,
guerrilla/partisan warfare, sabotage, clandestine conspiracy – to gain victory. For this
reason, the concepts and practices of protracted war, guerrilla war, and people’s war
developed by Mao Tse-Tung deserve serious study, as do the methods of struggle
developed by Europe’s anti-fascist resistance forces during World War Two”.
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So, there you go, Mr Jones. Malik Little, your most valued source, and one of those
who you allow shape your shallow opinions believes in globalised mass murder.
Figures 11, 12: Kafr Nabl (also spelled Kafranbel or Kafr Nabil), close to the
rebel stronghold of Ma'arrat al-Numan. The PRO of this motley crew where, these
reports http://tinyurl.com/handusa3 http://tinyurl.com/handusa4 say, the rebel
extremists Jabhat Al Nusra have a very sizeable presence, also signed the letter.
Note the call for beheading and the personal attacks on Mother Agnes. The fact of
the matter is these Kafrenbel protests and the Kafrenbel protesters are fakes. The
words for the posters are written by Syrian Muslim Brotherhood scribes in Britain and
Turkey and their fellow-travellers then amplify these messages through fellowtravellers in the media. Isn’t it odd Malik the Mole and Leeds extremist Christine
Gilmore could get in touch with Kafranbel to scrape 55 names together and they
could not get anyone with any credibility in Britain to sign it? The Kafranbel
protesters are as fake as the 55 signatories and the Syrian criminals they support.
Professor Gilbert Achcar Professor Gilbert Achcar’s is the first of the 55 names
that appears on the list objecting to Laham polluting the pristine Stop the War rally 24.
Achcar’s day-time job is as a professor of something or other at London’s School of
Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) whose website informs us here
http://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staff30529.php that “Gilbert's research interests and
publication topics include: the political economy and sociology of globalisation, the
global power structure and grand strategy, empire theory and the unfolding of US
hegemony globally and in the ‘Broader Middle East’, politics and development
economics of the countries of the Middle East and North Africa, the sociology of
religion in general, of Islam and Islamic fundamentalism in particular, social change
and social theory”. So a very wide or global “big picture” but somewhat shallow area
of expertise one could say. Though “Eichmann in Cairo: The Eichmann Affair in
Nasser's Egypt” seems an exception to the rule that Achcar is a boringly banal
broad-brush bloke, such, alas is not the case. Achcar merely flippantly reviews
coverage of the Eichmann trial in the Egyptian press; the infamous Nazi war criminal
never made it to the Pyramids, or those in Egypt at least.
Having established that Gilbert is a broad brush bloke with little capacity for
worthwhile, in-depth analysis, we next must discuss where, why and on what he
ladles his sheen. Gilbert’s current pre-occupation is the misnamed Arab Spring and,
as he hails from Lebanon, we would expect a degree of sophistication and an
24
http://pulsemedia.org/2013/11/20/open-letter-to-the-stop-the-war-coalition/ Here and may other
sites have their names digitally inscribed for future researchers.
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appreciation of the complex forces at work, the type of complexities Cheikh
Mohammad Izzat Al Matroud, discussed above, epitomises.
Such, alas, is not the case. Achcar imposes a simplistic good guys, bad guys
pseudo-Marxist narrative on to the Arab world and argues that we have to make our
choice and, Tinseltown style, ride with either the white hats or the black hats.
Achrar’s role, like that of Paul Conroy, who we later discuss, is to assure us that
NATO and their proxies are the good guys, the progressives as he would call them
and NATO’s “reactionary and counter-revolutionary” targets have to be “terminated
with extreme prejudice”.
Thus, as this article http://tinyurl.com/malikmole4 explains, contrary to his own
belated Blair-like protestations, Achcar was a key propaganda mouthpiece in
convincing the “radical left” to support the “humanitarian bombing” of Libya. As
Gilbert explained: in the “absence of any alternative means of achieving the
protection goal, no one can reasonably oppose it… You can’t in the name of antiimperialist principles oppose an action that will prevent the massacre of civilians.” So
saturation humanitarian bombing and the mass murder it causes are both all right in
this madman’s view.
Malik the Mole-like, Gilbert the Ghastly mislabels NATO’s Libyan proxies “a mixture
of human rights activists, democracy advocates, intellectuals, tribal elements, and
Islamist forces—a very broad coalition … The bottom line is that there is no reason
for any different attitude toward them than to any other of the mass uprisings in the
region.”
Achcar continually demanded that NATO “deliver arms to the insurgency” in Libya
and he even complained they had “only” flown 11,107 devastating sorties against
Libya as against 38,004 sorties in the 1999 war of terror against Serbia over Kosovo.
Not enough humanitarian mass murder for Gilbert the Good, it seems.
The thin veneer of Marxist clichés aside, Achrar can only be seen as a propagandist
for war and as someone who has no interest in stopping any NATO-led war in Syria,
Libya, Iraq or anywhere else. It is, perhaps, for those reasons that this jingoistic site
regards him here http://tinyurl.com/malikmole5 as a “clear-sighted leftist” war-monger
who no doubt knows what side his bread is buttered on. His simplistic pseudoMarxist message that “if we believe in the right of people to freely elect whoever they
want, then even if we had an uprising where Islamic forces were leading, this
shouldn’t change our position” is, even if Owen Jones thinks otherwise, not only
beneath contempt but should instantaneously disqualify him from having any input
into stopwar.org.
Hand in Hand for Syria
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Figure 13: Mohammad Al-Arefe, the extremist Saudi preacher, who is banned from
both Britain and Switzerland because of his outspoken support for armed sectarian
jihad, leads a Hand in Hand for Syria strategy-forming event (where the terrorist
rebel emblem is proudly displayed).
Figures 14, 15: Children hold up fake signs honouring the commitment of the
murdered Alan Henning and Christine Gilmore’s alleged help for al Nusra-controlled
Yarmouk camp. Syrian children would not use the term “RIP”/”R.I.P” and they would
not have sufficient English or familiarity with him to call him “Uncle Gadget”. Look
how clean Yarmouk camp appears and also take in the English lettering on the shop
in the background.
Several more of the signatories such as the ubiquitous Christine Gilmore and Noor
Barotchi who, as this link http://bit.ly/14oxhel shows also supports Israel bombing
Syria, are directly associated with the controversial Hand in Hand for Syria
movement (which I have reported to the police and the Charities Commission for
“financial irregularities”) as well as satellite groups in Leeds and Bradford; both of
them are not all that averse to a “humanitarian war” to bring the Syrian people to
their knees; Hussam Ayloush, as chairman of the notorious Syrian American Council
would, of course, be all for it. Razan Zeitouneh, a “human rights lawyer”, who also
signed the document, has lamented the fact that the West is refusing “to do what it
should do under the pretext of not turning Syria into a second Iraq”, and “to deliver
effective weapons or to create a no-fly zone and safe areas for civilians.” That
anyone such as stopwar.org seeking peace would pay heed to such bloodthirsty
zealots defies belief.
Still, many do. John McDonnell, the Labour MP, admitted that he and other Labour
Lefties had not done enough to support the mercenaries in Syria and pledged to help
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raise the profile of these issues by hosting a meeting in the House of Commons “for
a discussion like this on Syria”, as part of his “People’s Parliament” initiative.
He said this at a think tank, attended by “the usual suspects”, luminaries such as Dr
Rolla Hallam and Shahnawaz Khan, the brother of the late Dr Abbas Khan, the
British doctor, whose death in a Syrian jail so outraged us all some time ago. Further
details and videos of this conference are available here http://tinyurl.com/malikmole6
http://tinyurl.com/malikmole7, thanks to the sterling work of Comrades Malik the Mole
and KD Tait.
Oddly enough, shortly before the Stop the War conference, Laham addressed a
meeting in Westminster where McDonnell’s fellow Labour MP and Stop the War
chairman, Jeremy Corbyn questioned her in some detail. Laham did not manage to
kill or main anyone at that meeting, which McDonnell, perhaps for fears for his
safety, did not attend. Corbyn, who did, managed to survive her guiles and hopefully
tell the tale to McDonnell and others too fearful to see the whites of her Arabic eyes.
Figure 16: Hand in Hand for Syria extremist Christine Gilmore, with Syrian extremist
rebel Ziad Arabi-Katbi who she married in Syria in 2010 after a very brief fling. This
link http://bbc.in/1BztBU2 shows the BBC thought this lost soul important enough to
interview after the House of Commons decided not to bomb Syria because she once
visited Syria to get a husband.
Christine Gilmore felt Laham was such a threat that she brought a mob down from
Leeds to disrupt the public meeting, terrify the children attending it and report me to
the police for casting aspersions on her employability. She is a mature student, a
“permanent student” in her own words, who got romantically tied to Ziad Arabi-Katbi,
a much older Syria rebel, when she visited Damascus in 2010 and who now
campaigns for him to be admitted to the relative safety of Britain but for “Assad’s
Syria” to be bombed back to the Stone Age. Although Ms Gilmore is in Leeds
University to research “Nubian Studies” for a PhD, most of her writings are paeans to
arch-extremist, homophobic Hitler admirer and Muslim Brotherhood High Priest
Yusuf al-Qaradawi as some kind of protector of minorities and enlightened enhancer
of society rather than the intolerant promoter of sectarian slaughter that he is. As
they support the overthrow of the Syrian government, which can only happen by
armed foreign intervention, as they have hosted Ms Iman Mujahed, as they collect
exclusively for Hand in Hand for Syria and as their leading light is a fervent admirer
of arch-bigot Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Leeds Friends of Syria should themselves be
subject to scrutiny and more than a few armed police raids themselves
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Peter Tatchell and Friends
Figures 17-21: Peter Tatchell nails his colours to the mast. He gets off on making
fun of people such as the Pope, Mugabe and Putin, He also has controversial views
on sex with children. Though he has been closely associated with the leading lights
of the discredited Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), the above PIE photo is
most likely a Photoshopped effort by his sexual opponents.
The “Save Civilisation from Syria’s Sister Agnes” signatories do, of course, have a
gentler, more cuddly side. Nisreen al-Zaraee, for example, the pro-rebel
http://www.britishsyriancentre.com/archive/201310 site tells us “is a representative of
the Syrian Non-violence Movement and a consultant on Syrian Civil Society Groups
who is currently living in Leeds” where, this link
http://www.leedsuniversityunion.org.uk/events/16484/7310/ tells us, she feels she is
“treated like a suspect”. So as not to be “treated like a suspect”. Nisreen should
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explain why, like the “usual suspects”, she finds nuns preaching peace so
objectionable. The police should also make her come clean on her contacts with the
Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and its equally sinister satellite groups.
Peter Tatchell, signatory number 47, is, on summary inspection, a surprise inclusion
as he is generally associated with gay rights activism, very bravely if very suicidally
twice trying to do a citizen’s arrest on Robert Mugabe and protesting alongside
dangerous Protestant extremists when Pope Benedict recently visited Britain.
Tatchell, it seems, also wants a Libyan-style ‘no-fly zone’ over Syria, even though a
Libyan-style ‘no-fly zone’ over Syria would unquestionably lead to consequences
even worse than the nightmare that is today’s Libya.
When challenged about his views on Twitter, he says he supports revolutionary
secular Kurds, the same way someone in London might claim to support an obscure
Peruvian or Nigerian football team. When Twitter pointed out to him how morally
untenable his position was, Tatchell, taking a leaf out of his PIE defence, said he
only signed the letter and did not necessarily agree with or even know the others
who signed it. Crucially, he did not spill the beans on who got him to sign it or what
they had over him to get him to sign it.
Though Tatchell might like to pretend he is not in bed with the other pro-war
signatories, in the past, as this link shows http://tinyurl.com/malikmole8 Tatchell has
campaigned for "tanks, helicopter gun-ships, fighter planes, heavy artillery and antitank and anti-aircraft missiles" to be sent to Iraqi rebels even as he commendably if
rather quixotically claims here http://tinyurl.com/malikmole9 "I remain committed to
the Gandhian principle of non-violence", a point of some interest as Laham’s London
meeting was held in a Gandhian hall, whose Gandhian custodians, like their
American counterparts, were continually abused by phone and by email by “the
usual suspects” and where the meeting itself was thuggishly disrupted by some of
his fellow signatories in a most un-Ghandhian and very unpleasant manner. Again,
Tatchell should come clean on his involvement in organising this whole sordid affair.
Though he was taken to task for his shameful involvement on his Twitter account,
Tatchell shrugged off the many contradictions of his own mercurial position25 and, as
he did when outed as a collaborator with the thoroughly discredited Paedophile
Information Exchange, he tried to disassociate himself from his own actions.
Tatchell claims that his critics always cite Warren Middleton’s 1980s book, Betrayal
of Youth, to which he contributed a chapter. Tatchell claims he had no idea that he
was involved in child sex abuse matters when he was asked to write his piece.
Considering that Warren Middleton was co-founder and vice-chairperson of the
Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), a prominent group promoting paedophilia,
Tatchell should have had his suspicions, all the more so since both Tatchell and
Middleton were prominent members of the Gay Liberation Front/Angry Brigade, a
tiny tight knit neo-Marxist revolutionary group of radical students at the London
School of Economics.
25
https://twitter.com/PeterTatchell/status/404558841712746496
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Given that the rebels the 55 signatories support are raping under-age Syrian and
Yezidi boys and girls, and given his own dubious track record on such matters,
Tatchell would best serve their interests by simply apologising for his stupid
intervention, making a substantial financial donation to a Catholic charity of his
choice operating in Syria and promising never to speak again on the Syria and Iraqi
people he has so grievously wronged.
Tatchell is not the only bishop-basher who signed the letter. “Human Rights lawyer”
Clara A Connolly of “Women against Fundamentalism” also has form in that regard.
Ms Connolly, signatory number nine, says she grew up in a theocracy, Ireland of all
places, and that is why, like Tatchell, she tried to both smash up the Pope’s visit and
hijack Laham’s public meeting, even upbraiding the nun for not speaking her own
very quaint brand of English. Connolly is from Wexford in the south-east of Ireland
and a very peculiar form of English has been spoken there for longer than English
has been spoken in England. Laham grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp and
speaks six languages, in this order of almost native-level fluency: French, Arabic,
Spanish, English, Italian and Portuguese; as she also reads Hebrew, Syriac, Latin,
Russian, German and Greek, she is unquestionably an obvious target for all “women
against fundamentalism” of all hues, including Iranian Maryam Namazie, Indian Gita
Sahgal, Pakistani Bina Shah and American Razan Zeitouneh, all four of whom felt
impelled by their sham sisterhood to be among the 55 who signed the fraudulent
letter.
Though all of these may done commendable work in a number of tangential areas –
Tatchell, for example is a long-standing opponent of the repulsive Yusuf alQaradawi, over whom Gilmore dotes – the most interesting of them for our purposes
is Razan Zeitouneh, signatory number 54, who was blogging anti-government tirades
from the rebel extremist stronghold of Douma when she too got her Damascene
moment. This blog http://pressgangleeds.blogspot.co.uk/ tells us that, not unlike St
Paul before her, she “received a call: Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters, dug in in the
central Damascus neighborhood of Midan, needed someone who could set up a
remote Internet connection”. So, the blog tells us, she joined the cut throats just
shortly after the death squad unit she was enrolling in murdered four top officials,
including President Bashar Assad’s brother-in-law at Syria’s national-security
headquarters.
Though the Syrian authorities were obviously less than pleased with these highprofile murders, Razan can’t understand why she, the death squad’s top media guru,
was arrested. Her supporters are also surprised that a rival rebel criminal gang
subsequently kidnapped her and had their way with her. God bless their innocence,
real or imaginary.
Before the uprising, Ghazzawi blogged on subjects ranging from the lack of free
speech in Syria to LGBT rights to the challenges of being a vegetarian in Lebanon.
Unsurprisingly, given her experiences, she too, like many of the other 55 signatories,
has is receiving ongoing psychiatrist help.
Sad as it is, she too is a victim of Syria’s nightmare and, as such, she should be
working for dialogue, for allowing people like Laham to speak and, where necessary,
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to be challenged. She should not be working for those who seek the destruction of
Syria and the Syrian people for their own ill-conceived ideological prejudices which,
as often as not, only serve the interests of Western warlords.
Paul Conroy, Paul Conman or Paul Convict? We will next survey Paul Conroy26,
the Scouser ex-squaddie, who commands place number 10 on the “Save Civilisation
from Syria’s Sister Agnes” list to see why he is so fearful of Freedom’s nemesis, the
afore-mentioned Fadia Laham who, Malik the Mole like, is also known as Mother
Agnes Mariam of the Cross. Malik, in fact, is not the only mole on our list as Conroy
scurried, mole-like, along miles of rebel tunnels, made safe by locals the rebels
enslaved, to broadcast propaganda for the Libyan-led Farouk Brigades in Baba
Amro during the so-called siege of Homs.
Conroy has recently written a one-dimensional book on his experiences collaborating
with the Libyan and Syrian death squads which I bought to check how his
impressions of Homs squared with my own; the book, incidentally is awful, indicating
that Conroy should stick to taking photos for the cut throats and leave other extremist
apologists write the propaganda. I was in Homs twice in 2014, once as part of an
April peace delegation and the second time as an observer of the presidential
elections in Baba Amro, as it happens, where I got some very disturbing testimony of
what the locals actually thought about Conroy and his bunch of foreign mercenaries,
cronies and thugs.
Figure 22: Hold the Front Page. Serial Syrian Rebel Collaborator and Save
Civilisation from Syria’s Sister Agnes signatory Paul Conway recuperates back home
in Blighty but still tweets messages of encouragement for the death squads he left
behind in Syria.
He should not be confused with Darren Conway OBE, the cameraman for BBC Panorama’s
thoroughly discredited Saving Syria’s Children programme where a media savvy ex-British army
officer, who also seemed to have forgotten basic 101 army drills such as how to don wear flak jackets,
played the lead role with the colourful Dr Rola Hallam in this poignant propaganda piece.
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In this interview with the Liverpool Echo http://tinyurl.com/malikmole111 Conroy
freely admits that he, the late Marie Colvin and his other colleagues, unlike me with
my visa stamps, entered Syria illegally as embedded reporters with the hard-line
rebels, with whom Conroy has developed a Siamese twins Stockholm Syndrome
type of bond for whatever professional, patriotic, mercenary or other reason.
Whereas I entered the country openly and legally, Conroy entered it covertly, illegally
and through the good offices of some very bad people.
Conroy, the former artillery man, narcissistically claims that the Syrian Army’s
artillery deliberately targeted him and his fellow foreign journalists and murdered
Colvin and some others in the process in a 22 February 2012 attack which French
President Nicolas Sarkozy ludicrously described as an assassination and the less
suave Conroy called an "indiscriminate massacre" comparable to the Battle of
Grozny during the First Chechen War.
As it happens, the rebels mortared the hotel I was staying at in April and killed a
number of civilians. Though one of our group stupidly claimed we were the target,
the reality is the rebel death squads target everyone, not just foreign gadflies.
Conroy’s charge that the Syria Army’s artillery had their beady eye on him is likewise
ludicrous, especially coming from an old Gunner27 like himself. Because Conroy,
who, like so many others of the 55 signatories, claims to be under psychiatric care,
had holed himself up in a small area with die-hard foreign fanatics using the
residents, many of whom I have subsequently met, both as human shields and as
unpaid slaves, he should have expected incoming and lots of it. This is all the more
so as he claims he was billeting in the rebel “media centre”.
I have recently given a number of interviews in Syrian TV stations and they are
under very heavy guard as they too get incoming and lots of it from the rebels, the
saintly knights Conroy eulogises. Indeed, when I got to Ma’lulah on Easter Sunday,
the journalists there were extremely upset because three of their number had just
been murdered the night before by the rebels, the saintly knights Conroy eulogises.
Conroy not only eulogises these blood-thirsty psychopaths but cannot wait to return
to “the fixers, translators and rebels” his propaganda props up. He feels his work
undermining Syria is not yet done.
That is probably why his detractors claim here http://tinyurl.com/malikmole10 “this
outwardly charming man acts as a propagandist for American & Western
imperialism” for which he uses all the apocalyptic argot of Malik the Mole. In a series
of very soft interviews on Hard Talk and other outlets sympathetic to the larger and
compliant journalist family28, the ex-Gunner tells us “the time for talking is over”, the
27
The Gunners, are a nickname for the British Royal Artillery. I am not implying this Scouser follows
Arsenal FC, otherwise known as The Gunners. Perhaps he follows Everton FC, the same team the
late Ken Begley followed before the rebels kidnapped and murdered him.
28
Here is a small sample http://tinyurl.com/malikmole11
http://anthonyrobertpearce.wordpress.com/2012/09/17/paul-conroy-interview/
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blood-soaked Libyan no fly zone solution is the answer to Syria’s prayers, there is “a
lot more bloodshed to come”, the rebels are heroes and Syria will be the next
Rwanda because the SAA will exterminate everybody just as his beloved rebels do.
He says he is even willing to testify (about what and against whom?) in The Hague
against all and sundry and he even manages to claim that Vladmir Putin is
personally behind the Homs violence.
Figure 23, 24: Rogue Irish journalists Mary Fitzgerald who tries to blame rebel
crimes on the Syrian Army and Michael Weiss, who gets much of his information
from sources like Shamiwitness. Both are persistent critics of Fadia Laham and the
peace process and both blame rebel atrocities on the Syrian Arab Army.
Before wishing Conroy and his psychiatrist well with his ongoing therapy, it is
important we first look at his relationship with “the men with guns”. Irish journalist
Mary Fitzgerald, coincidentally perhaps, is another controversial critic of Fadia
Laham who has embedded herself with these same cut-throats both in Libya and in
Syria. She has also promoted their cause in Ireland from where many of their
activities are organised. Her vignettes29 tell us that these characters “received
training from Qatari special forces in Nalut, a town in Libya's western mountains”.
Mahdi al-Harati and Housam Najjair, the so-called “Dublin sniper” claim "We're here
to facilitate and train civilian rebels in Syria – many of whom are doctors, engineers,
and teachers – using our experience during the Libyan revolution,” and that “When
the Syrians have achieved their revolution, our job will be done.”
http://pulsemedia.org/2012/08/21/dead-journalists-and-sister-agnes-mariam/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajIqOd2-4AE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov51XF6WXBk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkwcKCpqwCs
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/08/09/the_syrian_rebels_libyan_weapon
http://archive.today/nzKgw
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Figure 25: Paul Conroy in the company of notorious Libyan mercenaries, mass
murderers and wanted criminals.
Not that these murderers brought much freedom to Libya but, for our purposes, we
should read this http://tinyurl.com/malikmole12 and look at this photo, where Conroy
(in the blue bulletproof vest) can be seen in Libya with, on the right, Al-Qaeda
leaders Mahdi al-Harati (in black body armour) and Abdelhakim Belhaj (in
camouflaged jacket); his organization, the Islamic Fighting Group in Libya, has
merged with Al-Qaeda but still figures prominently on the terrorist list of the U.S.
State Department and the British Home Office.
When Belhaj who, in a page from Malik the Mole’s playbook, also uses the nom de
guerre of al-Hasid, fought US and British troops in Afghanistan, he was captured and
returned to Qaddafi’s Libya who he later helped to overthrow with his CIA allies.
Once Libya was “Mission Accomplished”, both Belhaj and Conroy hot-footed it to
Syria, the next country on America’s hit list.
Although according to no less a person than 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, Conroy, it must be noted, made no attempt to arrest
him or even to inform the authorities of al-Harati’s whereabouts. For al-Harati’s band
of cutthroats, Conroy was a safe pair of hands.
Abdel Hakim Belhaj, meanwhile, Ayman al-Zawahiri’s right-hand man, Al Qaeda’s
number two commander and one of the world’s most wanted criminals, is not only
Conroy’s mate but he was also imposed as military governor of Tripoli by NATO.
Not, as the unfortunate survivors of Homs can attest, that he confined his barbarities
to Libya. Abdel Hakim Belhaj’s men were reputedly behind numerous atrocities in
Damascus and Aleppo as well as wholesale murder, mayhem and destruction in
Conroy’s “beloved” Homs before the Syrian Army rid the town of their noxious
presence.
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Because Paul Conroy’s knowingly collaborates with these dangerous criminals – the
photo was taken as his mates put Libya to the sword and African civilians were
summarily lynched by the score – his critics argue he could face 15 years in prison,
unless he pleads immunity as an agent of the Crown. Be that as it may, someone of
his flawed pedigree should not be lending his support to any cause, let alone one
working towards peace rather than the blood-soaked solution Conway and the other
colourful signatories to the Save Civilisation from Syria’s Sister Agnes letter so
obviously prefer.
Figure 26: Not so Candid Camera. Paul Conroy takes a break from promoting
Libyan and Syrian death squads to pose for the camera.
Though Paul Conroy has a clear and unenviable track record of promoting war and
not peace, he could, of course, argue in his defence that he is just an uneducated
Scouser slob being manipulated by his betters. Because the death of his fellow
collaborators in the Syrian rebels’ HQ coincided with a major meeting of the
Orwellian named “Friends of Syria”, it was, in fact, used as a “casus belli” not only by
the gobshites that harangued the highly-principled Owen Jones but, more worryingly,
the NATO hawks who have an unenviable track record of mass slaughter and who,
more than any others, belong, along with Conroy himself, in The Hague, if the scales
of justice could be miraculously fixed to actually indict them.
Conroy, like the NATO overlords or the rebel barbarians he serves, is not the
innocent at large he would like us to think he is. He crawled through miles of
tunnelling without even asking, knowing or caring how those tunnels came into
being: for his edification, the rebels used local slave labour to clear ancient and
obsolete sewers so Libyan killers and their Western apologists, some of whom paid
with their lives, could sneak their slimy way in. Conway’s name adds no credibility to
that spiteful list. To the people of Homs, his name will live in infamy forever.
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Figure 27, 28: Before and After. Italians Greta Ramelli and Vanessa Marzullo were
Free Syrian Army groupies. However, like the nuns of Ma’loulah and so many more,
The Free Syrian Army sold them to Al Nusra who are now offering them for sale to
the highest bidder. Razan Zaitouneh, signatory 54 on the list, was also kidnapped by
the moderate rebels the protest letter the gang of 55 signed support. Zaitouneh’s
current whereabouts are unknown.
Figures 29, 30: Self-styled anarchist Donnacha DeLong models his revolutionary
cap, his revolutionary necklace and his revolutionary earrings.
Donnacha DeLong, signatory number eleven on the open letter, as this link shows
in the Orwellian named ceasfiremagazine http://bit.ly/1s5zt5x also was a passionate
supporter of the bombing of Libya, which is now a failed state, deliberately
descended into despair and anarchy, the political gloss this clown likes to sheen his
idiocies with . This particular war monger grew up in Dublin and, like Dara Ó Briain,
the well-known comedian and TV presenter, attended a Gaelcholáiste (Irishspeaking school), the well-respected Coláiste Eoin in Ó Briain’s case. After college,
Ó Briain’s proficiency in both Ireland’s official languages of English and Irish allowed
him to present bilingual TV shows for RTE, Ireland’s equivalent of the BBC. Because
DeLong calls himself a Gaelgeoir (or Irish speaker) rather than a Gaeilgeoir, to use
the correct spelling even the youngest true Gaeilgeoir would know, he must not have
paid much attention in class. He also must not have paid much attention to his
surrounds for he claims that Dublin, the home of Enya, Bono and countless other
multi-millionaires, was almost entirely working class during the 1980s.
That is not only pure nonsense but it also shows DeLong cannot be taken seriously
because the Gaelcholáistí have been, outside of West Belfast, almost entirely an
upper middle class rather than a working class phenomenon. Although, as West
Belfast clearly demonstrates, many Irish cultural nationalists send their children to
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such schools, the schools’ huge advantage is the sense of solidarity the quasi
ideological adherence to a language under threat, Irish in this case, gives the
students and this is reflected in their impressive performances in state exams and
other metrics. Although there are now a growing number of such schools in working
class areas, in DeLong’s formative years, Coláiste Eoin and all schools like it,
catered to a well-heeled clientele, people with polished Irish accents like DeLong and
Ó Briain.
When not showing he is clueless about his own upbringing, DeLong likes to parade
his ignorance of the Irish language, the language his teachers tried their best to
educate him in. When Counterpunch contributor Daniel Cassidy wrote a book
wrongly ascribing much of America’s slang to the Irish language, DeLong
passionately defended the Counterpunch contributor for faux solidarity reasons we
can easily surmise. As this link shows http://bit.ly/14uKOSq DeLong defended
Cassidy’s shoddy work as follows: “Cassidy makes clear in the book that he’s
speculating about many of the suggestions he’s making. This is how research in this
area happens, someone speculates and then others investigate and either verify or
falsify what they’ve done. To reject the entire work because you can falsify some (or
even most) of his suggestions is unfair and, if as you say, it’s preventing scholars
doing further work on the topic, that’s ridiculously unscientific”.
As the same link and the 2 September 2011 review here http://amzn.to/1tOpMtj both
show, the book has no academic or etymological grounding at all. DeLong’s defence
of it is in reality an admission of his total ignorance of the subject and the way he
defends it is, as the review shows, shows DeLong’s total ignorance of the scientific
approach to such questions. Research is not done on ignorant speculation as
DeLong claims or on blind adherence to arch-murderer Qaradawi as Christine
Gilmore, her co-signatory thinks. Rather, in the words of Isaac Newton, as inscribed
on the side of the British £2 coin, it proceeds on the shoulders of giants, on the basis
of tried and trusted prior research, not on the basis of prejudiced and biased blind
guesses, the types of ignorant and uninformed prejudices, in other words, that got
DeLong and his fellow-fantasists to sign this letter of protest. This is not to compare
research into the Irish language or American slang to Newton, the last of the
magicians, as Keynes described him but to say that both the Irish language and
American slang have long been the subjects of incremental research and the fact
that DeLong has not a clue about that indicates he has not much of a clue about
anything else either.
Although DeLong clearly never paid much attention to either the Irish language or to
his Dublin surrounds, he did turn a new leaf in balmy London so much so that
Damian Thompson, the editor of Telegraph Blogs, took DeLong to task for stupidly
describing the “broom army” of middle-class volunteers who cleaned up Clapham
Junction as “scum”. When Thompson phoned him, DeLong confirmed that is what he
said but claimed “I was referring to a particular exclusivist crowd” and qualified his
oafish remark with the equally idiotic statement that his fellow-anarchists who helped
the middle-class scum clean up Clapham were not scum but were showing they
were true followers of Bakunin, Galleani and the great Proudhon himself who the
comprador class would like to, err, broom brush out of history.
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Though it is hard not to laugh at such a pathetic comic-book figure, DeLong has held
a number of quasi-journalistic jobs, including one with RTE and, as he stresses a
thttp://bit.ly/1s5zt5x he spent quite some time with Amnesty International which also
employs the notorious anti-Syrian troll Kristyan Benedict in a relatively senior
position. Connections like that help explain why Amnesty International and similar
groups are allowed pimp the rebel extremist line on the airwaves so much and why
they are allowed spread their bile so copiously. DeLong’s former RTE job would also
help explain why warmongers get so much airtime while peacemakers are
intimidated.
Though DeLong, like most Irish losers, claims his entire family were out fighting the
British for a couple of days over the 1916 Easter weekend, Richard Seymour,
signatory 42 on the Proclamation, would be slow to make such a fatuous claim for he
claims to be “Northern Irish”, or, more properly, from a hard-line, nun-hating anti –
Irish minority sect in the north-east of Ireland. More recently, Seymour has been
intimately associated with the tiny Trotskyist British Socialist Workers Party (SWP)
and many of his blog posts focus on the allegations of rape and sexual assault which
has been a hallmark of this micro party in recent years
Though many of Seymour’s droppings can be found on the Internet, this article
http://bit.ly/1yosqqU is of particular interest because it begins with a lengthy quote
from “activist and Emerson College scholar Yasser Munif” who is signatory 27 on the
letter and who, like Seymour and quite a few other signatories, is a regular
contributor to obscure Trotskyist papers.
Munif was one of the first graduates of the University of Balamand, a private,
Lebanese university founded by the Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius IV of Antioch in
1988. His puerile politics notwithstanding, it is unclear why Munif and the atheists
who signed the ridiculous letter concur with the non-existent Syrian Christians for
Peace “that she be excommunicated and prevented from speaking in the name of
the Order of Carmelites” not least because Faham, like almost every other nun in the
world, has done absolutely nothing that would warrant that reaction and she is not, in
any case, a Carmelite nun and is, in fact, a member of the Greek Catholic rather
than the Latin Catholic church to which the Carmelites are attached. Though one
only hopes his academic work is of a higher quality than the badly concocted letter
he put his paw mark to, Munif’s student feedback seems to reinforce the idea that
subjective polemics and ranting against abstract enemies rather than cold, hard,
academic facts is, like that of signatory number one, his fellow Lebanese clown, also
Munif’s forte. Ziauddin Sardar, signatory number 55, has also been something of an
international gypsy, living in Saudi Arabia and knocking out books on Islam, multi
culturalism, indeed 'Britain's own Muslim polymath' as Owen Jones’ The
Independent purportedly called this jack of all broadbrush trades in one of their more
charitable moments.
More crackpots: Naomi Foyle, signatory number 14, describes herself as follows:
Naomi holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Bangor University. Her topic, Venus
Victrix: The Warrior Woman in Narrative Verse, propelled her into activism, and she
now campaigns for a just peace in the Middle East. Additionally, she informs us that:
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“Naomi also works as a CW lecturer at Chichester University and a professional
Tarot card reader” and that she writes “erotic prose-poetry”. If stopwar.org hopes to
stop any wars this side of the Second Coming, they would be well-advised not to
allow Tarot card readers and tea-leaf readers who write pornographic poetry in their
spare time dictate their policy but, hey, unlike Owen Jones and his gang of 55
crackpots, I am not trying to dictate policy to them
This is not to totally say Naomi Foyle is a total waste of space. She could, perhaps,
help Ruth Riegler, signatory number 33, express her thoughts in haiku rather than
the long-winded oxymoronic diatribes that are her forte. Though Ruth Riegler claims
to be the co-founder of Radio Free Syria and of the grandly-sounding Syrian
International Media Alliance, both have left little in the way of Internet footprints and
what they have left is best forgotten. Though it takes some digging to find anything
this eccentric has penned, this particular piece http://bit.ly/1HNHfVn is a beauty as,
inter alia, she claims Israel supplies the Syrian Army and air force with munitions.
Such is the level of knowledge the 55 signatories possess.
In this typical rant, http://bit.ly/1IcP6u9 Riegler castigates ISIS members for “their
mentally subnormal IQ levels” and as “slack-jawed mouthbreathers who would
individually have great difficulty in locating their own rear ends with both hands, a
map and compass” and as “sub-literate, genocidal drooling diddies who would find
The Cat In the Hat excessively intellectually taxing reading matter”.
Though writing like an immature adolescent might make Riegler feel important, it
makes her look very stupid and again calls into question why Owen Jones and his ilk
paid attention to this pathetic woman.
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Figure 31: Left to Right: Sepp Dietrich, Heinrich Himmler and Joachim Peiper at
Metz in September 1940. The leaders of the Syrian rebels have learned a lot from
them.
Though Riegler like all 55 signatories are a laughing stock, the cause their stupidity
serves is no laughing matter. I have personally seen the handiwork of the terrorist
groups they support in places like Ma’lulah and Kessab and what they represent is
quite scary. Though many of the rebels, as evidenced by their graffiti, are barely
literate, those at their command, control and coordination centres in Turkey are not.
In this respect, they may validly be compared to Hitler’s Wehrmacht and SS, which,
as the picture above shows, were a lethal mixture of fantasists like Himmler, efficient
clerks like Himmler, excellent mid-level commanders like Dietrich and highly efficient
battle commanders like Peiper.
Himmler, as it happens, was from a devout Catholic family and one of his cousins
was a Hitler brown priest, the type ignoramuses like Bloodworth like to spew about.
Though a lot has been written about these three mass murderers, these post-war
words of SS-Standartenführer Jochen Peiper are particularly apt here: "I recognize
that after the battles of Normandy my unit was composed mainly of young, fanatical
soldiers. A good deal of them had lost their parents, their sisters and brothers during
the bombing. They had seen for themselves in Cologne, thousands of mangled
corpses after a terror raid had passed. Their hatred for the enemy was such; I swear
it and I could not always keep it under control."
Though Peiper went on to explain that many of his SS soldiers, much like the British
ISIS men caught buying Islam for Dummies, were barely literate, they could handle
weapons and they were adept at using them come hell or high water to avenge their
families. Riegler’s rant notwithstanding, the rebels the gang of 55 support, however
inadvertently, are the same. Like the Nazis before them they draw their spiritual
sense from a myriad of sources, many of them laughable to those not at the
business end of their violence. They feed their prejudices on cocktails of sectarian
grievances, some real, others imagined. They are not only developing an Islamic
volk but a very dangerous caliphate at that, one where total obedience is demanded.
Though we can laugh at Naomi Foyle reading Tarot cards or using voodoo on us,
Hitler built his Reich using such improbable material. Because the rebels’ true
leaders are on a similar mission, using whatever similar material, Owen Jones and
the gang of 55 included, they have at hand, we should be, if not afraid, at least
prepared to expose these people for the criminal enablers that they are.
Owen Jones, James Bloodworth and Independent Research Jones’ Independent
has a largely undeserved name for being a progressive paper, the sort of paper
“persistent, passionate and in some cases angry … activists” who “were - in many
cases - opponents of Western intervention” might support and even buy if they could
afford it. Be that as it may, they do have some peculiar contributors and none more
so than the appropriately named James Bloodworth who tells us here
http://tinyurl.com/malikmole13 “Mother Agnes is the Syrian equivalent of one of
Hitler’s brown priests” because she cast doubts on the Ghouta attack and she raised
the issue of the Alawite women and children the Syrian rebel terrorists concomitantly
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abducted in Latakia. Bloodworth’s shallow “research” is on a par with Jones’ as he
merely calls all and sundry naughty names (something Jones does not really do) and
cites Peter Bouckaer of Human Rights Watch, which studiously ignored the Latakia
atrocities even as it used the rebels’ Ghouta chemical attack to prod NATO into
bombing Syria back into the Stone Age, a call that many of the 55 signatories have
also made and one stopwar.org professes to oppose.
Bloodworth, whose various vacuous articles concentrate on excoriating the Pope
and bemoaning the marginalising of women and gays on any issue that flits across
his interesting mind, shows an incredible level of ignorance about the subjects he
addresses. His laugh-out-loud claims include the belief that the secular Syrian Ba’ath
party are a Christian religious order and that the Stop the War group is controlled by
Stalinists who have made it “a malevolent Leninist front whose leadership has a long
record of lining up alongside any movement or tyranny that is sufficiently antiWestern”.
Though it would appear Bloodworth, who is a passionate defender of free speech for
hate mongers (http://ind.pn/13Lrq26 ) is not worth his journalistic salt, in his defence,
he could argue that he is just as confused, uninformed and rudderless as Jones and
it is a fair point as shown in this piece http://tinyurl.com/malikmole14 where Jones,
of all people, supports the massive and indiscriminate use of violence.
Figure 32: Syrian women give a simple message even Owen Jones, James
Bloodworth and the gang of 55 should understand.
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Though many of those “persistent, passionate and in some cases angry … activists”
who protested to Jones admit they have very serious personal issues to deal with,
there is, in plain words, something much bigger at stake. People of all faiths and
none are being slaughtered in the Middle East and beyond in the interests of real
politic. Limp-wristed thugs like Jones, Bloodworth and Scahill, who discourage
dialogue, discussion and reason, along with the 55 virtual bullies who were central in
the campaign of vilification against Fadia Laham, are not a part of the solution to the
problems of Syria. They are as much a part of the problem as anyone else who
condones, promotes or fosters hatred, violence and murder at the expense of
reasoned debate and dialogue. If they had any self-respect, they would hang their
heads in shame and do penance and pilgrimage in any of the Syrian monasteries
that have so far managed to survive the excesses of the rebels they so
enthusiastically and stupidly support. Because they have no role to play in securing
peace, they should be exposed, ridiculed and held to account for the idiots that they
are.
Figure 33: A Syrian woman flies the flag of her homeland in a simple message of
support for civilisation even Owen Jones, James Bloodworth and the gang of 55
should understand.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Dr Declan Hayes is an Irish citizen who has lectured on finance to post-graduate
students in Australia, England, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Syria and Mexico as
well as his native Ireland. He has published a number of books in both Japanese and
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English on finance and defence-related issues and has written extensively on them
in Japanese, Irish and English newspapers. He is a competent media performer and
has commented on these issues on numerous occasions on TV and radio stations
throughout the world.
Although he has been in involved in human rights issues all his adult life, most
recently he has concentrated his efforts combatting the war of terror being waged
against the people of Syria, which he has visited three over the last year and to
which he is returning in April
•
This is a follow-up on my two earlier pieces. The first of these was on the
controversial Hand in Hand for Syria charity http://bit.ly/1p490Ar and the second of
them was called Saving Civilisation from Syria’s Sr Agnes http://bit.ly/1mRC1ed .
This piece can be downloaded from here: http://bit.ly/1ofdXqo . This folder
http://taigs.com/Syria/ contains copies of those and other files and will be periodically
updated.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
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My Complaint to the Police Following the Cricklewood Terror Attack
Dear PC Alderson
I refer to your visit to my house last night and I would like to make the following
points for clarification:
1. I wish the Hampshire and Yorkshire police to consider the actions of Ms
Gilmore and issue her with a cease and desist warning even though I believe
she and the Muslim Brotherhood will use that as evidence they, the
persecutors, are being persecuted.
2. The events I organised for Mother Agnes Mariam and Nobel Peace Prize
laureate Mairead Maguire were subjected to a lot of harassment by Christine
Gilmore and her followers. The Mandal Centre was, as the London Met can
verify, subjected to scores of (criminal?) nuisance calls and speakers, such as
Dr Halla Diyab, were targeted by tweets to scare her off. Christine Gilmore, as
her tweets show, was central to all this.
3. This is part of an international campaign, coordinated by the Muslim
Brotherhood, the group behind much of the violence in the Middle East. They
are organised, dangerous and very extreme.
4. I am fully within my rights both as a highly qualified academic (see below) and
as a lecturer and thesis supervisor with over 30 years’ experience in
universities to say her proposed thesis is crappy because it is and I am
prepared to submit a sworn affidavit to that effect. That is an academic call
and I believe that, given her age, her academic background and her skewed
approach to research, I believe there are no job or other prospects for her
from her PhD which I consider a total waste of time. I can supply hundreds of
other academics to agree with that academic statement and many of them
would be prepared to submit their professional assessments in a court of law.
I believe she is kept at Leeds University simply to boost numbers; there is
nothing unusual in this and it is done in all weak departments which do not
pay their way. Incidentally, I lecture in the most profitable sector of
Southampton Uni and we, and our students, subsidise “research” like hers.
5. Ms Gilmore, on her twitter bio, claims to be an eternal student. She draws
attention to something which does not raise her standing but lowers it. She
has no academic standing and her nonsense supporting Qaradawi who
claims Hitler went too easy on the Jews does her standing no favours.
Academically, she is a joke. Her PhD, incidentally, is supposed to be on
Egyptian literature, not Syrian or Arab politics.
6. Ms Gilmore writes unrefereed papers in support of notorious arch bigot and
demagogue Qaradawi. See here: http://leeds.academia.edu/ChristineGilmore
Qaradawi, who praised Hitler and who has called for the extermination of the
world’s 100 million Shias, is the chief recruiter for the 150,000 foreign fighters
currently terrorising Syria, the Central African Republic and other places. That
being so, it is reasonable to assume she is sympathetic to the Muslim
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Brotherhood, which is a very extreme, and violent well-funded international
terror supporting network. They are very dangerous people and Ms Gilmore,
who is supposed to be researching Egyptian literature, should not be
squandering her considerable free time praising this political figure.
7. Ms Gilmore, as C4 now reports, has managed to get her husband a spouse
visa to live here: http://www.channel4.com/news/british-immigration-lawputting-a-price-on-family-life I believe he has skipped the queue and I believe
her money and connections, as evidenced in getting C4 coverage, helped in
that process. More importantly, given she is an admirer of Qaradawi and as
she does not believe in free speech for British or Syrian nuns, I believe he
could well pose a security threat here. I have made my opinions known and,
should her husband subsequently prove to be a problem, the blame, which
cannot be pinned at my door, should be pointed at those who facilitated his
(speedy) entry.
8. Ms Gilmore and her colleagues have bullied and intimidated at will and have
got away with it so far. Their goal is to shut down discourse and to allow the
mass murder of Christians and other exposed minorities to continue in Syria.
They do this in the guise of supporting the hand chopping, throat cutting, child
raping criminal foreign fighters in Syria.
9. Though I am not accusing Ms Gilmore of direct complicity in this slaughter, as
I explained to you, these opponents of peace go from the relatively benign
Internet warriors to the most violent and psychotic people imaginable.
Because Ms Gilmore has been a key organiser of these protests, I feel she
could well be a dangerous person. Some of those who accompanied her to
the Mandal meeting are very dangerous and are not just Internet warriors.
10. Mother Agnes Mariam is in Rome today, meeting the Pope, after which she
will resume her tour in Canada, where at least one venue has had to be
cancelled due to threats of violence from people allied to Ms Gilmore. Ms
Gilmore is planning to protest at today’s Stop the War meeting, which should
have featured Mother Agnes Mariam but which Ms Gilmore and others
managed to stop by harassing the organisers, as is plain from the tweets.
11. Here is Rev Stephen Sizer’s report of the Mandal meeting they tried to
disrupt. http://stephensizer.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/mother-agnes-mariamand-mairead-maguire.html He makes the point we organised the meeting with
the Nobel Peace Prize laureate to facilitate talk and dialogue but Ms Gilmore
and her friends went there, as their tweets and Facebook pages and covert
videos make plain, to disrupt and provoke violence, an offence in itself, just
like the phone calls the Mandal Centre got and just like the intimidation Sr
Wynbourne and others suffered at the hands of Ms Gilmore et al. This is the
same pattern that was used in the USA and is being used in Canada.
12. Ms Gilmore is not alone. Dr Mahmoud Al Akraa was very instrumental in
disrupting the Mandal public meeting by shouting incendiary insults. His cell
phone has, by all accounts, a picture of him witnessing a Christian prisoner
being beheaded by the Muslim Brotherhood. Here are his details:
https://www.facebook.com/malakraa
http://www.thelondonclinic.co.uk/consultants/mr-mahmoud-al-akraa
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http://news.sky.com/story/1096243/syria-british-doctor-killed-in-hospital-attack
I believe he should be investigated and questioned about this.
13. I am attaching the request we sent to the Met to monitor our meeting as we
were worried, primarily for the sake of the children, Ms Gilmore and her
associates would disrupt the meeting which they did. Though attendees were
disappointed at the lack of a police presence, I explained to them that the
police have to do a risk assessment and wait until harassment Ms Gilmore
and her friends partook in goes beyond a certain threshold. But for the quick
thinking of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire, Rev Stephen Sizer
and myself, Dr Al Akraa would have succeeded in initiating the violence they
desired. Dr Al Akraa, I feel, should be investigated.
14. In answer to your question: I am not overly concerned about my safety but I
have no illusions about the extreme levels of violence the Muslim Brotherhood
are prepared to use against me and against anyone else they feel stands in
their path. As I explained to you, when we returned from Dublin on
Wednesday night, we had to try three different London hotels at midnight
before we found one safe enough to billet Mother Agnes Mariam in. In my
own case, I would imagine it would just continue at the level of low level
harassment such as this dishonest complaint for the moment until the Muslim
Brotherhood believed more extreme means were necessary. Mother Agnes’s
friends had no doubts that her safety was very much in danger at the first two
hotels they were going to check her into.
15. In conclusion, I wish to state I have no political or other affiliation or agenda, I
have not been involved in any protest or anything of the sort since arriving in
Southampton in September 2007, and my concern is an extension of my
community concerns. I thank you and your colleague for your time last night
and I do hope your colleagues in Yorkshire make Ms Gilmore to cease and
desist from her intimidation and libels of British and Syrian nuns and of
myself. I believe there is ample evidence showing Ms Gilmore and her
colleagues are the real bullies here and I fully expect the Yorkshire police to
act accordingly.
Dr Declan Hayes, BA (Mod), MA, MLitt, PhD, ASIA. 30 November 2013.
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Above: Some of the ant-Catholic, anti-peace tweets from Muslim Brotherhood
admirer Christine Gilmore, notgeorgesabra, the extremist Leeds Friends of Syria
group and other dangerous war mongers.
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APPENDIX 7: SYRIA’S BAND OF MUSLIM BROTHERHOODS
By Dr Declan Hayes

This is a follow-up on my two earlier pieces. The first of these was on the
controversial Hand in Hand for Syria charity http://bit.ly/1p490Ar and the
second of them was called Saving Civilisation from Syria’s Sr Agnes
http://bit.ly/1mRC1ed . This piece can be downloaded from here:
http://bit.ly/1ofdXqo . This folder http://taigs.com/Syria/ contains copies of
those and other files and will be periodically updated.

This current document explores the myriad networks sinister groups like
Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood use in the West to recruit money, men, women
and children to their cause.

It presents photos of NHS doctors wearing the battle fatigues of the Syrian
rebel extremists and asks the readers why no action is, to our knowledge at
least, being taken against these people by either the NHS, our political
leaders, the Charity Commission or the police.

It asks why a large number of inter-linked organisations have been
simultaneously started by a small coterie of people and asks if the police and
related authorities are investigating those strange coincidences and if they are
happy that the resulting questionable networks stretching from the West into
the heartland of rebel Syria are allowed to flourish and thrive.

It notes Welsh protesters brazenly flouting the death flag of ISIS and asks are
the police investigating these and other overt and covert supporters of
sectarian slaughter and linking them to other networks.
The Syrian people are paying a huge price for the cynical games of our betters. The
cause of peace is not helped by the cynical, sectarian double-dealing and treachery
that is synonymous with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. The road to peace in Syria
is going to be long, hard and very bloody. That road will be considerably shortened if
the rebels abandon the lies that fuel their campaigns of murder and mayhem.
Though history will, of course, harshly judge them, that is no consolation to the
millions of Syrians, whose lives have been shattered by their murder campaign and
by our lethargy. If we can name, shame and neutralise the war addicts, then the
people of Syria, their ultimate victims, might have a chance of seeing some solace
this side of the grave.
If you want further information or to speak to me about any of the material contained
here, please contact me at the following email address [email protected] or
on my mobile phone +447942440165. Although I can be reached at the university
address and at my university email, I would prefer you used the contacts conduit
given above.
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Dr Declan Hayes dated: 3/8/2014
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I
Figures 1-4: Manchester’s Dr Madrous al Soud proudly wears the uniform of
Syrian rebel extremists as he poses with sectarian killers in “liberated” Syria. His
sidekick wears the logo of Every Syrian, a charity “Mad Dog” Madrous al Soud runs
to help those in Syria he thinks need the kind of help himself and his mates can
provide.
The Rise of the Foot Doctor
The pictures on his Facebook page might look like those of any fanatic getting his
jollies doing jihad in Syria. He poses and jokes with armed murderers, confident that,
working in tandem, they will destroy secular Syria. Nothing new there in his
Facebook pictures you will say you as you move on.
But pause a while. This friendly-looking fellow in the fashionable field fatigues is not
your ordinary run-of-the-mill jihadist recruited out of the nearest drug rehabilitation
centre. He is the highly-esteemed and most respectable Dr Mahrous al Soud and
the logo you see in his countless selfies is that of Everysyrian.org, one of a large
number of British-and American-based “charities” who are working hand in hand with
the Syrian rebel extremists controlled, as often as not, by the chameleon-like Syrian
Muslim Brotherhood with which the good Dr Madrous may or may not have a
relationship with.
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Dr Mahrous, who could easily be mistaken in his selfies for a well-scrubbed if
somewhat narcissistic jihadist, is in fact a highly-regarded consultant cardiologist
working for Britain’s NHS as well as a leading executive in the Muslim Brotherhooddominated British Syrian Medical Society, which has also thrown its weight behind
the sectarian terror campaign the Muslim Brotherhood is waging against secular
Syria. At a time when British fascists complain about foreigners coming to England
to get free NHS medical treatment, one wonders why neither they nor the NHS
complain about the legions of NHS experts joining the medical units of the Syrian
rebel cut-throats, a form of execution one hopes the highly-esteemed and most
respectable NHS consultant cardiologist Dr “Mad Dog” Madrous has never
witnessed and might even disapprove of.
Although Dr Mahrous is quite proud to flaunt, peacock-like, his smartly-pressed
battle fatigues together with the partisan colours of everysyrian.org, the charity he
runs, others, who entice donations from the wider, unsuspecting British public, are
more circumspect. One such charity is Hand in Hand for Syria which, as explained in
this 29 page document http://bit.ly/1p490Ar is excellent at promoting itself and raising
funds but not so good at submitting its financial accounts on time.
There is, as a perusal of extremist sites show, no shortage of money-making
ventures. Or, as Muslim crooner Wasfi Massarani crossing the Atlantic in the photos
below show, no shortage of shadowy organisation joining them for jihad in a
carefully-woven mosiac of Muslim brotherhood, fraternity and jihad30.
The Muslim Brotherhood, with their Qatari funding behind them may have, as this
link http://tinyurl.com/smb1x shows, bigger fish to fry than those that concern us
here. Whenever there is a staged atrocity, they have to don their Brotherhood boots
and jump into action. At the time of writing in early August 2014, they are brushing
down the ‘Caesar’ file and bringing their latest puppet on an American tour. Caesar
claims to have done selfies of himself with a staggering 11,000 civilians murdered in
Syrian jails before escaping, Rambo-like, across the border to freedom and Qatari
30
The mini-army of front groups captioned in the following photographs or related to them via sites
like http://arcsyria.org/about_inline.html include: Syrian Expatriate Medical Association (SEMA),
Syrian British Medical Association (SBMS), Syrian American Medical Association (SAMA), Syrian
Expatriates Organization, Syrian Sunrise Foundation. Hope for Syria: hopeforsyria.org, Karam,
www.karamfoundation.org, Life for Relief and Development: www.lifeusa.org, Maram Foundation:
www.maramfoundation.org, Mercy Without Limits: www.mercywithoutlimits.org, NuDay Syria:
www.nudaysyria.net, Shaam Relief Foundation: www.shaamrelief.org, Syria Relief and Development
(SRD):, syriareliefanddevelopment.org/, Syria Relief Network: syriareliefnetwork.org/en/, Syrian
American Engineers Association (SAEA): www.saea-us.org, Syrian American Medical Society
(SAMS): www.sams-usa.net, Syrian Orphans Syrian Sunrise Foundation (SSF):
www.syriansunrisefoundation.org, Swasia Charity Foundation: www.swasia.org. Zakat Foundation:
www.zakat.org, Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies (SCPSS), Syrian Expatriates
Organization (SEO), Syrian American Council (SAC), United Charity, advisory member. Most of these
affiliated ARCS members are organizations with a 501(c) 3 status or pending status. Though ARCS
members all claim to be non-profit organizations with no religious or political affiliation, all of these
groups only work in areas controlled by Syrian sectarians; they do not work in the governmentcontrolled areas. They are, in other words, part of the “secular” opposition and their sheer number
would imply that the Muslim Brotherhood are the organisers in chief behind them.
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cheque books. Caesar’s trip is being managed by the Coalition for a Democratic
Syria, a Syrian-American umbrella organization that is part of “the Syrian opposition”.
For extra effect, they got the Holocaust Museum to host his photo exhibition.
Just how did all of these crews arise so suddenly and seemingly from nowhere? One
wonders did they all just spontaneously bloom Mao-like, like a million Muslim spring
flowers, or evolve in some kind of Lamarckian, pre-programmed and pre-designed
evolution with some sinister outfit such as the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, being
their God, the Great Designer-in-Chief of these interesting, effective and highly
integrated but superficially independent groups.
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Fig 5a-5g : Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood and the Hidden Hand of Lamarckian
Evolution. These hordes of supposedly independent crews (check out their many
logos) can organise the same crooner on to both sides of the Atlantic. That takes
organisation, something the Muslim Brotherhood or the Watan crew could
undoubtedly lend a hand in.
This link http://www.bss-uk.org tells us that “British Solidarity for Syria (BSS) was
established in August 2011 in order to support the struggle of the Syrian people for
freedom and democracy. It shares the goal of the Syrian people: replacement of the
current dictatorship with a civil democratic state based on the rule of law, respect for
human rights, and equality for all Syrians regardless of ethnic or religious
background”.
It then continues to pull at our secular heart strings by telling us that “BSS is a nonsectarian and all-inclusive organisation which welcomes members from all
nationalities and all ideological backgrounds. It is an independent organisation and is
not affiliated with any political party. In November 2012, BSS formed a partnership
with the UK registered Non-Profit Organisation Watan. Watan is an umbrella
organisation that represents a progressive movement that works through the various
institutions of civil society and aims to achieve comprehensive progress in Syria,
before and after the fall of the regime”.
So there you have it. The BSS is affiliated to Watan but is non-sectarian and allinclusive. It is also an “independent organisation” that has just recently hooked up
with Watan in a most “non-sectarian and all-inclusive” manner. Whois tells that the
site was registered by “Anas El-Khani” of “13 Woodcrest Road CR84JD” where “a
certain” Dr Ussaamah El-Khani resides and where this site http://tinyurl.com/smb2x
tells us the similarly named and similarly focused Aala el-Khani, who is a director of
Watan, of its charity offshoot Khayr and of the Syrian Media Centre, also resides.
What a coincidence and all the more so as that is a statistically significant number of
directorships for a recent university graduate!
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Figure 6: Tomorrow Belongs to Me. Aala el-Khani with some props on the Turikish
Syrian border.
Aala, who is certainly a rising star in the sisterhood, should remember 10 October
2012 as it is the day she became Director of three seemingly unrelated companies –
Syrian Media Centre, Khayr and Watan – all on one day and the fact she may be
blood related to Anas of the “unrelated” BSS is most likely BS.
Aala, Manchester University proudly boasts here http://tinyurl.com/smb4x is doing
“independent” research in “Qah a refugee area on the eastern border of Syria and
Bab Al-Salam refugee camp on the northern border as well as Bakhsheem refugee
camp in Turkey” and that “Aala hopes after writing up her findings she can secure
funding for the development of a training programme specifically aimed at refugees
similar to the Triple P Positive Parenting Programme – used across the world to help
parents develop practical coping strategies in different situations”. Hopefully her
directorships or her fellow directors will help her in the name of Muslim sisterhood.
Although the university tells us Aala has “the support of WATAN, an institute
involved in supporting all aspects of Syrian aid and relief”, it does not tell us if this
support was won by open competition or if she simply had “the right blood” and came
from “good stock”, which is something secretive, conspiratorial organisations such as
the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood have always put great store in. Heaven knows what
the Triple P Positive Parenting Programme will think of her lame “research” methods
or what her generous funders, friends and fellow-directors in Watan and its affiliates
will for that matter.
Perhaps Dr Darwish, who is also a Watan director, can help us in this respect for
these links http://tinyurl.com/smb5x http://tinyurl.com/smb6x tell us that Manchester’s
Dr Ammar Darwish is a director of a very impressive six companies, all of which
were set up almost simultaneously either on either 8 June 2012 or 1st and 2nd
October 2012. These companies are Generation Freedom, Khayr, Syrian Activists
Network, Syrian Centre for Studies & Research, Syrian Business Club, Syrian Media
Centre, the Centre for Syrian Freedoms and our new-found friend Watan Association
Ltd which, as this link http://www.watansyria.org/en/ hints, may be the controlling
group behind these other fronts. The Charity Commission tells us here
http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/find-charities/ that Khayr lists three trustees,
one of whom, interestingly, is the upward-mobile Aala, and another of whom is Dr
Ammar Dawish, who should not be confused with Dr. Marya Darwish which this link
https://www.justgiving.com/WinterizationAid tells us raises money for “Watan UK
along with the other hard working selfless Watan teams from around the world,” one
of which may be Watan FM radio, which this BBC link http://tinyurl.com/snb8x tells
us is pumping sectarian propaganda into Syria from their Turkish safe haven and
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which is, of course, “enabling” Aala to “enable” vulnerable victims of the Syrian
rebels.
Though this brief soiree into Manchester’s Muslim netherworld does raise a host of
questions, the proliferation of dubious charities like these greatly compounds the
work of the under-resourced and under-appreciated American and British regulators
who are charged with keeping their eyes out for cowboy operations conning the
public. As the USA, for example, has a staggering 1,250,000 million charities, with
an extra 5,000 more being created every year, there is a very big charity ocean for
these radical Syrian groups to hide, swim, network and recruit in.
As if the vast numbers alone were not enough, then there are the “governance
issues”. Charities like Kids Wish Network, Cancer Fund of America and The
American Breast Cancer Foundation give less than 10% of their donations in direct
aid, and the other 90% to their fundraisers. In England, meanwhile, The Cup Trust
raised £176m from donations in its first two years of operation but distributed a
comparative pittance of £55,000 to charity. Clearly, the Charity Commission, Britain’s
regulator, has its work cut out in regulating these groups, many of which are just
badly run, more of which are clearly fraudulent and still more of which might be
collecting money to fund sectarian slaughter.
The Forest Gump Approach
Because the oxygen of publicity is essential to massive fund-raising, it is important to
take Forest Gump’s approach and gate-crash epoch-making events. If the Syrian air
force attacks “defenceless women and new-born babies in incubators”, it boosts your
fund-raising bottom line if your volunteers, rather than those of your equally
opportunistic competitors, are on the ground defending those infants and on our TV
screens desperately pleading with the public to “send money now”.
This is the classic bait and switch tactic known to fund raisers and fraudsters the
world over; Time4Life, an Italian mob, also seems to have an uncanny knack of
being at the business end of both the Syrian air force and Italian TV cameras every
time their charity cans rattle. Such outfits bait the public into giving them money for
one cause “before it is too late” and they then use it for another cause; Greenpeace,
to take the best-known example, do this all the time. Crucially, as BBC’s
controversial Saving Syria’s Children programme shows, these groups must hog the
media exposure so that they and their fund-raising, by hiding in the open as it were,
are insulated from serious scrutiny.
Thus, Dr Mahrous,Time4Life and Hand in Hand for Syria, the group behind the
Saving Syria’s Children farce, find themselves like modern-day Clark Kent Supermen
in the thick of things, rescuing babies, helping widows and orphans and, with the
help of an overly compliant media, being all round good guys, the type of people you
would invite round to organise a fund-raising dinner, unlike “the men with guns” that
the good Dr Mahrous actually hangs around with and which you, like the slaughtered
Christians of Mosul and the Armenians of Kasab, would run for your life from.
Sex Jihad and The Men with Guns
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Figure 7a-7c: Homage to Horror. FSA godfather Sam Idriss gives his seal of
approval to the slaughter of Alawite women, children and old men, Latakia, August
2013; John McCain does a happy chappie selfie with Syria’s most notorious
kidnapper; Syria’s moderate rebel and notorious cannibal explains his diet habits on
BBC TV.
The good Dr Mahrous is not the only British-based medic giving help to the “good
guys”. Renowned British surgeon Paul McMaster recounts here
http://tinyurl.com/medicsign3 his experiences working in an illegal hospital in rebelcontrolled Syria and treating “fighters – from both sides as MSF is, of course,
impartial – with serious gunshot wounds”. Much later in the piece, he tells us that
“Sometimes, after the casualties, the men with guns would arrive. At MSF we never
allow weapons into the treatment area – no matter which side they are on. We did
have prisoners from the government forces brought in for treatment and I went to
see one after we had treated him. He was being well looked after”.
So, far from being a neutral NHS type needle exchange drop in centre run by a
neutral medical outfit, Mr McMaster was, in effect, operating an Islamic rebel field
hospital and salving his conscience by treating the odd prisoner “the men with guns”
brought in.
Jacques Beres, the co-founder of the medical charity Doctors Without Borders,
recounts a similar experience with “the men with guns” when he treated Syrian
rebels in Aleppo, Syria’s Stalingrad, where he claims here
http://tinyurl.com/handchopw1 that a whopping 60 per cent of his patients were
rebels – and about half of those were foreigners hell-bent on establishing a sectarian
Sharia dictatorship, the type of rule one would expect NHS doctors like Dr Madrous
and his battle-hardened confreres to shy away from and to have nothing to do with.
This link http://tinyurl.com/HIHKurd1 tells us “In al-Dana in Idlib, Mahmoud Hussein,
an activist from the NGO Hand in Hand for Syria who conducted his own research on
this subject (sex jihad), told Al-Monitor that most of the holy warriors discard their
“wives” after two months, at which time they then marry another female captive. Mr
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Hussein, the Hand in Hand for Syria worker, then goes on to tell us: “All the
'immigrants' who come to the medical center in the countryside of Latakia insist that
the female doctors marry them. These doctors say they are engaged, and the
fighters insist on being introduced to other Syrian girls”.
Although Mr Hussein’s very blasé attitude to the victims of sex jihad might disgust, in
civilised society that is, for their American and British fund-raising enterprises, such
collaboration is undoubtedly a part of the moral price those aiding the Syrian cutthroats are not only happy to pay but also wish to get us to collude in so that we too
will be part of their homage to horror. Because we cannot, on the one hand, condone
such savagery with our donations and retain any sense of moral integrity on the
other, we must forensically examine these organisations and the media
organisations that collude with them. Their victims deserve no less from us and from
those charged with regulating them.
The euphemistically-named Save Syria31 was set up by Dr Mohamed Najjar, another
fascinating British-based doctor, who is a TV celebrity on Al Hiwar, the Muslim
Brotherhood linked TV channel and who is also a regular performer on English
language secular TV as well. Dr Najjar has even very bravely travelled to areas of
Aleppo controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Al Tawheed Brigade and, where,
rumour has it, British doctors adjudicate in sectarian sharia courts before returning to
Blighty to boast about those poor unfortunates who, in the words of The Bard, they
“damn with a spot”.
Were Save Syria and other Muslim Brotherhood linked charity groups to come clean
on all they know about Britons, NHS medics included, who officiate at sectarian
Syrian sharia courts, this might, of course, impact their fund-raising bottom line and
be as potentially bad for business as condoning sex jihad, something some of the
Hand in Hand for Syria crew seem content enough to condone. Were we to find out,
perhaps through the good offices of Save Syria and other Muslim Brotherhood linked
crews, that British doctors were condemning Syrian men to death at sectarian sharia
courts and that militias linked to the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and through them to
British-based charities, were also condemning entire families to death, well, we might
switch our GPs and even write to our MPs about what prominent employees of the
NHS are getting up to in their spare time.
Dr Mohammad Najjar, one of the main London-based organisers of these
questionable charities, is in an excellent position to throw light on whether British
doctors are officiating at sharia courts that sentence entire families of “collaborators”
to death as he seems to know where, to use an old saying, the bodies are buried. In
this laughable report http://tinyurl.com/smb8x, which informs us that Assad’s regime,
like that of Saddam Hussein’s before him, has weapons of mass destruction that are
going to kill us all before we have time to pick our noses, Mohammad Najjar tells us
about his secretive “private aid mission to Aleppo”.
In these articles, http://tinyurl.com/smb9x and http://tinyurl.com/smb10x Dr
Mohammed Najjar, this time wearing another hat, that of the leader of the “secular”
Syrian National Coalition, tells us that there are a handful of "foreign fighters" in Syria
who could be described as jihadists but that their numbers have been "exaggerated"
31
Its website gives the contact details here http://www.savesyria.org.uk/1_3_Contact-Us.html for the
“brothers from Aleppo” as follows: “Dr Mohamed Najjar - Tel: +447830538302; Brother Ziad Najar Tel: +447838426647”. Its Facebook page is here: https://www.facebook.com/savesyriauk
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and that they are, despite massive evidence to the contrary, of no real consequence.
Though Dr Najjar does not tell us if British doctors in Syria are officiating at sectarian
sharia courts that sentence entire families of “collaborators” to death, we can
probably assume they are not as, according to Dr Najjar, who regularly commutes to
rebel-run Aleppo, there are not many non-Syrians fighting there, notwithstanding the
countless dead jihadists, Britons among them, testifying otherwise with their cold
dead hands.
Here http://tinyurl.com/smb11x Dr Najjar is wearing yet another hat, this time
representing Islamic Relief, where he shills for DEC’s Syria Crisis Appeal and where
we learn that “Mohamed is a London-based locum hospital doctor, has played a
prominent part in fundraising for Islamic Relief’s Syria crisis response by helping to
organise appeals on UK-based Arabic TV channels and speaking at appeal dinners
in London, Bristol and Sheffield”. We do not, alas, learn from “Mohamed” if British
doctors in Syria are officiating at sectarian sharia courts that sentence entire families
of collaborators to death.
We do learn from “Mohamed” that “Inside Syria a lot of people have no electricity or
clean water and they are living out in the open in small tents”. We do not learn from
“Mohamed” that the Muslim Brotherhood’s military death squads in Aleppo and
elsewhere are targeting the water supplies and electricity stations even as they buy
up old generators in England to ship to the areas they and their Turkish overlords
control in Syria. We do not, in other words, learn that it is the Muslim Brotherhood
death squads who are at the root of the problems that so trouble “Mohamed”.
In this interview http://tinyurl.com/smb12x our new-found friend Dr Mohammed
Najjar, this time back to wearing the hat of the opposition group the “secular” Syrian
National Coalition, is back to the hoary old canard that "the world is still carelessly
watching babies and children being slaughtered". He does not confirm rumours that
London-based doctors linked to the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood have pictures of
themselves on their cell phones watching “the rebels” beheading captured soldiers
and civilians to satiate their sectarian blood lusts. No word either of the wholesale
slaughter of Alawite children, “babies and children” included, in Latakia at the time of
the Ghouta attacks but “Mohamed” is no doubt a busy man, what with all that
commuting with all his different hats between Aleppo and British TV studios.
“Mohamed” is, alas, not the only doctor in this house of ill repute. As this Skynews
report on one of their comrades killed in Syria shows http://tinyurl.com/HIHTrustee
another colourful character is London-based Dr Mahmoud al Akraa who led a mob
that disrupted a peaceful and inclusive meeting in London which I chaired. Details of
that meeting, where Dr Mahmoud al Akraa personally heckled small children and
hurled abuse at them, are here: http://tinyurl.com/HIHTrustee2. Dr Mahmoud al
Akraa’s Facebook page shows here http://tinyurl.com/HIHTrustee3 he and Dr Rola
Alkurdi Hallam, the Saving Syria’s Children super-star, are friends. As this link
http://tinyurl.com/trusteexx1 shows, Dr Mahmoud al Akraa also shares platforms with
disgraced and discredited provocateur Danny Abdel Dayyem; more to the point
perhaps, Dr al Akraa claims that the Syrian government forces the Muslim
Brotherhood are murdering will summarily and sadistically torture and then kill any
Syrian seen to have been getting medical aid from non-approved sources which, if
true, would have to call into the question Hand in Hand for Syria’s clearly suicidal
policy, as enunciated by his fellow Hand in Hand for Syria trustee, Mr al-Dairi, of
running token medical services in government-controlled Syria. Equally importantly,
at 2:43 into the video, he expresses his delight that “the Muslim Brotherhood is
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coming back” to Syria. Hand in Hand for Syria, like Dr Mahmoud al Akraa himself,
should explain whether or not they support the Muslim Brotherhood, the “secular”
Syrian National Council and the various rebel extremist groups they have been
consorting with. They, along with the NHS, should also clearly state what, if any,
disciplinary action they intend to take against Dr al Akraa. Dr al Akraa should
probably hand his phone over to the authorities so they can check on whether selfies
of him urinating over the bodies of decapitated Syrian soldiers exist or not32.
This link http://tinyurl.com/rola1 points out that Dr Rola Hallam, who is at the centre
of the Hand in Hand for Syria crew, is the daughter of Dr. Mousa al Kurdi, a leading
apologist for Syrian extremist militias, who has been involved at the highest levels
with the extremists. Dr Rola was one of the signatories and organisers of the 16
September 2013 letter to The Lancet, signed by a large number of medics, many
globally prominent, asking that they be allowed to work unhindered in Syria. Given
that all of them, Dr Rola included, declared “that we have no conflicts of interest”, Dr
Rola should clarify whether that is, in fact, the case33. Dr Rola should, in other words,
explain whether her 16 September 2013 declaration is true that she has no conflict of
interest or whether her real sympathies and those of Hand in Hand for Syria, like
their actions, are sectarian and partisan. The other medics mentioned here should
do the same so that we do not think they are merchants of death, the type of
degenerates who would have any truck with sectarian Syrian sharia courts.
Perhaps I have the short end of Syria’s sectarian stick here for, in this article
http://tinyurl.com/smb13x our good friend, Dr Mohammed Najjar, again rejects any
idea that the sectarian Syrian rebels are sympathetic to Al Qaeda. As he explains:
“The Syrian people are quite moderate, liberal people and they don’t accept
extremism. This is new to our society and I think the Syrian people will continue to
reject any kind of extremism in Syria”. Speaking about the tree-hugging rebels, Dr
Najjar said: “Many of these are ordinary Syrian people who decided to carry
weapons to defend their children and their lives.” The fact however, is, the good
doctor’s protestations notwithstanding, there are sharia courts operating all over the
“liberated” areas Najjar visits and for him to pretend otherwise is disingenuous at
best and downright criminal at worst.
32
Though I confronted Dr al Akraa at the meeting and could see he is clearly a very disturbed man, I
have no way of verifying whether this is true or not. Several of the terrified Syrians who attended the
meeting made these allegations to me.
33
See here for the letter http://tinyurl.com/medicsign1 and here http://tinyurl.com/medicsign2 for the
list of signatories.
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Figure 7d: Dr Mohammed the Video Star: This revealing video
http://tinyurl.com/sbmz4 http://tinyurl.com/smbsmb stars Dr Mohammed and a
supporting cast including charities Syrian Aid and handsofmercy and Dr Rami
Abdulraham of the pro-rebel SOHR. Dr Najjar tells us that he had to leave Syria
years before the current troubles started. As he also tells us that the Syrian
government is quite prepared to use not only chemical weapons but nuclear
weapons as well, we can probably deduce that neither he nor his mates have ever
been big fans of the Syrian authorities. In case we are in any actual doubt about their
allegiances, because we are told, 11 minutes into the video, how dissidents had to
hide from the Syrian authorities during the earlier and equally bloody revolt of the
Muslim Brotherhood fanatics, we can only assume that the tainted tentacles of the
Muslim Brotherhood are the controlling hand behind all of this.
About 14 minutes into the video, the good doctor travels to Turkey to help the
“women and children in incubators” the Syrian authorities loathe. However, in rebels
areas, Jim Crowe rules and those unfortunates have to stand in line behind “the men
with guns”. The first patient we see Dr Muhammad meeting is not, in fact, a woman
or now-born child fresh from an incubator but a seriously injured gunman in the type
of fatigues Dr Mad Dog Madros models; at 14:40 into the video we see one of the
many hyenas crowding around the gunman wearing a “Hand in Hand” vest. After
showing us the injured jihadist, Dr Mohammed then tells us he is proud to help
“people”, presumably as long as they are on his side of the battle lines.
After Dr Muhammad and the SOHR rebel apologist tell us more one-sided harrowing
tales, a pregnant woman in a Turkish refugee camp tells us of her sad plight but, as
she does not precisely explain why and with whom her husband has remained
behind in Syria, we can only assume he is a Muslim Brotherhood affiliated gunman
and that she is, accordingly, “part of the team”. After her cameo, Dr Muhammed
returns to tell us how he and other doctors have helped patch up countless gunmen.
He says in the earlier days before they really got the bloody bandwagon going, there
was no organisation, just a band of medical “brothers” “spontaneously” infiltrating
into Syria to help their wounded “brothers”, some of whom then make appearances
along with the expected quota of wounded children and their distressed mothers.
The SOHR head honcho then reappears to tell us of their dreams of a “democratic
Syria” which is being thwarted by the refusal of the Syrian Army to surrender all
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minorities and moderate Sunnis to the less than tender mercies of their sharia
courts.
The video concludes by Dr Muhammed confessing to us that “As a person, I can’t sit
and watch what is happening to my country”. Perhaps that is how he felt when he
fled Syria before the Troubles broke out; perhaps he felt the slaughters the Muslim
Brotherhood inflicted on Syria in the 1980s was preferable to the current Wagnerian
regime who are, he has warned us, plotting to use nuclear weapons on their own
people and, presumably, on us too.
After 25 minutes, we learn the video was produced by Mohammed Ameen, as part of
a student programme run by Mike Wayne (of Brunel University?). Though Mr Ameen
should be commended for his potential, he should, as a possible future documentary
maker, not be as embedded or besotted with his subjects, handlers and fixers as
more well-known and popular documentary makers we have discussed elsewhere
are. Likewise, although Dr Mohammed is doing much good work, the benefits to all,
not just to Sunni extremists, would be much better if he came clean with us about
why he left Syria in the first place and why he is devoting his considerable talents to
the ignoble cause the “men with guns” propound.
TORTURE TIME WITH SYRIA’S HANNIBAL LECTORS
Not that Dr Najjar wants us confused on where he stands. In his own words
http://tinyurl.com/smb13: “I think this regime can’t be dealt with except by force and
he has to be taken out by force.” Because he does not make it sufficiently clear just
how much force should be applied so that “the regime” can be “taken out”, we must,
judging from the evidence, make our own minds up on just how much violence Dr
Najjar is prepared to condone to rid Syria of all human supporters of “the regime”.
Would he, for example, preside in a sectarian sharia court that would summarily
sentence Syrian government employees and members of minority religions to death?
If not, why not? Would he be prepared to tell the authorities here and in Syria on
what he knows about those kangaroo courts? If not, why not?
Figure 8: Dinner Time for the moderates: Khalid al-Hamad, the commander of the
moderate “Omar al-Farouk” Brigade affiliated to the “Syria Free Army” from the
region of Baba Amr in Homs, would probably agree with the good doctor, even if he
has little time for the niceties of the Muslim Brotherhood’s kangaroo courts. Khalid is,
of course, the flesh-chomping Muslim Brotherhood affiliated run-of-the-mill rebel who
was feted on mainstream British and American TV stations about his dining habits
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and how prisoners can expect to fare at the dinner table of the Muslim Brotherhood
linked crews he runs with.
Not, as this report makes plain http://tinyurl.com/snb14x that they would fare much
better in any of the dungeons the Muslim Brotherhood’s sectarian death squads
control or in the sectarian kangaroo courts presided over by British-based doctors
who boast to their confreres how they condemn their prisoners to be sliced to death.
Figure 9: Christians are Dog Food. British-based doctors linked to the Muslim
Brotherhood have assured us that savage actions like this are not sectarian and that
the Christians their comrades cannibalise have nothing to fear from them.
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Figure 10: Lambs to the Slaughter. From an excellent Australian report giving
details the torture regimes and kangaroo courts the criminals of the Syrian Muslim
Brotherhood help run. The “brothers” excuse all this by saying their prisoners are all,
wink wink, Shabiha.
Figure 11: Coup de grâce: Syrian government soldiers are dispatched in typical
fashion after they were overwhelmed in a joint Muslim Brotherhood/Al Nusra attack.
The “brothers” excuse all this by saying their victims are all, wink wink, Shabiha.
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Figure 12: Muslim Brotherhood Selfies: Muslim Brotherhood thugs take
incriminating selfies of themselves humiliating and torturing a captured Syrian Army
officer. The “brothers” excuse all this by saying he was, wink wink, Shabiha.
This excellent Australian report shows prisoners cowering in front of Abu Haytham,
the psychopathic commander of the Eagle Coast Brigade, part of the Muslim
Brotherhood dominated Free Syrian Army franchise. The prisoners are being
tortured in a Muslim Brotherhood controlled mosque in Jabal al-Akrad, in Syria's
north-western province of Latakia. The prisoners have obviously been severely
beaten and tortured, standard fare as they are prisoners of the FSA's Ahfad Omar
brigade - part of the Muslim Brotherhood controlled Tawheed Battalion.
Hassan Ouso, their torturer-in-chief, claims they are “Shabiha”, which is code for a
member of a minority religious sect or a government employee; though he is
continually asked, Ouso repeatedly ignores questions about whether the prisoners
were tortured or beaten in custody, perhaps on the grounds there is no point in
stating the obvious.
In Aleppo, the 2000-strong Tawheed mob - one of the largest crews shaking down
the locals – using the same flimsy “Shabiha” excuse, regularly execute any member
of the Barri clan they get their blood-drenched claws on, Shabiha, of course being
the catch-all phrase for anyone these “noble savages” want to torture, rape or kill. It
is no wonder Ousa’s prisoners quiver in fear. The Muslim Brotherhood, many of
whom are NHS employees, are not signatories to the Geneva Convention.
After Ousa and his fellow-goons soften them up, the prisoners will next face the
summary justice of a sectarian sharia court, presided over perhaps by a British NHS
doctor who will later boast about it and show photos of them being beheaded around
the Edgware Road coffee shops, knocking shops and gambling dens he frequents.
Perhaps that is all my idle, ignorant speculation for Anna Neistat, the associate
director for emergencies at Human Rights Watch, which is a de facto apologist front
for rebel war crimes such as those we described, tells us “There is no suggestion the
FSA is committing crimes of this magnitude, but there is still concern that abuse is
occurring. As such, human rights groups have been negotiating a ''code of conduct''
with the rebels in which they promise to avoid the abuse of prisoners”. She tells us,
reassuringly, that as many of these murder gangs have signed up to a charter a few
of the Human Rights Watch lads knocked up, prisoners have nothing to fear from
these ignoble warriors. In Marea, a quiet farming town north of Aleppo, the 40 odd
prisoners, who are all undoubtedly members, wink, of the Shabiha and who are all
being systematically tortured by Muslim Brotherhood linked Tawheed Battalion
chappies, would beg to differ, only their tongues would be cut out for such
brazenness.
The Eternal Jew Haters in Syria and the USA
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Figure 13: Eternal anti-Semites. Members of the Liwa al-Tawhid mob, or Brigade
of Unity branch of the Free Syrian Army franchise, loot and ransack a synagogue in
the Bab al-Nasr neighbourhood of Aleppo, June 28, 2013.
British charity groups are not, of course, the only lot who have scoured the world’s
sectarian sewers for rabble rousers and death squad apologists. The Americanbased Syrian Sunrise Foundation, have inflicted quite a few Frankensteins onto the
Land of the Free and the Brave. As this link http://tinyurl.com/smbx14 shows, one of
their biggest draw-cards was a sectarian, Jew-hating nut job going by the name of
Sheikh Osama al-Rifai, who got gullible American punters to donate over $3.6 million
for, as he called it, financial jihad. He did this by doing gigs at the Muslim
Brotherhood controlled Mosque Foundation, where Sheikh Mohammad Rateb alNabulsi who is, as they say, known to the police, regularly raises money for the
Syrian American Council.
Figure 14: Moderates Beware. Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood have spearheaded a
campaign of assassination against all moderate Sunni clerics who refused to call for
sectarian slaughter.
Sheik Osama al-Rifai’s colourful CV includes the interesting tidbit that he facilitated
the creation of the Islamic Front, a merger of seven extremist jihadist crews now
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ravaging Syria34. Stateside, he was happy to share the “credit” for building these
killer machines and he singled out "organizations here like Shaam Relief, and Syrian
Sunrise Foundation, you must be very aware that you are too performing jihad just
like your brothers in Syria."
The Syrian Sunrise Foundation likely brought al-Rifai to the U.S. due to his
reputation inside Syria as the head of a large charitable front operation. Its website
says that it aims "to send aid to families, orphans, and widows affected by the
conflict." The group claims to have a "well-established humanitarian network of
hundreds of workers" and denies having "any political, religious, or any other
agenda" which is just as well as The Islamic Front will keep plenty of “orphans and
widows” in need of their help. Sunni ones that is, as non-Sunnis need not and best
not apply.
Al-Rifai, who has co-hosted jihadi fund-raising conferences in Egypt, does not like
Jews who, not being a man to mince his words, he says are "absolute evil" and that
Jews corrupted Western women "through Freud” and "the Jews mention in the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion that all the nations are the donkeys of the Jews, and
that they cannot humiliate and ride these donkeys until they can corrupt them. This is
in the Elders of Zion, and I ask the God to give me the capability to explain all of
that." And this is the obnoxious character the USA let roam the Land of the Free from
sea to shining sea.
Figure 15: No room at the Muslim Brotherhood Inn for Syria’s Christians.
Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood, together with their Turksih sponsors, have spearheaded
a campaign of murder, torture and kidnapping against Syria’s Christians not only for
their default sectarian reasons but also for the geo-political reason of ethnically
cleansing the region of the “Cross worshippers” so they can more easily portray the
area’s problems as a sectarian rather than a geo-political reason.
Though Al-Rifai frequently speaks about morality and uniting all Syrians, he
endorses a sectarian coalition of cut-throats that brutally suppresses those ideals.
IHS Jane's estimates the mobs al-Rifai now runs with could have as many as 45,000
gang members under their command. Most of the crews that make up the Islamic
34
After the Islamic Front crew begged, borrowed or stole all the gear the USA and her allies gave the
Free Syrian Army, the Yanks temporarily suspended this indirect help to ISIS’ allies.
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Front, including its leadership, have had close operational relations with Al-Qaida's
Syrian branches, including the Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State of Iraq and Greater
Syria crews, all of which are supposedly enemies of the USA where Al-Rifai has
been allowed to raise millions of dollars for their common cause. They are all peas in
the same stinking pod, a band of brotherly brigands civilised people should have no
truck with.
There is nothing moderate about these gangsters. Zahran Alloush, the leader of
Jaish al-Islam and chief of military operations for the Muslim Brotherhood-controlled
Islamic Front, solicited foreign mercenaries to help them rape Syria. He has regularly
called for resurrecting the Islamic caliphate in which he also advocated cleansing
Syria of Shiites and Alawites; videos show his foot soldiers flying the jihadist black
flag, the flag of choice of those at the centre of the war against Syria. Harakat Ahrar
al-Sham have regularly fought alongside Jabhat al-Nusra and both mobs
coordinated the September 2013 assault that ransacked the ancient Christian town
of Ma'aoula. Ahrar Al-Sham has also worked with the Free Syrian Army crew and, of
course, with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, the grand daddy of Syria’s terror
networks.
Al-Rifai's serial endorsements of the Islamic Front, when coupled with the blurry lines
between the different Sunni crews looting Syria and the millions they have raised in
the United States, through sympathetic groups like the Syrian Sunrise Foundation,
raise serious questions about The Syrian Sunrise Foundation, Shaam Relief 35 and all
other Western “charities”, organisations and NGOs who may be helping, “however
inadvertently”, sectarian slaughter in Syria.
Syria’s Zealots, Fanatics, Heretics and Outright Lunatics
Hand in Hand Heavies: Mohammad bin Abdul Rahman Al Arefe
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http://counterjihadreport.com/tag/shaam-relief-foundation tells us that The Shaam Relief
Foundation, working in cahoots with the Syrian American Council, brought Dr. Mohamad Rateb AlNabulsi Stateside. Al-Nabusi, reflecting the beliefs of notorious Muslim Brotherhood godfather
Youssef Qaradawi, believes in the tactic of suicide bombing, and that Jews are the “most inferior and
most evil of peoples and the greatest enemies of Allah and of Islam and its people.”
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Figure 16: Kill Them All. Mohammad Al-Arefe, the extremist Saudi preacher,
speaks at a Hand in Hand for Syria event (where the rebel emblem was brazenly
displayed).
Figure 17: Band of Brotherhoods. Mohammad Al-Arefe is honoured at a major
jihadist fund-raising event. The above photo was retrieved from this link
http://tinyurl.com/arefex2 which discusses Al-Nusra’s structure. The photo is from a
jihadist fund-raising meeting where Arefe was one of their key fund-raisers.
Figure 18: Round Up the Usual Suspects. American godfather John Kerry
consorts with ISIS go-betweens to keep the pressure up on Syria’s secular regime.
In justifying his own collaboration with Syrian death squads, Kerry had previously
claimed that the Syrian Army and ISIS were working hand in hand against Syria with
each other. The Syrian Arab Army is, in fact, currently engaging ISIS on all fronts
whereas Kerry is arming them, “however inadvertently”.
In this insightful interview http://tinyurl.com/smbx15 Nabeel Naiem, a former Al
Qaeda capo, extrapolating from his own experiences of running a 120 man terror
gang, questions how Isis has come to be so big, so well-organised and so wellfunded. He contends “Now as we speak there are 1,500 of ISIS & Nusra (Front) in
Tel Aviv hospitals” and, of interest to the NHS, the Charity Commission and the Old
Bill, that “They have field hospitals, and it’s remarkable that they have a number of
doctors in their ranks, even doctors from European countries”, “Osama was
spending by himself, but before Osama there was the International Islamic Relief
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Organization”, “they’re working on igniting the war between the Sunna and the
Shiites, just like what Abu Mussab (Zarqawi) used to blow up Sunnah mosques then
blow up Shiite mosques, to start the sectarian war in the region; and this is of course
an American plot, and I tell you ISIS didn’t kill a single American, ISIS didn’t behead
a single American and didn’t play football with his head, they beheaded Muslims and
ate livers of Muslims and didn’t kill a single American though it’s established since
2006”, “the Muslim Brotherhood have no religion, no nation, not safe to be with them,
they’ll betray anyone”, “At one time, these takfiri groups were openly taunting the
people who came to see dead British soldier bodies returned to open abuse saying
they deserved this. There was a national outcry about these people and parliament
was forced to list them as a terrorist group – to be dated in four days’ time. So, the
group changed their name and continued their practices. They are still there –
espousing their hatred.”
Whatever we may think about Nabeel Naiem, we would have to agree that his
opinions on the Muslim Brotherhood and other terror gangs deserves attention, not
only from the NHS, the police and the Charity Commission but from us all. Nabeel’s
analysis leads to the important questions as to who is calling Syria’s sectarian shots
and who is most complicit in their many war crimes.
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Syrian Muslim Brotherhood: Calling the Shots?
Figure 19: Summary Justice. Syrian Muslim Brotherhood death squads commit yet
another war crime. These captured Syrian Army prisoners are riddled down for the
entertainment of the Muslim Brotherhood supporters. Perhaps their assassins did not
get the Human Rights Watch memo warning them of the adverse publicity effects of
such massacres.
Because the “secular” SNC purports to represent over 60 percent of the Syrian
opposition, perhaps 60% of their crimes should be attributed to them and their British
NHS support teams. In their defence, the SNC/SMB would argue that their forte is
merely overseas lobbying and overseas fund-raising and money–earners and that as
they are only the monkey, we should instead look to the organ grinders of Turkey,
Qatar and the USA instead. They have a point.
Perhaps then we should round up front-people like Texan resident Ghassan Hitto,
who was recently named as SNC’s nominal boss of bosses, as he was formerly an
operative with the Shaam Relief crew as well as a “friend of the Elashi family,” one
of whose “family” members, Ghassan, recently got 65 years in the State Pen for his
“charity” activities36.
Articles such as these http://tinyurl.com/smbx20 and http://tinyurl.com/smbx21 which
explain “How the Muslim Brotherhood Hijacked Syria’s Revolution” might instead
indicate British and American police should first look at the Muslim Brotherhood
octopus and all its leprous tentacles. Though the Brotherhood preaches tolerance
and makes temporary alliances as easily as their assassins make temporary
marriages, that is just a political tactic from this intolerant, sectarian and thoroughly
nasty bunch of thuggish criminals, who have and who never had any sizeable
mandate for their sectarian murder campaigns37.
They had and they continue to have no major popular support in Syria, bar what they
can win with the bomb, the bullet and the bribe. Though The Muslim Brotherhood
was Syria’s strongest opposition crew when the troubles began in March 2011, it
was entirely based in exile and had no foot soldiers on the ground. Its main strength
still resides in its overseas networks, in its ability to network in Whitehall, in
Washington, in Doha, in Ankara and in the other corridors of power and from them to
36
See these links for more information on The Lone Star Hero: http://tinyurl.com/smbx16
http://tinyurl.com/smbx17 http://tinyurl.com/smbx18
37
The most seats they ever won was 10 in the 1961 elections where their vote early and vote often
tactics had limited success. See here http://tinyurl.com/smbx19 for more on this gang of welleducated thugs.
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its control of the Syrian National Council (SNC) and the broader National Coalition of
Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, both of which have lost power to the
more dynamic and even more ruthless fanatics Saudi Arabian intelligence sponsors
and which are much more amenable to recruiting brain-dead cannon fodder
wherever they can find them than are the more secretive but equally repulsive
Muslim Brotherhood controlled Mafia gangs.
Since February 2014, open feuding between Saudi Arabia and Qatar triggered an
equally vehement confrontation over war booty between the coalition’s Jarba and
Salim Idris, the Brotherhood’s anointed, who personally oversaw the August 2013
Latakia massacres38. They are, in effect, yesterday’s men, arguing over the booty
but not having enough trigger-men to keep their all-essential street credibility
amongst the throat-cutters, head hackers and serial rapists of “liberated” Syria.
Back to the Future: the Spanish and Syrian Civil Wars
Figure 20: Symbols of Death. The black flag of ISIS is now proudly flaunted in
Wales. An Irish-based mass murderer of Syrians is eulogised in a widely-circulated
poster.
Syrian death squad supporters often draw comparisons between their cause and
that of the Spanish Republic and those who fought for it during Spain’s gory 1936-39
Civil War. Like many such comparisons, there are superficial similarities and major
underlying differences, the most obvious of which was the Spanish Republican
fighters, their international fighting brigades included, were fighting in defence of the
Spanish government whereas the Syrian death squads, their foreign mercenaries
included, are waging their jihad against the Syrian government and against any and
all Syria’s civilians who resist them and their very narrow religious vista.
Whatever similarities there are do not flatter the Syrian rebels. Hemmingway’s book
tells us of orgies of executions, of deranged mobs hacking priests to death with
picks, of defenceless women being publicly tortured and humiliated, of the
unthinkable savagery and wanton killings that are now synonymous with the Syrian
rebel death squads, and of Spain’s Republicans, like today’s Syrian soldiers,
learning how to slit their own carotid arteries to avoid the excruciating torture the
Muslim Brotherhood get off on; all of these Spanish Civil War depravities would be
familiar to students and survivors of the Syrian rebel militias.
38
Read here http://scpss.org/en/?p=272 how the ageing dons of the Muslim Brotherhood struggle to
compete for turf with their more popular, younger and more ruthless competitors.
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Whereas Franco had Hitler and Mussolini, Syria’s criminal gangs have an array of
help from the equally repulsive regimes of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, who have
bought, bullied or bribed most of the West’s journalists and politicians so much so
that the ravages of Northern Syria which are on a par with the destruction,
devastation and pillage of Franco’s Army of Africa as they raped their way between
Seville and Madrid, are glossed over as a liberation.
Saudi Arabia, Qatar and their allies aim to destroy Syria’s social tissue and to pit one
denomination against another so that Syria descends into the abyss and all that
remains is the shrill call to prayer of the Wahhabi overlords imposed on those Sunnis
who survive the carnage; there is no room in their Syria for Christians or Muslim
“apostates”.
The most famous call of the Spanish Civil War was: No pasaran, they shall not pass.
Should the Saudi Salafists pass, should they prevail in Syria, then, just as at the end
of the Spanish Civil War, all hell will break loose as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, like the
vultures they are, pick dry the bones of their victims and plan their next atrocities.
Their willing executioners, the Salafist mercenaries and rapists who have come from
all ends of the earth to devastate Syria, will hopefully be hunted down and brought to
book for their crimes against humanity. There can, unlike Spain’s International
Brigades, be no fond remembrance for those scum, no matter what part of the social
spectrum they came from.
MUSLIM BROTHERHOODS STEEPED IN SYRIAN BLOOD
Shortly before the remnants of the International Brigades evacuated Barcelona,
Dolores Ibárruri, La Pasionaria, made a famous speech in homage to them on All
Saint’s Day, November 1, 1938. That speech and the deeds of those she made it to,
still, despite the testimonies of Orwell and Hemmingway, resonate in many breasts
today because there was more than a kernel of decency and honesty in those from
England, Ireland, America and beyond who died at Jarama, Guadalajara, Brunete,
Belchite, Levante and, most famously, at the Ebro. These unholy cut throats are cut
from a filthier cloth.
Figure 21: Abderozzak Benarabe, Big A to some, Big A**hole to others, a
notorious Danish criminal doing some recreational jihad in Syria.
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One typical jihadist, as this article http://tinyurl.com/SMBX22 explains is Big A,
Abderozzak Benarabe, a convicted drug trafficker and the leader of one of
Denmark's most notorious sadistic organised crime gangs. Not unlike NHS Britain’s
more urbane doctors, this thug collected £50,000 and hi-tech military paraphernalia,
including night-vision goggles and heat sensors, for Syria’s criminal rebels. Big A,
like our NHS doctors and, like the criminals Dale Carnegie begins his famous “How
to win friends and influence people” opus with, would argue that his help to Syria’s
cut throats shows he is a good man, a man of honour even.
Figure 22: Belgian Cannon Fodder: Sharia4Belgium radicalised this kid and
shipped him off to rob and rape Syrians. Belgian Dimitri Bontinck will certainly not be
writing paeons to these thugs. He claims his son, Jejoen, underwent an Islamic
radicalization process by the notorious Sharia4Belgium crew who then shipped him
off to kill Christians in Syria. As this report explains http://tinyurl.com/smbx23 Dimitri
was roughed up when he went to Turkey to try to rescue his son from the clutches of
the death squad cults who brain-washed him.
Figure 23: English cannon fodder: Abdullah Deghayes, as this obituary
http://tinyurl.com/smbx25 explains, was radicalised in England and killed in Syria by
Syrian security forces fighting serious crime. British Foreign Minister William Hague
actually said the death of this young criminal was a tragedy. The teenage fanatic
travelled with his 16-year-old brother Jaffer, who is now hopefully helping Syrian
police with their enquiries. Their older brother Amer, 20, stopped a bullet in his gut
during the same criminal enterprise that sent Abdullah to his death. Their father is
proud of them. Because their uncle, Omar, was held in Guantánamo Bay from 2002
to 2007 on suspicion of being an Al Qaeda assassin, some, using the Muslim
Brotherhood logic, would say Abdullah came from “good stock”.
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Figure 24: The “Irish Brigade” in the thick of it. These unlikely-looking Irish
people were arrested in Cairo. Their father is Imam Sheikh Hussein Halawa who
runs the notorious Clonskeagh mosque with which most of the Irish passport holders
killed in Syria were connected. These innocents abroad just happened to be in the
mosque at the centre of the Muslim Brotherhood protests and one of them just
happened to be coordinating media activities for Al Jazeera, the Qatari station which
broadcasts Muslim Brotherhood diatribes to the world. The mosque their family runs
(their father cannot speak English or Irish even though he has lived in Ireland for
decades) is the headquarters of Europe’s Muslim Brotherhood groups and they have
a special relationship with the Irish government which amazingly allows these
sectarian zealots to vet the Arabic documents of all Christians and Shias entering
Ireland. This controversial mosque also has close contacts with Sheikh Yusuf alQaradawi, the prominent Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood bigot who has urged irish
and other Muslims to go to Syria to commit mass murder. Saudi Arabia and the
poisoned dwarf state of Qatar are currently funding the building of more megamosques throughout Ireland.
Figure 25: Pin up boy. This Irish-based thug who died committing serious crimes in
Syria was described in the Irish Sun newspaper here http://tinyurl.com/smbx26 as a
“good-looking lad” and as a “martyr”. This newspaper never described dead IRA or
British IRA squaddies in such terms but a thug who abused Irish hospitality to go and
kill Libyan and Syrian children gets crowned with such laurels.
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Figure 26: Pray to the Irish Martyrs. Not to be outdone, controversial Irish Times
journalist Mary Fitzgerald, who has a very unhealthy relationship with the gangsters
who destroyed Libya before moving on to rape Syria wrote here
http://tinyurl.com/smbx27 about these two “martyrs of Louth and Meath”. This is
important as the remains of Oliver Plunkett, Ireland’s most revered (and peaceful)
saint, resides in Louth, in the actual town where the father of one of these deceased
criminals works and where Pope John Paul made a point of visiting and honouring in
his plea for people to pursue peaceful not violent means of conflict resolution.
Fitzgerald, to whom we shall return in a later piece, has a nefarious agenda here by
trying to conflate tradional and revered Irish Christian martyr pacifists, who died
because of their faith, with low-life mercenary criminals who slaugher people of faith.
Regarding Shamseddin Gaidan, the other deceased criminal, she tells us, a Libyanborn Meath schoolboy, “told his schoolfriends and teachers how much he wanted to
be there to witness the revolution that ended Gadafy’s 42 years in power”. Hopefully,
they reported the teenage hood’s desire to “witness” to the Irish police, who hopefully
have his family and their associates under constant surveillance with a view to either
imprisoning or deporting them if they want to give “witness”.
The other thug, 22-year-old Hudhaifa ElSayed, from Donacarney in Drogheda, was
well known to the police and, according to Fitzgerald, “knew exactly what he was
doing”. Abdel Basset, his Egyptian father, unsurprisingly perhaps, is a doctor, a
surgeon.
ElSayed, Fitzgerald tells us, was one of a number of Irish-based murderers who
went to Libya and, happy they had helped heap chaos on it, moved on to Syria to
repeat the process. Fitzgerald recounts how she had met this criminal when she
illegally entered Syria as an embedded reporter with his death squad and, as if trying
to convince us that all mass murderers are cartoonish freaks she recounts how “His
wire-rimmed glasses seemed incongruous alongside his military-style fatigues and
the Kalashnikov slung across his back”. Fitzgerald tells us that Asmaa, the late
thug’s mother, who has not yet been deported from Ireland, “told him it is okay” to
effectively go and rape and pillage his way around Syria. Her equally fanatical
husband believes their gang member son “died for a great thing.” As she does not
bother asking what that “great thing” is, we have to assume it is turning Syria into
another Libya rather than another Ireland, from where they pontificate and build the
myth that their son was nothing other than the cold-blooded sectarian killer that he
clearly was.
Although I hope to later explain how come traditionally neutral Ireland is now a major
exporter of Islamic jihad, these reports http://tinyurl.com/smbq1
http://tinyurl.com/smbz1 recount how a gang of Irish traveller thieves stole €200,000
in cash from the home of “well-known Irish Libyan freedom fighter Mahdi al-Harati,
who was one of the leaders of the bloody revolt against Gaddafi” and that al-Harati
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admitted to Irish police that the cash came from American CIA agents for his Libytan
and Syran work.
.
Figure 27a, 27b: Going Out with a Bang. Not that CIA operatives in Ireland are the
only Yanks helping to destroy Syria. The pictures above show Abu Huraya, who
looks a lot like Tony Soprano’s dim-witted son, the first American brainwashed into
being a suicide bomber in Syria. He is on video in this report here:
http://tinyurl.com/smbz2
Figure 28: The Ugliest American? Because Mathew van Dyke is an American who
saw a huge business opportunity in joining the jihadists in Syria and Libya, he is
probably the most venal and revolting American of them all.
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Figure 29: Bringing it back to Blighty. These two cretins murdered Lee Rigby, an
off duty soldier on London’s streets in a brutal manner their mates specialise in in
Syria.
Figure 30: Land of my Fathers? These Welsh-based murderers ask others to join
them killing Christians in Syria and Iraq. Their supporters now openly display their
flag on the streets of Cardiff.
Figure 31: Sex Jihad gone wrong. This American’s career of “comforting” the
jihadists was cut short by the Syrian Army who killed her before her customers could
kill them.
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Figure 32: London Sex Jihad Offering: Channel 4 inflicted this psychopath on their
viewers in “an exclusive” of all sick things in 2013. Luckily, the programme was
shortened when the news Prince George was born broke. She married a Swedish
murderer and their families regularly visit them to see how their ethnic cleansing of
Syrians from Syria is getting along.
Figure 33 Sisters in sex jihad. This piece http://tinyurl.com/smbz3 tells us that
twins Salma and Zahra Halane left their parents’ Manchester home in the middle of
the night from where they flew to Turkey, before crossing the border to Syria to
“meet” the troops. That takes some organising, the type of organising Manchester’s
Muslim Brotherhood cabal can easily do.
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Figure 34: School’s Out: Sex Jihad Is In: Schoolgirl Zahra Halane kneels in front
of friends when she was in Year 6 at her primary school. Let’s hope she does not
have bursitis but, if she does, maybe one of the Manchester doctors mentioned
above, who regularly visit “rebel” Syria can help.
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Dr Declan Hayes is an Irish citizen who has lectured on finance to post-graduate
students in Australia, England, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Syria and Mexico as
well as his native Ireland. He has published a number of books in both Japanese and
English on finance and defence related issues and has written extensively on them
in Japanese, Irish and English newspapers. He is a competent media performer and
has commented on these issues on numerous occasions on TV and radio stations
throughout the world.
Although he has been in involved in human rights issues all his life, most recently he
has concentrated his efforts on Palestine and, increasingly, Syria, both of which he
has visited twice over the last year. An eternal optimist beneath his sceptical sheen,
he is a master scuba diver who looks forward to diving off the coasts of Gaza and
Syria in the near future when the people of those lands are allowed to live in peace
from those outside forces who are currently besieging them.
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Appendix 8: Legal Regulatory Issues.
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As a further gesture of goodwill, I am including this short appendix, with the above
snapshots regarding general relations between solicitors and their clients as well as
the specific duties of care that may pertain when those charities are operating under
the protection of terrorist gangs. The hope is that Nelson’s and all other reputable
firms of solicitors will advise their clients and the various regulatory authorities
accordingly. Without firms such as Nelson’s doing their duty, the terrorists will
undoubtedly win.
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The Rape of Kasab
Dr Declan Hayes
Kasab’s descent into hell began at 5.30 am precisely on March 21 st 2014 when
merciless shelling from the Turkish side of the Syrian border rained down on the
undefended Armenian village, not only sending its 2,000 residents into panic but
portending the apocalypse that was about to befall them.
Over 20,000 fanatics from al Nusra, the Free Syrian Army and a number of other
extremist groups swarmed over the border on motor bikes, pick-up trucks and
Western ambulances converted into troop and munitions carriers for this blitzkrieg.
Though hopelessly outnumbered, lightly-armed Syrian troops held off the invaders
until the inhabitants could be evacuated. Sunnis, Shias, Alawites and Armenian
Christians all fled for their lives from these fanatics who some Western
commentators still insist, against not only all the evidence but against common
sense as well, are progressive liberators; several Kasab residents, such as Hovian
Khatcherin, found themselves fleeing from these Islamic hordes for the third time,
having previously been forced to flee Raqaa and Aleppo for her life. Such are the
perils that are part and parcel of daily life for the Levant’s remaining Christians and
for which there seems to be so little pro-active sympathy beyond Syria’s borders.
The “liberators” systematically desecrated all Kasab’s churches, they looted the
village’s graves, they scattered the bones of the deceased around the town for stray
dogs to scavenge on, they stripped every house and outhouse of anything of value,
window and door frames included, and these fanatical despots even hoodwinked the
West’s press into praising their actions as some sort of praiseworthy activity against
the supposedly tyrannical regime in far-away Damascus.
Kasab’s very elderly residents, who were too infirm to flee, were ferried, against their
wishes, into Turkey and, like the earlier kidnapped nuns of Ma’lulah, were cynically
paraded to pretend their kidnappers had their interests at heart. Pepken Djourian
and his wife find that a particularly bitter pill to swallow as the invaders executed their
only son in front of them and let him to rot for three days in the sun before throwing
him like a dog into a hastily dug hole in their apple orchard, a particularly apt analogy
as his murderer said that Kevork’s death meant they “had one less Armenian dog to
worry about”. Following his murder, Kevork’s parents were held against their will for
the next forty days in Turkey, where their kidnappers even brought Turkey’s
American ambassador to admire how well they were being treated and where noted
author Nizar Khalil willingly acted as interpreter between the aged Armenian captives
and their Turkish captors.
Kasab’s residents are convinced all of this was done with the full connivance of the
Turkish government. Kasab is in the very north-west tip of Syria and there is no other
way to attack it than with the permission of the Turkish authorities through the
heavily-militarized hills of nearby Turkey. Indeed, Samuel Poladian, who stayed in
Kasab for the entire occupation, lives only 200 metres from a Turkish police station
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and, like all the others, he not only claims he heard Turkish military helicopters
overhead on the morning of the invasion but that Turkey orchestrated the whole
outrage. Because the Turkish side of the border is speckled with countless army
outposts and because not even one of the invaders nor one of the looters was
arrested or even detained on the Turkish side of the border, their claims and their
contrary narrative are much more credible than Turkey’s lame excuses for these
crimes.
The Armenians claim the Kasab outrage, which was directed solely against
Armenian Christians, was Turkey’s brutal way of showing the Armenians and the
Syrian government and army which protect them that, just as in 1909 and in 1915,
they can occupy Kasab and slaughter its inhabitants at will any time they choose to.
The wilful destruction of the centre of Kasab, together with all its churches, makes
sense within that framework. What does not make sense to the people of Kasab, or
to those of the Aramaic-speaking town of Ma’lulah I visited a few days earlier is why
they have been so completely and utterly abandoned by the Christians of the West,
so much so that the departing fanatics booby-trapped the entire town of Ma’lulah
with bombs marked as donations to the Free Syrian Army by the European Union.
Neither of these ransacked Christian towns has received even one penny in aid from
the West, which seems to focus its relief efforts on the refugee camps the rebel
extremists and their Turkish hosts control and use as forward bases to attack those
they denigrate and dehumanize as “Cross worshippers” and who we should regard
as fellow human beings we are duty bound to help.
Though the Syrian Arab Army retook Kasab on 15 June 2014, the Armenians’
nightmare has not ended. Less than 800 of Kasab’s more than 2000 residents have
returned to their wrecked and looted homes, the schools are bereft not only of all
teaching materials, the liberators having burned the lot of it, but also of the
wherewithal to replace them with, their orchards, their means of making a living
stand fallow, the trees being more “collateral damage” caused by their erstwhile
“liberators” who have promised to return again with a vengeance, the Western world,
together with the Armenian diaspora, have other “more important” things to concern
themselves with, their tormentors commit stomach-churning atrocities on a daily
basis and Turkey and other sinister forces lurk in the long grass, waiting to strike at
the defenceless Christian Armenians of Kasab whenever is most opportune for their
nefarious agendas.
Unless people of goodwill act, the Christians of Syria will follow the Christians of Iraq
and Turkey itself into the trash can of history. Syria shows that the maxim that, for
evil to prosper, it is only necessary for people of goodwill to do nothing remains as
true as ever. Islamic extremists are using funds collected in the West to wage wars
of extermination on the minorities of Syria, Iraq, Northern Nigeria, the Central African
Republic and a number of other communities and countries that have been targeted
for destruction. April 24, 2015 marks the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide
which Armenians worldwide intend to commemorate and to use to call for an end to
such unspeakable acts of terror. We should join them not only in that call but into the
calls for help by the people of Kasab, of Malulah and of all of Syria and Iraq.
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I am Armenian
Dr Declan Hayes
I am not Armenian. I am Irish, as it happens. However, in the Armenian language,
my family name means I am Armenian.
If I were Armenian, I would be very angry with my fellow-Armenians, those in the
USA in particular. They are, we hear, the second richest minority group in the USA
and they are, we hear, making big preparations to commemorate the 24 April 2015
genocide when 1.5 million Armenians were butchered in Syria for the simple crime of
being born Armenian.
The American Armenians, we hear, remember those far-gone atrocities and are
determined the world will know about it. In France, we hear, it is a crime to deny that
genocide was perpetrated by Turkey on the Armenians, along with the Greeks, the
Assyrians and a number of other minorities in April 1915. France, Syria, Chile,
Uruguay and numerous other countries have, from time to time, commemorated that
genocide with postage stamps, a nice initiative, instigated no doubt by concerned
Armenians who remember those far-off atrocities and are determined the world will
smugly and silently remember them.
So, why the anger, you ask. Today, 7th September, the Armenian civilians of
Jaramana in Damascus are still under constant bombardment by the moderate
rebels America’s President Peace prize winner Barack Obama has just promised
another $4 bn to, the Armenians of Aleppo have had their homes and factories
looted and their contents sold off as booty in Turkey, they have buried their friends
and relatives by the score, and the Armenians of Kasab have likewise had their
relatives slaughtered, their community destroyed and their elderly folk taken as
hostages to Turkey where they were paraded in front of the American ambassador
and his beautiful wife for their entertainment.
Whatever about the fat cats of the Armenian Diaspora, the Armenians of Syria are by
and large simple people who got their kicks by singing hymns in church and their
living by picking apples. Those simple pleasures and livelihoods are now denied
them and the American Armenians, no doubt too busy following Kim Kardashian on
twitter or listening to Cher’s ditties on their expensive sound systems, do absolutely
nothing to help their fellow-Armenians who remain at the business end of the Turkish
cosh.
Even though American Armenian lawyers, we hear, are great advocates, we see
none of them getting off their well-waxed posteriors to take class actions on behalf of
the elderly Kasab Armenians taken as hostages to Turkey for the entertainment of
their ambassador and his beautiful wife. Even though American Armenian churches,
we hear, are very generous donors to all types of charities and they have the welfare
of the larger and less fortunate Armenian community very much at heart, their fellow
Armenians in Syria have yet to see one single, solitary dime from these generous
flag-bearers of atrocities committed long ago, atrocities those in Kasab who suffered
similar atrocities this year, heard first-hand accounts about when, as little children,
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they sat on their mothers’ knees almost a century ago. Not for them the narcissistic
keening by the rivers of Gotham. Their mess of pottage has a sharper edge, the
unforgiving sword of the Saudi funded jihadists who are well on the way to
exterminating them and their way of life.
Syria’s Armenian community have been stripped of their livelihoods by foreign
gunmen who enjoy the largesse of the American government which depends, in part,
on the tax dollars of America’s Armenian community. Syria’s Armenian community,
like all the people of Syria they have lived peaceably with for untold centuries, need
the help of the outside world, members of the Armenian Diaspora in particular.
Although simple people, Syria’s Armenians are not stupid. They know there is a plan
afoot to denude the traditional bible lands of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine of
their Christians and other minorities. They know they are in the line of American fire
through no fault of their own, save that of being born Armenian Christians. What
they do not know or cannot understand is why the well-heeled members of the
Armenian Diaspora in the United States and France care so little for their fate that
they will not even do the most simple, elementary and rudimentary things in solidarity
with their Syrian confreres.
Why no Armenian or Christian aid? Why no political pressure on Washington’s
warlords? Why no legal challenges against Turkey’s Erdogan regime and why is
America’s ambassador to Turkey and his beautiful wife not behind bars? These are
simple questions I would put to America’s Armenian leaders if our paths crossed – in
America or they will hardly cross here in Syria as America’s Armenian community
are either too busy or too scared here to “come and visit” as St Paul, himself no
stranger to Damascus, put it.
I am not Armenian but, if I were, I would be angry. I would try not to sink into the type
of despair that is the ghost at the bedside of Syria’s Armenian community. If
America’s Armenian community refuse to help, perhaps salvation for the Armenians
and Syria’s other Christian remaining communities lies where with it has traditionally
lay, with the Syrian Arab Army and its ultimate protector, Mother Russia.
I will put these issues to the nuns of Saidnaya when I meet them later today for their
great festival. In the meantime, as we say in Russian, Dosvidan'ya.
Dr Declan Hayes is currently on his third trip to Syria this year. He is helping
organize a conference in Damascus for April 24th 2015, tentatively called: Syria:
Between Destruction and Reconstruction to mark the murder of all Syria’s innocents
and to help plot a way forward out of the morass. He may be reached at
[email protected]
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Syria: September Summary
Dr Declan Hayes
The comments that follow are based on my experiences and observations from the
last month which I spent in government-controlled Syria, in particular, from my time
in Damascus, Ma’lulah, Saydnaya, Latakia and Kasab where I saw at first-hand the
results of the terrorist war of attrition the Syrian rebels, Turkey and their Western
allies are waging against the Syrian people.
Syria is like a hunted animal, being slowly killed one American arrow at a time. In
Syria’s north east, the Islamic State forces, obviously trained, supported and
supplied by their regional allies, Turkey in particular, inflict heavy losses on the
outgunned Syrian Arab Army forces. In the north, roving bands of Western armed
and funded “moderate” gangs, aided and assisted by Turkey, plunder isolated
Christian communities at will, slaughtering the inhabitants and, crucially, ripping the
heart out of these communities.
Across the border, in Turkey, Western aid, most of it channeled through the terrorist
Syrian Muslim Brotherhood organization, is given to the Islamic bands who control
the refugee camps; some of the aid is given to the families of the fighters, more is
given to opportunistic entrepreneurs and the rest is sent to the “moderate” Islamic
fighters across the border in Syria to help them rid areas contiguous to Turkey of all
non-Sunni minorities. All of this is designed to dismember Syria and to divide it, like
ancient Gaul and modern Iraq, into three dysfunctional but malleable pieces, all the
better to control and exploit it.
Aleppo, the industrial heartland of Syria, has been stripped of its factories, which
have been sold as war booty in Turkey. Scores of civilians remain missing, sold, no
doubt in Raqaa to Turks or Saudis who are not too particular how they acquire their
non-Sunni sex slaves whom they regard as sub-humans.
Across the border, Lebanese soldiers are kidnaped by American-trained rebels and
are beheaded so that Lebanon, which stands at the edge of the Syrian abyss, might
also be devoured by the sectarian fires all of Syria’s armed rebels, along with their
foreign mercenaries and the foreign powers, which fund them, stoke.
In the north, the mothers of Tartous and Latakia continue to bury their sons, who die
in the uniforms of the Syria Arab Army, defending their families from the
unspeakable fate Obama’s moderate rebels have decreed for them and which was
visited in person to the mothers of Latakia in August 2013 by suspected war criminal
and White House darling General Sam Idriss, when his moderate rebels kidnapped
hundreds of women and children and slaughtered entire villages for no other crime
than being moderate in their beliefs. Syria’s Christians, meanwhile, their churches
ransacked, scour the world, looking for a refuge, any refuge, from the fate that the
West has decreed for them and for Lebanon’s Christians by the hands of the
moderate Syrian rebels, who delight only in death and destruction, pillage and rape.
To the south, Israeli artillery units give covering fire to moderate rebels as they overrun Druze villages and behead their elders. In the outskirts of Damascus, the story is
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not much different. The moderate rebels shell residential communities on a daily
basis and, when the Syrian Army counter-attacks, the West condemns them for
defending their homeland against foreign rebels and mercenaries who brook no
resistance, who countenance no contrary opinion and who execute all who are not
fully subservient to them and their sectarian, slaughter campaign.
Syria’s true opposition, meanwhile, are numbed into inertia by all of this. This group,
which includes opposition MPs, doctors working in Syria’s hospitals, as well as
voluntary and church workers, cannot understand why Syria’s most sectarian forces,
the extremist and ultra-sectarian Syrian Muslim Brotherhood in particular, are the
darlings of the West. Though they can point to countless atrocities committed by
these embittered thugs, they cannot understand why the John Kerry continues not
only to wine and dine them but also allows them to continue their criminal
enterprises.
This is not to say that they do not comprehend what the Pentagon has in store for
Syria and her people; with Iraq just over the border, no one could fail to understand
that the entire region is being fashioned to the design of the obnoxious regime of
Saudi Arabia, which beheads far more people than do their Islamic State proxies and
which suppresses freedom of expression in Bahrain with the same gusto than do the
moderate rebels in Syria.
They know that the rebels could not function without the help of Saudi Arabia and
Turkey and that their help is, in turn, conditional on the United States and the human
rights groups she controls turning a blind eye to their crimes. They know all that but
they cannot understand why the West wants to sacrifice them on the altar of Saudi
Arabia’s ugly obscurantism. They cannot understand why Turkey is allowed to
collude in blatant war crimes against the civilians of Kasab, Idlib and Aleppo and why
the West also colludes in the final solution of extermination that is their lot.
The West’s leaders could be a part of the solution and not the problem if they
wished. First off, they could immediately criminalize the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood
and prosecute those involved in its charity racketeering. Next off, they could
investigate the role of Turkey’s leaders in the vast number of atrocities that have
their paw prints indelibly embedded in them and take appropriate action against
them and the Turkish state. Next, it could send fact-finding delegations to Damascus
to get a feel for life under perpetual mortar fire, fortified by the West’s sanctions.
They could do all that and more but they do not want to because they want Syria
destroyed and her people pauperized and impoverished. The moderate rebels have
driven Syria’s farmers off their lands, they have stripped bare the factories of Aleppo,
America’s green light has allowed them to hire armies of rapacious Chechen
mercenaries and pay them three times as much in a day than Syrian soldiers can
hope to earn in a month. That is the White House way.
These rebels and mercenaries are not harbingers of freedom but tools of Saudi
conquest and oppression. Their policies, in as much as they have any, regarding
women, minorities, religious, sexual or racial tolerance mirror those of the totalitarian
Saudi state, which outlaws Christianity, persecutes most minority Muslim faiths,
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crushes civil dissent in Bahrain, funds terror and obscurantist ideologies worldwide
and brooks absolutely no dissent to its obnoxious rule. The ISIS apple does not fall
far from the Saudi tree.
Although the West’s leaders, for whom the mercenary end seems to justify the
mercenary means, knows all of this and more, they still shame-facedly pose as
honest brokers and as some kind of guardian angels to the region’s minorities and
moderate Sunnis, even as they and their allies supply weapons of death to the
jihadists who are slaughtering them and cleansing them from their ancestral homes.
The Western media’s idea that there are moderate rebels in Syria is likewise utterly
contemptible. War has always radicalized and brought out the worst, not the best in
humans. The rule of the bomb and the bullet is the antithesis of reason and all the
more so when the West is determined to divide the region on confessional lines.
Arming Syrian Sunnis, ostensibly because they are the majority, is, of course, a
recipe for sectarian slaughter, as is the dictatorship of the majority premise it is
based on. It is to accentuate, rather than to mitigate the region’s fault lines and to let
out the dogs of war on an unimaginable scale. It is to ensure minorities have no
rights, unless they can be corralled into their own Bantustan, complete with the types
of ephemeral rights and mountains of obligations West Bank Palestinians are all too
familiar with.
Though all of that may seem unimaginable to most ordinary people, it is the game
plan on The Road to Persia. The illegal, opportunistic and ill-thought out sanctions
on and war in Iraq directly caused the deaths of over a million children, the infamous
collateral damage to that war that now barely warrant a footnote from those who
comment on it. A million dead Iraqi children, forgotten by all as if they never existed
and never had simple dreams, pleasures, pastimes, hopes and aspirations like the
rest of us.
As in Iraq, so shall it be in Syria, which is being dismembered into confessional mini
states as part of the Road to Persia project for, although the fog of war might make it
hard to say who is currently winning the war, the ordinary people of Syria are
definitely its big losers. Not only are their sons being captured and beheaded by the
Chechen and Tunisian mercenaries plaguing their land but America’s sanctions,
which play the good cop to the bad Chechen cop, continue to destroy their quality of
life. Many of Syria’s most vulnerable, the old and the very young, have to beg for
scraps from the tables of pavement cafes, where the diners are often little better off
than themselves. The Syrian soldiers look like they have not slept in a year and
middle-class and middle-aged families have to elect to let their parents and children
die rather than give them what, for us, would be routine surgery.
Syria resembles Byzantium in its death throes. The Armenian town of Kasab has had
scores of its inhabitants beheaded, and its old folk taken as hostages to Turkey
where they were paraded, like the war trophies they were, in front of the American
ambassador. I met an English teacher there who used to get her simple kicks by
singing and playing the organ in church. Her church is now gutted and the organ split
into smithereens after the rebels made a propaganda video about it. Her school has
been torched as have all the books and other primitive instruments of learning it was
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home to. The school children have even had their teddy bears stolen by the rebels
and they are quite rightly fearful about their futures, if, indeed, they have one.
Conversation in Kasab is not about Real Madrid or Barcelona, Cher or Kim
Karadashian but is mostly about how the rebels looted every single home, how they
scrawled their messages of hate on every single wall and what neighbours were
tortured and murdered and where and why.
The why is the easy part. The Armenians of Kasab were butchered and their village
dismembered to let them and the uncaring world know that Turkey can repeat this
exercise any time it sees fit. Those Armenians who have returned are thinking of
leaving again and wondering is there any port in the world that will give them refuge
from the Saudi-funded storm overwhelming them.
Kasab’s children are a nice lot, as children usually are. They know the score, as we
say in Ireland and it shows in their nervous twitches. They hear the nearby shelling,
the machine gun fire and the artillery and they see the wounded Syrian soldiers
being evacuated. Because they know that they too might have to be again
evacuated, they have been uprooted, their childhoods sacrificed on the altar of
America’s ruthless foreign policy.
Although the old folk who were taken as hostages to Turkey for the amusement of
the American ambassador or who had stay behind under the occupation also know
the score, most of them put on a brave face and recount how they defied their
oppressors in big or little ways. Samuel Polodian recounts how he traded cigarettes
for sardines with the Chechen commander who billeted in his house and George
Kortmosian tells similar tales, as does 95 year old Joseph Saghjian, who Turkey
filmed, for propaganda purposes, along with Soughmon, his 85 year old brother,
being helped off the bus in Turkey by their kidnappers. Though Dikranuhi Mangigian,
who is 91 and who could not be evacuated because America’s sanctions deprives
her of the medicines necessary to keep her legs mobile, recounts how she
pretended she could only speak Armenian and not Arabic to her oppressor, Papken
Djourian has no such tales of valour. He and his wife had to watch as the moderate
rebels executed Kevork, their only son, in front of them, let his body rot in the son for
three days and then dump it, like the carcass of a dog, in a hole in their apple
orchard before evacuating them with Turkish complicity across their border for their
safety and for the amusement of the American ambassador and his pretty wife, both
of whom cared not a whit for their plight.
I took a lift from Kasab to Latakia on the back of a pick-up truck with Syrian soldiers
fresh from killing al Nusra foreigners and eager to go back and kill more. Though we
joked and laughed about the usual things soldiers joke and laugh about, I did notice
the soldier opposite me, in between the jokes, kissing and caressing the muzzle of
this AK47. He is no doubt keeping the last bullet for himself, which, all in all, is
probably sensible enough, even if the old ladies who met some of them in Latakia
would prefer that bullet through their ancient skulls rather than the attentions of the
moderate rebels, who enjoy gang raping their female captives and, in the case of the
Afghans, their much younger male captives as well.
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Latakia itself is, along with Tartous, enjoying something of an economic boom as
those who flee rebel-held areas, flock to those and other safe havens and cause
knock-on economic benefits in housing and other sectors. Tourism also booms there
as Syrians, unable to go abroad, opt for stay-at-home holidays. The funeral industry
is also booming as recruits from those areas are bearing the heaviest brunt in Syria’s
war against the criminal elements ravaging it.
The funeral industry is also booming in Damascus, most notably but by no means
exclusively in the Christian and Druze enclave of Jaramana. It is no means
exceptional for these exclusively civilian neighbourhoods to get 20 and more rockets
lobbed into them in a single afternoon and, in this respect, Jaramana is to Syria what
Malta was the Allies during World War 2. It has been bombed and rocketed every
single day for the last three years, ever since the war to dismember Syria began.
Deaths, injuries and multiple funerals are now an everyday occurrence there as
these innocent folk have been abandoned by the West to the non-existent mercies of
the Syrian rebels in all their inter-changing hues and alliances of convenience.
Though the Syrian air force has now entered the fray, continually bombing the rebel
front lines of nearby Jobar from whence most of the deadliest rockets and mortars
come, they cannot deliver a knockout blow. Hamas have taught the rebels and their
supporting mercenaries how to make impenetrable tunnels and Western technology
and Syrian slaves have allowed them multiply and cause mayhem in places such as
Adra which are as diverse as Syria herself.
The coalition waged against Syria have left little to chance. They are confident of
victory. Their allies and proxies are kidnapping and chasing UN soldiers from the
Golan Heights, they are wresting large swathes of land from the central Syrian
government under one flag of convenience or another and uncertainty, the spectre of
death and the stench of permanent stagnation haunt the rest of Syria. This can be
easily seen in the Aramaic-speaking town of Ma’lulah, where the priceless icons
have been looted, the churches destroyed, the children traumatized beyond
recovery, the community destroyed and, like Kasab, the entire place abandoned by
Westerners, Christians in particular, who should be helping them keep the faith. It is
a war crime repeated the length and breadth of Syria.
The nearby all-Christian city of Saydnaya seems the exception that proves the rule.
This city is dominated by a Greek orthodox convent the same way Italy’s Monte
Cassino dominates its surrounds. Though these nuns are guardians to priceless
icons, an icon of the Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus painted by St Luke the
Evangelist taking pride of place amongst them, one wonders, if like those artifacts of
Monte Casino, these too will be rescued or if they will follow those of Ma’lulah into
the underground markets of Turkey, France and the USA.
Although we cannot be sure about what will happen to the icons, we can be pretty
sure what will happen to the town’s Christian defenders, an eclectic mixture of semiprofessional soldiers and civilians determined to fight and die for their homeland.
They are, quite simply, doomed. There will be no salvation for them when the
Pontius Pilate West allows the moderate rebels and their extremist partners regroup.
Saydnaya is not Monte Cassino. It is not defended by battle-hardened German
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paratroopers but by a ragtag group of lightly (and sometimes not so lightly) armed
patriotic locals who have not received the training and materiel the USA and her
allies have extended to their enemies.
Although they are doomed, these “Cross worshippers” are, like untold millions of
their compatriots, determined to die with their boots on, faithful to their religion, to
their culture and to their homeland until the inevitable, inescapable and extremely
ugly end. One wonders what will follow their demise and the wasteland that will be
Syria, and if the victorious warlords who inherit it, will, in time, allow narcissistic
Western tourists potter around in the ruins and tut-tut about its “tragic” fate.
Perhaps the Pope in Rome will offer a Mass for the repose of the souls of those
Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic soldiers who die with an AK47 in one hand and
their rosary beads in the other. Perhaps religious charities will raise a few bob on
their backs and give some of it to those who manage to escape the fate that America
has in store for them.
I know nothing of all of that. All I know is I met a bunch of lovely people in Saydnaya.
I think of a little girl who proudly carried aloft an icon of Mary around for the entire
procession on 8th September. I see the faces of the Greek Orthodox nuns who
carried their icons on that procession as nuns before them have done since time
immemorial. I see the faces of the young refugees from Ma’lulah the nuns house and
can all too easily imagine their futures, blighted beyond repair by America’s
machinations. I recall a very intelligent boy who gave me fascinating insights into the
area on the convent’s roof and how we admired that convent, its view, its history and
its culture and lamented how those America pays to attack it regard the convent as
nothing more than a fortress to be stocked by their cohorts who are infinitely more
ruthless than even Hitler’s Monte Casino paratroopers were.
The picture I see is very bleak, bleaker perhaps than the betrayal and subsequent
fall of Byzantium. It is a picture of betrayal, of death and mass executions, of simple
people being sold in slave markets and sacrificed for the interests of some of the
world’s most repugnant regimes, Turkey and Saudi Arabia being pre-eminent
amongst them.
This deliverance of the decent people of Iraq and Syria to their enemies is one of the
most shocking and disgusting crimes of modern times and all of those, without
exception, who colluded in this crime are at least as guilty as those who collaborated
with Hitler’s SS when they committed their equally heinous crimes. The fact that an
almost defenceless people stand, in their homeland, on one side and, on the other,
Western governments and civil and religious organisations arm, fund, clothe, protect
and promote those foreigners and local Quislings and ne’er do wells who wish to
wrest it from them, does not reflect well on anybody of authority in the West. Should
Syria survive, should she and civilization itself come through these trials, it will be no
thanks at all to those Western regimes and institutions who have cosied up to the
world’s most reactionary, most despicable and obscurantist regimes who have put
the entire people of Syria on the wrack for the pettiest and most venal of reasons.
Nor will it be some sort of celestial miracle, delivered from on high for some obtuse
reason or other. Rather, it will be a tribute to the courage, bravery and humanity of all
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of those alluded to here: the soldiers, mothers and civilians of Syria who, though
abandoned by the world, managed to persevere. For my part, I am happy to have
seen that light of humanity shine in the Darkness of the West, even if the Darkness
still does not and never will comprehend it. It is enough.
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Why do Syrian Moderates not Support the Syrian Moderate Opposition?
Dr Declan Hayes
As the planes of the Syrian air force screech overheard, as America’s Barack
Obama and his co-conspirators pledge more lethal aid to the enemies of Syria, one
wonders where are the Syrian moderates that should be supporting the Syrian
moderate opposition, who are the darlings of the Western media.
If this were a genuine revolution or revolt against a tyrannical regime, the sort of
despots one gets in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait or Turkey, one would expect most
Syrian moderates to support it. Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, to take one pertinent
example, famously had the support of the shopkeepers, hawkers and students of
Tehran who ended up sending the Shah, his secret police and their toadies scuttling
for American-supplied bolt holes overseas. Whatever its rights or wrongs, Iran’s
Islamic Revolution had widespread support, as do Bahrain’s moderate protesters,
who brave the henchmen of Saudi Arabia every time they protest against that truly
autocratic regime.
Moderate Alawites, Shias or Christians cannot support the Syrian insurgents as all
the rebels are agreed that the Alawites and Shias must be exterminated and the
Christians driven into exile, if they are not first also exterminated. All of Syria’s
Christian leaders support, implicitly at least, the government of the Syrian Arab
Republic, not least because, a few token rebels apart, there is no area in rebel-held
Syria where they can openly practice their religion or live without perpetual fear. Nor
is there anywhere the moderate rebels control that Christians and other minorities
can be safe from kidnapping by these same moderates, who will then sell them on to
their more violent partners in crime, in much the same way the moderate rebels sold
on the Ma’lulah nuns and the two American journalists who were recently beheaded.
There is, in short, no way Syria’s Christians, Shias or Alawites, who do not have a
death wish, can support the moderate rebels.
What then of the Druze and the various other religious and ethnic minorities that help
give Syria its rich diversity, something the West pays often token lip service to? Well,
the moderate rebels in the south of the country have recently hacked the heads off
five Druze holy men, something not designed to make their sectarian cause popular
amongst their estranged Druze brothers. The same fate, or worse, awaits all of those
who are not Sunnis.
What then of the moderate Sunni majority? Syria’s Grand Mufti has had his son
murdered by moderate rebels, Dr Mohamed Said Ramadan Al-Bouti, Syria’s leading
Syrian scholar, was murdered by the moderate rebels, as were scores of other Sunni
imams who bravely refused to call for the extermination of Syria’s minorities. Syria’s
Sunni tribal chiefs, like their religious leaders, have also had to flee for their lives
from the moderate rebels unless they too call for the extermination of Syria’s
minorities and their heads to be placed on spikes; I have spoken on several
occasions to one of their number who described to me scenes the moderate rebels
stringing his fellow-tribesmen up on trees like lights on a Christmas tree and him only
escaping by virtue of his position as a tribal leader. It is because of barbarities like
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that that Syria’s internally displaced Sunnis flee to government-controlled areas,
rather than the areas the moderate rebels blight with their crimes.
Not that the moderate rebels are happy with just exterminating all minorities and
shoe-horning Syria’s Sunnis into their Saudi-style state. Above all, they are, along
with the more extreme groups they collaborate in the field with, intent on establishing
a theocratic, oppressive state that serves their own interests and those of the groups
who fund them. These countries, groups and individuals wish to carve up Syria for
what they perceive as the national interests of Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the
United States. They care not a whit for democracy, moderate or otherwise, for, if
they did, they would be looking at the considerable moats in their sponsors’ eyes
rather than the specks they have magnified in the eye of Syria. They care not a whit
for moderates or moderation for, if they did, they would not support the ongoing
crimes being committed against the Arab people in Libya, Gaza, Egypt and Syria
itself. They care not a whit for the rights of moderate minorities for, if they did, Saudi
Arabia’s two million Christians would not risk arrest and torture for simply saying their
prayers.
The simple fact is there are no moderate rebels in Syria, save those who have
already returned to the government fold or those who are now negotiating their safe
return. This is not to say that there is no non-violent opposition or disagreements
with the government’s line. There are but those who so disagree argue their case in
the same non-violent manner and in the same type of forums we, the moderates of
the Western world, favour for ourselves, if not for them. I have met politicians,
human rights workers and Syrians working with displaced children who have all not
only argued passionately against one or more policies of the Syrian government but
who have worked and who continue to work against those policies in the camps, in
Parliament and on TV. These are the very people the moderate opposition wish to
eviscerate.
These people are not fools. Though they may not support the Syrian government in
all it does, their support for the Syrian Arab Army is unwavering and steadfast for
they know, looking at the experiences of Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Iraq and especially
Syria itself, what the alternative beckons for them. Though many of them may well
perish along with the Syrian state, the bombing and kidnapping of Iraq’s Christian
congregations which paved the road to the slave markets of rebel-controlled Raqaa
clearly and the mass atrocities by the moderate rebels in Syria’s northern Latakia
province in August 2013 clearly shows what the Pax Americana will mean for them.
It is those experiences that propel Syria’s real moderates, the mothers and
grandmothers of Tartus and Latakia to urge their remaining sons to follow their older
siblings to the front lines and an equally early grave.
The truth is there was never anything moderate about the Syrian rebellion. Its
genesis was in the coalescence of the methods and beliefs of the rabidly sectarian
Syrian Muslim Brotherhood with the imperial designs of Turkey and the sectarian
machinations of the Saudi Royal family. There never was anything moderate, secular
or modern about it. It was a cynical, sectarian assault on all Syrians that was fuelled
by NATO’s bully boy tactics, those of the USA in particular. It has tried to replicate in
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Syria the mayhem it has succeeded in causing in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan. There
is nothing moderate in that and nothing there for moderate Syrians to support. It is a
criminal war on Syria and her people and for that reason, it has no traction and can
have no traction in Syria or amongst her moderate people. To pretend otherwise is to
be complicit in this great crime against the Syrian people and against moderate
humanity itself.
Saydnaya: A Hard Nut to Crack
Dr Declan Hayes
The following pictures are from the Christian town of Saydnaya, which continues to
hold out against the Muslim Brotherhood/Free Syrian Army/Al Nusra rebels and
mercenaries. Though near to Ma’lulah, the lingua franca is Arabic, not Aramaic. One
wonders if the nuns pictured here from the Convent of Our lady of Sayndaya will
eventually be kidnapped for ransom by these rebel thugs and their fate twisted by
the Western media who continue to pretend that the al Nusra mercenaries treated
the old nuns they kidnapped and ransomed from Ma’lulah well.
Saydanya’s big day is today, 8th September. Text will follow later today. Pease feel
free to use the pictures and text as you see fit.
Inside the convent where I stayed overnight. I have lots of pictures from there. They
have a drawing from the time of St Luke. No doubt the rebels will loot it in time and,
like the icons of Ma’lulah, sell it off to a collector in New York or Miami.
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The nuns of the Convent of Our Lady of Saydnaya house these and many more
Christian refugees, all without help from the Christian West or their proxies who are
more interested in wine lists in the Damascus restaurants they frequent than in these
examples of Obama’s collateral damages.
Butaina Shalhub and her siblings, parents and grandparents have had to flee
Ma’lulah because the footsoldiers of Obama’s Free Syrian Army want them and all
Syrian Christians dead. If you get up close to her, you see the worry and uncertainty
for the future etched deeply into her face. The constant Free Syrian Army
bombardments do little to help the peace of mind of the refugees holed up in the
convent.
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Christian refugees at the convent, victims of NATO’s foreign policy.
God, Syria, Assad: Saydnaya defy the gunmen. Born Christians, determined to die
as Christians.
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In spite of dungeon, fire and sword: Saydnaya’s Christians stand firm in their faith.
No Surrender: Saydnaya’s Christians bang out a clear message of fealty the wet
prefer not to hear.
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Ave Maria: Though abandoned and betrayed by the West, this little girl marched the
entire route with her icon of the Virgin Mary. Her faith in adversity puts that of her
Western betrayers to shame.
I bring not peace but a sword. Saydnaya, September 2014
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Semper Fidelis: The little girl with the icon gets reinforcements from the convent.
Muslims traditionally venerated the convent’s icons as well.
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Legitimate target? Young Syrian girl holds aloft icon of Our Lady of Saydnaya
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That was then…: Plaque commemorating a donation by Irish Americans, The
Convent of Our Lady of Saydnaya, Syria
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Syria’s 7 up Series
Dr Declan Hayes
7 up was a path-breaking documentary series the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
began in the late 1950s. The show assembled a bunch of 7 year-old British boys and girls of
varying socio-economic backgrounds to ask them about their dreams and aspirations and the
award-winning BBC show returned to interview those self-same children at regular 7-year
intervals ever since to compare and contrast the aspirations of the youngsters with the reality,
grim or otherwise, of their adulthood. The series has developed a loyal cult following of sorts,
not least because all of us can relate to it and because the innocence of childhood should be a
common benchmark to us all.
As part of my excursions into both Palestine and Syria, I have, of course, encountered a large
number of children and their guardians. I have interviewed a Christian pediatrician from
Bethlehem and have listened, horrified, as he tells me that the Israeli soldiers regard heavily
pregnant Muslim women as sub-humans and so detain them at checkpoints instead of letting
them pass to give birth in the nearby maternity wards at the far side of the checkpoint. I have
stood aghast in kindergartens in Hebron where the Israeli military do not allow the
Palestinian infants to have toilets or washing facilities and I have happily listened as Syrian
and Palestinian toddlers have practiced their few words of English with me. I have noted the
preponderance of Messi and Barcelona shirts amongst the kids of the West Bank and of
Damascus and have thereby seen that they too are part and parcel of our common, civilised
world, the type of half-crazed, half-scared world TS Elliot described in Murder in the
Cathedral and counter-posed in The Hollow Men.
Going through life, it is those people, young and old, who live and partly live who add spice,
meaning, hope, heart and fragrance to life and who inspire us to carry on under the Flag of
Life rather than ISIS’ Flag of Death.
This picture shows me with little Rheanne, a Syrian boy with the voice of an angel. He lives
under armed guard as the moderate rebels wish to kill him and his remaining brother because
this innocent little imp sings for peace, something they abhor.
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This picture shows the moderate rebels teaching a youngster how to kill other youngsters and
their guardians. The moderate rebels are setting the seeds of a monster in that little boy’s
heart. God knows how many innocents he will kill in the next seven years.
This little girl had her father murdered in Homs by the moderate rebels. As you can see, like
any other toddler her age, she is an angel and yet the moderate rebels want her life destroyed.
Let us hope that, despite Syria’s moderate, mercenary murderers, she will enjoy the next
seven and more years.
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Perhaps this kid killed the little girl’s father. All of the Syrian rebels have specialized in press
ganging children to their cause and the West seems happy enough to collude with them in this
respect, even supplying weapons of death for them to place into the hands of children. One
wonders how scrambled will be his moral compass seven years hence.
Sometimes the weapons of death are almost as big as those who have been charged with
dispensing death for a nebulous cause they cannot understand. These are the life-destroying
experiences the moderate rebels give the junior jihadists they have brainwashed.
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One wonders what those two youngsters will be like in 7 years’ time. Will they be dead, so
much extra cannon fodder for the rebels, moderate and less moderate to justify their mayhem
with? Will they be ruthless killers like the 15 year-old mass murderer photographed above
with an advanced sniper rifle that usually only NATO soldiers have access to? As this young
killer is credited with the murder of 36 Syrian soldiers and civilians, small talk about Messi
or Barcelona is probably not for him. Note this photograph is taken in the minaret of a
mosque, which is his favourite sniping spot. Should the Syrian Arab Army do the logical
thing and blow him and the minaret to kingdom come, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood will
use its media connections to denounce the SAA’s attacks on holy sites, something the
moderate rebels have proved themselves to be particularly adept at.
The moderate and more radical rebels are not the only people working with children in Syria.
Here is a photo of a few beginners taking karate lessons in the ransacked Armenian town of
Kasab. Unlike those on the other side of the lines, the intention here is not to turn these
youngsters into killing machines but to give them a whiff of the ordinary fragrance of life.
Had we been able to teach hip-hop dancing, basketball or volleyball, the curriculum would
have been changed accordingly. The reward for these classes is not the death of another
Syrian innocent but the smile on the faces of these children.
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Check out the smiles on the faces of these innocents. Even the great Messi is interested in a
little bit of karate diversion.
No Jihad lessons today: Palestinian youngsters who have fled the Chechen rebel controlled
Yarmouk camp engage in some happy and harmless banter with a Canadian visitor at the
school they and their families are holed up in until the Syrian Arab Army can enable their
return.
Palestinian mothers in government-controlled Damascus look on, happy that their children
can again be children at least for a while.
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Australian boxers make new friends and children happy, Latakia, government controlled
Syria. Again, the objective here is to allow children to be children, not to be soul-dead killers.
Put them up: Australian boxers and Syrian children, happy together, Latakia, government
controlled Syria.
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Pakistani peace activists, Australian clerics, Sunni tribal leaders and Syrian children, happy
together, Homs, government controlled Syria. The reward is the smiles and laughter of these
children.
Bonds that unite: Iranian, Pakistani and British peace activists together with happy Syrian
children, Homs.
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Palestinian children, who have fled the rebel-controlled Yarmouk camp, do what children are
supposed to do. They play.
Schoolyard scrap: Australian boxers entertain Palestinian children and their guardians who
were forced to flee the rebel-controlled Yarmouk camp where Chechen mercenaries train
children to kill.
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Australian sing-along. Palestinian children, having fled the rebel controlled Yarmouk camp,
join Australian peace activists in a harmless but enjoyable sing along. The Ossies give them
the innocent joy that is the birthright of all children everywhere.
Lambs to the Slaughter: These Syrian children had their fathers and other family members
murdered by rebel mercenaries. Restoring the innocence of childhood here will not be easy.
Innocence Lost. ISIS train these youngsters to kill more innocent Syrians. One wonders what
kind of childhood these savages had.
Innocence Lost: The moderate Free Syrian Army train this youngster how to make
instruments of death. One wonders what kind of Syria they and their controllers envisage will
be built on their ruined lives.
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Killer Cool: This death squad member seduces innocent children with the bandanas of the
ISIS death squad cult. What is their future under the Da’ash murder cult?
Lost Lives: These Syrian children had their fathers and other families murdered by foreign
death squads. Lost lives, lost smiles and lost dreams.
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Orphan maker: This child had his family murdered by the moderate rebels who talk sweet
words but dispense only death.
Robokids: These Syrian children can even force a smile even though the West’s favourite
rebels murdered their parents for no discernible reason.
Syrian widows and orphans, Homs. Why does the USA boast of supplying the weaponry that
wrecked their lives?
Keep smiling through: Despite the campaign of terror launched against them and their
families, these Syrian children in Homs can still muster a childish smile.
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Pay any price, carry any burden. These orphaned Homs children will probably be murdered
by America’s moderate rebels, as were their parents.
Last Stand of the Alawites: Will this toddler also be murdered by the moderate rebels and
will American justify her “sins of the fathers” murder?
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Send me your wretched: This entire family has migrated through Turkey to murder innocent
Syrians and Iraqis. The family’s father should be in jail and his children in care but their
controllers think otherwise.
Faith of our Fathers: Greek Catholic Cathedral, Damascus. The moderate rebels continually
shell this area of Damascus as the local Christians and Druze refuse to give them access to
commit their war crimes.
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Hail Queen of Heaven: Greek Catholic children, Damascus. Life here is preferable to life
under the rebel death cults.
A mother’s joy, Greek Catholic cathedral, Damascus. Go knows what horrors the moderate
rebels have in store for her and her child should they prevail.
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Some of Syria’s purest and finest. Greek Catholic Cathedral, Damascus. Though this photo
should bring a smile to your face and a lift to your heart, the moderate rebels only see targets
for their bombs, their mortars and their bullets.
Iranian peace activists with Syria’s purest and finest, Greek Catholic Cathedral, Damascus.
These Iranian peace activists choose life, as opposed to the death-dealing those regimes
finding the rebel death cults prefer.
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Enter the Liberators: Syrian children rejoice as the Syrian Arab Army liberate them and the
Christian town of Ma’lulah. Ma’lulah was the scene of countless atrocities which the local
children were forced to watch as part of the campaign of indoctrination, intimidation and
terror of the moderate rebels.
Thank God for the Syrian Arab Army. Local children rejoice as the Syrian Arab Army restore
civilization to the Aramaic speaking town of Ma’lulah. Although Ma’lulah still has a very
long way to go to full recovery, all are agreed that the present situation is infinitely preferable
to the blood-soaked sham liberation of the moderate rebels.
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Good to be home: Assyrian toddlers return to their ransacked church, the centre of their
community. Homs, Damascus. Though their small enclave will cost billions to repair, they
are delighted to be rid of the moderate, mercenary rebels who enslaved them.
Twin Towers of Joy: Ma’lulah’s children walk in peace and beauty under the protective eye
of their liberators. Ma’lulah had been a nice place to live and it could be again if the
necessary help was forthcoming to these children and to their families. However, the west’s
priorities seem to be to fund the rebel-controlled refugee camps the Chechen mercenaries use
to attack Syria’s Christian enclaves.
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On the One Road: Syrians smile together in peace and in hope. Ma’lulah, Syria. These kids
do not want much; they have little enough left as it is. Although the West has the capacity to
restore Ma’lulah to normality, it prefers to supply bombs to the moderate rebels to booby trap
Ma’lulah with. The Christians of Ma’lulah find it hard to understand why Western Christian
(sic) want to destroy them and their world-renowned heritage. They do not understand that
Syria’s enemies are like the Mafia. Lost and damaged lives are of no consequence and are
only a necessary means to the mercenary, heartless and godless end they have planned for
Syria and her people.
Silent on a peak in Syria. Hopes for a brighter future, Ma’lulah Syria, where, despite the
moderate rebel kidnappers, they still speak Aramaic, the language and the message of Jesus.
This child had a happy childhood and a promising future until the moderate rebels the West
backs destroyed it all. The heartlessness of the west’s terror campaign against the people of
Syria is too awful for an innocent child to understand.
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Schoolyard after the rebels had their fun. Armenian children in Kasab, Syria will not have
their childhoods stolen from them. The destruction of this Kasab schoolyard was another
famous victory by the moderate rebels. Try explaining to a child why adults get off on
vandalism like this.
Sweet dreams of youth: Kasab, Syria after the liberation. This child, like tens of thousands of
other Syrian children, has to figure out why the West wants to deny her not only a childhood
but, possibly, life as well.
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The Beauty of youth: The children of Damascus continue to play even as the moderate rebels
continue to kill them and their dreams. There are a large number of adults and organizations
in government-controlled Syria who are determined that the simple joys of life will prevail
over the rebel death cults the west support. These people deserve our support.
We want but little here below: Play time for the children of Damascus as they exercise their
birthright to be children of their homeland. The children of Syria, along with those who
mentor and protect them, are the true heroes of this conflict. The rebel murderers and the
godfathers of violence are its obvious villains.
Summary:
The BBC’s 7 up series was a path-breaking documentary series because it compared and
contrasted the psychological pre-determinants of a cross-section of British children long
before such practices became popular or profitable. Though it was an interesting and
informative pilot programme, it is nowhere as important as the devilish experiment currently
being conducted in Syria on almost the same precise scientific ground rules Hitler’s finest
would have appreciated. We have, on the government side of the lines, the vast majority of
Syria’s children whose parents and guardians, often despite insurmountable odds and
fathomless wells of despair, are trying to make their charges fine children and finer adults.
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Against that, we have, on the rebel side of the lines, a large number of dysfunctional men and
women, paid for and controlled by seemingly respectable people in countries both contiguous
to Syria and in safe havens far away from her borders. Judging by the evidence on the
ground, the objective of these seemingly respectable members of the Syrian Muslim
Brotherhood and of the governments and armies that are in cahoots with them, is to turn Syria
into a large factory of death and to make Syria’s children indentured slaves in that factory of
despair.
There are, as the testimony above shows, people who oppose Syria’s ongoing descent into
Hades. If our lives and our belief systems are to mean anything at all, we are duty bound to
help them and choose the innocence and beauty of life over the nihilism and despair the
rebels practice and preach.
Dr Declan Hayes is currently on his third trip to Syria this year. He is helping organize a
conference in Damascus for April 24th 2015, tentatively called: Syria: Between Destruction
and Reconstruction to mark the murder of all Syria’s innocents and to help plot a way
forward out of the morass. He may be reached at [email protected]
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Syrian Air Force Ramp It Up
Dr Declan Hayes
It has been a good few days for the Syrian air force. Yesterday, they took out the top cadres
of Ahrar-al-Sham, one of the Syria rebellion’s leading Turkish-controlled Islamic groups, in a
bunker bomb style attack just outside the ravaged city of Aleppo and today, and, indeed, for
the last few days, they have been relentlessly pounding the Damascus suburb of Jobar, which
is now home to thousands of foreign mercenaries and which, the residents of Damascus hope,
will soon be their graveyard. They have also conducted a number of raids on the rebel
stronghold of Raqaa where the rebels, with Turkey protecting their back, are selling off
Yazidis and other women as slaves to the highest bidder who is, as often as not, a Saudi sex
tourist.
Whatever tears might be shed in Damascus for the victims of these air strikes are being
drowned out in the whoops of delight as the ordinary people of Syria rejoice that the rebels
and their mercenaries are getting, however belatedly, a taste of their own strong medicine. If
the civilians of Syria had their way, the air force would probably up the ante again.
Not that their attacks are particularly ferocious by American standards. Their planes have
been swooping overhead round the clock for the last few days, no doubt helping to turn Jobar
into rubble. Jobar was once a bustling suburb until the mercenaries colonised it to use as a
staging post for Jaramania, the joint Christian/Druze suburb which is the gateway to the Old
City of Damascus. Their plan was to repeat what they had done in Homs and Aleppo: to
break into Christian enclaves, to devastate the old city and, with the compliant Western media
in tow, to blame the resulting destruction on the Syrian Arab Army, which is supposed to sit
idly by and watch these foreign rabble slaughter and enslave to their heart’s content.
The rebels’ plan went wrong in Damascus for two main reasons. Jaramania’s mainly
Christian and Druze residents have remained steadfast in the face of the suicide bombs and
mortars which have rained down on them on a daily basis since the plan to take out Syria
under the false flag of the Arab Spring first began. The latest of these merciless attacks has
just ended as the criminal rebels of Jobar gave them what will hopefully be a last parting shot.
Some 2,000 rebels tried to break through to Jaramania the night before last but the residents,
in conjunction with the Syrian Arab Army, managed to send them packing for the umpteenth
time. The truth of the matter is no one outside of the small network of Syria’s Muslim
Brotherhood fanatics, a number of compromised itinerant workers and those youngsters the
rebels have been able to bribe with jobs or sex slaves, wants those psychopaths here. The
residents of Jaramania, is seems, are just made of sterner stuff, perhaps from the same mettle
as Vietnam’s Ku Chi residents who also stood up to a relentless foreign aggressor.
The second major reason Damascus has held is because it is a long way from the Turkish
border for, without Turkey’s logistical support and without the safe hinterland Turkey
supplies for the rebels, along with the “refugee” camps it supplies for the families of the
rebels and the markets it supplies for the goods, entire factories included, these liberators
have liberated from Aleppo, Raqaa, Idlib and Kasab, this Arab spring would have long ago
been exposed for the harsh Syrian winter that it is.
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Jobar, like Qusayr before it, may well be one of those turning points that are often crucial in
war. Should the Syrian Army prevail – and all the indications are that it will – then the
terrorist heartland of Ghouta, which was home to the false flag chemical attack of a year ago,
may end up being crushed in a pincer movement and the rebels there may end up as
mincemeat under the juggernaut of the Syrian Army and the militias helping it. Should Jobar
be liberated, then the mortar attacks on the residential neighbourhood of Jaramania will be all
but finished and Yarmouk, as well as Ghouta will be next on the list.
Although liberating Ghouta will be a long war of attrition, the capture of Jobar will cut its
supply lines as well as much of its utility, its only current use being for killing Damascene
civilians by indiscriminate mortar fire in the main. The massive Palestinian refugee camp of
Yarmouk is now home to only 20,000 Palestinians who are held there solely to act as human
shields for the 4,000 jihadists forcing them at gunpoint to stay. Once Yarmouk is in the cross
hairs, Hades best be stocking up on its virgins again for those 4,000 invaders are doomed.
Once Ghouta is neutralized, as it should be over the coming months, then the situation of the
Syrian authorities, at one level, becomes much stronger. They will control most of their own
country, except those lands in the south where Israel supplies tactical support, covering fire
included, to the rebels and the countryside contiguous to Turkey will also remain
problematic.
Although the Syrian Arab Army, along with the air force in close support, are undoubtedly
the good guys in this, Syria’s battle to the death, the United States and her proxies do not
want a happy ending. They want to divide, emasculate and drain dry the Syrian Arab
Republic, irrespective of what her citizens want or how they vote or how they choose to die.
Despite enabling “moderate rebels” to get rich by selling the weapons they were supplied
with to the more extreme elements who do the actual fighting, the United States is determined
to press on regardless, with another $3 trillion promised to the reprobates of the Free Syrian
Army, a flag of convenience for the Muslim Brotherhood and the tiny bands of light-fingered
brigands working in cahoots with it.
The United States, in its efforts to destroy the secular Syrian Arab republic and to pauperize
her citizens, is working with Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the two main supporters of the radical
rebels, supposedly to help moderate Sunni rebels overthrow their government, which is
infinitely more tolerant than those of Turkey or Saudi Arabia (if the kleptocratic family which
runs that God-forsaken country can be called a government).
But Syria’s Sunnis, you say, want the rebels. Not so. Most Sunnis, who have been able to,
have fled the rebels areas for the tolerance of the government lines. Kasab, traditionally
Armenian, has now a very sizable Sunni minority, who wear the hijab or the niqab as they see
fit. The same applies to Latakia and Tartus, which were formerly overwhelmingly Alawi and
Christian. The Christians and Alawis in the central city of Safita now risk being outnumbered
by the Sunnis who have fled from their liberators in Aleppo. To say to any Sunni here that
they have any sympathy at all for these psychopaths is to risk getting a well-deserved thump
in the mouth.
The only people, who can actually stand these rebels, are, quite simply, those who benefit
from them. Chief amongst these are the war mongers of Britain, the USA, France, Turkey,
Saudi Arabia and the loathsome micro state of Qatar as well as the quasi criminals of the
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Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, that gang of loathsome wretches who are the nucleus of
America’s puppet government in waiting, who have no real support in Syria and who, if the
people of Syria had their way, would be today in Jobar, at the business end of the Syrian air
force and the ground troops poised to liberate it.
Dr Declan Hayes is currently on his third trip to Syria this year. He is helping organize a
conference in Damascus for April 24th 2015, tentatively called: Syria: Between Destruction
and Reconstruction to mark the murder of all Syria’s innocents and to help plot a way
forward out of the morass. He may be reached at [email protected]
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Syria’s Collateral Damage
Dr Declan Hayes
The nearby restaurant does a reasonable local dish, with a plate of vegetables,
starters and tea included costing less than $5. Notwithstanding the occasional
obnoxious Oxfam and Red Cross workers who pop in there to complain about the
lack of a decent wine list, the restaurant is good value for those Syrians who can
afford it and who do not mind sinecured aid workers disturbing the ambience with
their crass talk about the lack of wine lists and how their frequent holidays on the
French Riviera are little enough recompense for their Syrian “hardships”.
Though restaurants like this do a brisk trade, they are not for everybody. At one end,
the parasitic aid workers who make their dishonest livings from disasters like Syria’s
consider it too low-brow and, for many Syrians, it is simply too expensive. A good
monthly salary is about 25,000 lire, which would pay for about 20 such meals that
the aid workers disdain and that most Syrians can no longer afford as Obama’s
sanctions and his hired rebels slowly grind them into penury.
Most Syrians subsist almost entirely on bread and the other staples the Syrian
government heavily subsidises. Some, such as the finely-dressed old gentleman
who sells tissues to passing motorists outside of the restaurant, try to top up their
exhausted funds as best they can. Not for him or his the comforts of a Muslim
Brotherhood run refugee camp paid for by vested interests in the West. The old,
unkempt bag woman, who sleeps out on the grass verge opposite, does not enjoy
such luxuries either. At the moment, she can mark time under the beating sun, and
perhaps make some token preparations for when the winter snows set in to claim the
vulnerable who are now everywhere in government-run Syria.
The young Muslim girls selling trinkets to the passing motorists are probably
amongst those vulnerable, as are their mothers who depend on the begging skills of
their charges to survive. Many of these are widows of moderate rebels, abandoned
to the charity of the good citizens of Syria once their utility to Obama’s democratic
crusaders has run its course. They are, like all mercenaries, expendable.
The soldiers guarding the checkpoints nearby are not much better off. One wonders
when last they had a proper rest and one can see where the phrase “smoke like a
trooper” comes from. Cigarettes permanently in the side of the mouth and AK47s
slung on backs, they give the cars they stop a peremptory check, knock on the top of
the boot to tell the car to proceed before starting the same boring process with the
next car. Though the best they can hope for is to emerge from this conflict with life
and limbs intact, they know the ugly fate that awaits them if the rebels, in any of their
inter-woven hues, emerge victorious. With the fate of their captured comrades in
Raqaa and Aleppo in mind and with only their cheap cigarettes and the gratitude of
the Syrian people to buoy them, they will see this tragedy through to the very end.
They and those they protect have no other choice
Though navel-gazers can wonder how these people manage to carry on at all, that is
not the half of it. Obama’s Syrian objective is to lower Syrian expectations so much
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that just to survive is, for now, a victory, akin to that of the Palestinians with their
existence is resistance mantra. Here in Syria, education and accommodation remain
free though jobs are almost as rare to come by as white blackbirds. People and
institutions soldier on, hoping against hope itself, for better days ahead even as their
enemies, vulture-like, circle round, buying off elements here and there to weaken
and destroy the whole creaking edifice and all therein. It is a bleak picture.
The English language teacher in Kasab tells me they have neither books nor
classrooms to use them in as the Turkish invaders have destroyed, burned or robbed
all they depended on to teach. Nor will she be singing in church as was her want, for
the rebels, having first filmed themselves playing the piano in her church, then
proceeded to smash the keyboards and torch her church for no apparent reason
save those of the territorial wild animal or the brainwashed Philistine. She hopes the
American Armenian community, the Pope in Rome or some other group of influential
foreigners will come to their aid and her simple paradise will be restored. She hopes
in vain. There will be no deliverance. They are doomed.
The neuro-surgeon who is paid in a month a fifth of what he can earn in a day in the
West, asks me if I can help him do business with Irish companies. I explain that the
“indomitable Irish”, being as craven as the next, daren’t break Obama’s sanctions
and so he and his family must look for deliverance elsewhere. Nobody’s fool, he
knows there will be no deliverance. He stares into the ever-approaching void.
The hotel manager pops in to the business centre to consider upgrading the carpets.
Appearances are everything even if the edges are fatally frayed. He works about 20
hours a day, dedicated to preserving the value of the hotel for happier days ahead
that may never come. He is a patriot, the last refuge of Syria’s doomed. Like
countless others, he will go down with the ship. Obama’s moderates do not need
free-thinking people like him. They will no doubt give the hotel over to a crony who
will loot it clean and the new carpets will grace some clip joint the rebels use in
Turkey.
The peroxide blonde pulls on her French cigarette. Like all Syrians, she smokes too
much. Like all Syrians who support Syria she too has suffered, being expelled from
Saudi Arabia for not taking a robust stand against her own kith and kin. Such people
are not wanted in extremist Saudi Arabia, the paymaster of Terror Inc. and a key
component of Obama’s terror war on Syria. They are still wanted in Syria, supported
like so many others by friends and family as well as the “kindness of strangers” both
at home and abroad. Realistically she has no future, it has been taken from her and
so she may as well smoke herself to death, knowing that Obama’s sanctions have
deprived Syria of the means to save lives, her own included, at risk.
The surgeon complains that he cannot get the bits and pieces that are essential for
successful operations. He looks far into space, wondering if he is on a fool’s errand.
His young son wants to follow in his footsteps, to be a surgeon, to worry about
necessary incidentals and to stare off into space, wondering if he too is on the fool’s
errand of saving the lives Obama and his sanctions want to end so a new Camelot
may emerge, phoenix-like, from the pyre of all their incinerated dreams.
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The clever fifteen year old Greek Orthodox kid lectures me in English as good as my
own on the complexities of the politics of this part of the world. He was in an
expensive international school, cut out for finer things, president of the Oxford Union
perhaps. He now attends an Armenian school, where the teachers get their charges
to look backwards to the puddles of the past, when Armenia was a fine and mighty
nation and all bowed down and worshipped her. He tries to live in the present, his
future, like those of his Armenian class mates in tatters like so much else in Syria.
He might, if he is lucky, get a menial job here or a better-paid one scrubbing floors in
Beirut along with the hordes of other Syrian teenagers who sacrifice their young lives
and deadened dreams there on the altar of Obama’s sanctions. He now knows
dreams are not for everyone and, like a million dead Iraqi children before him,
Barack Obama has plans for his future that do not include the Oxford Union or any
other university for that matter. This is war, war without mercy on Syria’s innocents
and he too is a target.
The young woman from Ma’lulah knows that too. Though pretty, the ravages of a war
she did not want are etched forever into her young face and into her empty life.
Thanks largely to the largesse of patriotic Syrian nuns, her family is still holding
together and they may survive but Camelot is not for them. Though attending
university, she is hardly enjoying it the way her contemporaries in the USA might.
She is penniless, rudderless and afraid for the future Obama has stolen from her.
Though bright, she may defy the odds and eke out a living somehow.
I videoed her saying a prayer in Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Perhaps she will
get a job as a freak in a Christian circus, spitting out a prayer in the language of
Jesus, not unlike the barbaric, circus-like life Western intervention has bequeathed
the Yezidi women sold off as slaves to democracy’s avenging angels in Raqaa. She
is too innocent regarding the guiles of the world to survive in this world Obama’s
sanctions has delivered her in bondage to. She can have no hope. That is for other
people.
The Jaramania barman who rejoiced with me at the government attacks on the
moderate rebels in Jobar, who had been relentlessly mortaring his neighbourhoold
for the last three years, is now a little cautious. He has to watch his back and, just as
importantly, his job, a rare and precious commodity in this God-forsaken land holed
beneath the bow by Obama and his self-serving sanctions. He has a life to lead, a
family to feed and appearances to maintain. Whatever you say, say nothing is the
way to go as unzipped lips sink ships. It is best to be cautious, to be silent and to ride
out the storm.
But what if the tempest does not pass? What if Obama and his sanctions are in this
till the end, until Syria ends up like Iraq, Libya and the other countries the USA
vowed to destroy in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on New York by Saudi Arabian
citizens? What then for these poor, marginalized people? Well, platitudes will be
said, shibboleths recited, profits made and lives lost and those lives lost and dreams
extinguished will be the legacy of Barrack Obama, the rightful heir to George Bush
and the great Tony Blair, whose award-winning philanthropy to the needy is in the
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same league as his role as a harbinger of peace to this sad land he so badly
blighted.
Still, God is good. Tony Blair gets honoured, he gives the son of the Archbishop of
Canterbury a well-deserved job, George Bush gets on with his paintings, Barcelona
should do well this year, there is always the Chelsea Flower Show to look forward to
and Kate Middleton, wife to the Queen’s grandson, has kindly got herself pregnant
again. Her Majesty, always a rock of strength, will soon be in the Guinness Book of
Records as Britain’s longest-ever serving regent. May God bless her even if He
refused to bless the Syrian people, who are being assailed on all sides for the odious
crime of being peaceable people, who wanted to live their unobtrusive lives in their
homeland. Wall Street and those beholden to it had other plans and so, 200,000
deaths on, the bloodletting continues. Old men, fallen on unimaginably hard time,
shuffle through the Damascus traffic with their paltry wares, children forget what
school is, Syrian soldiers prepare for death and those they defend carry on, hoping
against hope that the days of sacrificing the innocent, Christians and non-Christians
like, to voracious lions might one day end. They hope in vain.
Dr Declan Hayes is currently on his third trip to Syria this year. He is helping
organize a conference in Damascus for April 24th 2015, tentatively called: Syria:
Between Destruction and Reconstruction to mark the murder of all Syria’s innocents
and to help plot a way forward out of the morass. He may be reached at
[email protected]
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The Massacre of Armenians at Kassab, Syria under the support of the
Republic of Turkey
June 26, 2014
By Our Correspondent, Latakia and Kassab, Syria
At 6 am. on the morning of March 21, 2014 armed terrorists came streaming into
Kassab, Syria over the Turkish border. The Army of the Republic of Turkey fired
heavy canons to assist in the initial breaching of the international border. They also
provided satellite information. The weapons used by the terrorists were all provided
by the United States of America, from their personal warehouses at Benghazi, Libya.
This was the “Rat Line” which Seymour M. Hersh wrote about on April 6, 2014. The
vehicles used also came from the US warehouses. All of these weapons and
vehicles were the property of the Libyan government under Muamar Ghadafi. Once
USA and NATO completed their regime change there, the US had possession of
everything, and it was just a matter of time that the stuff was transferred to the Port
at Iskenderun, Turkey.
March 21, 2014: the Kassab, Syria international border crossing with Turkey. Al
Qaeda affiliated terrorists with the Free Syrian Army and the black flag of Radical
Islam.
Kassab is a tiny Syrian village of 2,000 inhabitants who are ethnically Armenians.
They are the descendants of the survivors of the first genocide of the 20 th century,
when in 1915 the Turkish government exterminated 1.5 million Armenian Christians,
among other ethnic groups.
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Now, after almost 100 years, the Turkish government are again targeting and
singling out for extermination the Armenian Christians. History repeats itself in
blood.
The Republic of Turkey is almost exclusively Muslim. Christians were forced to flee
as refugees, never to return, or be killed. Many were slaughtered. Churches were
made into museums: sectarian cleansing.
March 2014, Hotel Rowda is used at the Al Qaeda headquarters in Kassab, Syria.
April 2014, the Radical Islamic terrorists say their prayers on the beach at Samra,
Syria on the Turkish border near Kassab, Syria.
The terrorists in Kassab were not Turkish. They were from various nationalities, but
all united under the black flag of Radical Islam, which is not a religion, or sect, or
faith based, but strictly a political ideology, devoid of any humanity or the peace and
love of Islam. These Radical Islamic terrorists are in fact the Anti-Islam, designed to
humiliate Muslims globally. They came from Afghanistan, and spoke no Arabic,
they came from Britain and spoke only English, and their Australian cousins were
along for the ride, as well as Moroccans, Tunisians and the Turkoman.
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March 2014, the Moroccan brigade of Al Qaeda affiliates as they attack Kassab,
Syria
The Turkoman are a Central Asian ethnic group. These specific terrorists were
Syrian citizens and could speak Arabic as well as their native tongue, Turkish. The
Turkoman were full Syrian citizens, with equal rights. They left well paid government
jobs in Syria, as well as lovely and valuable farms, homes and industrial property.
These Turkoman all left Syria during the 2011-2012 period, after the crisis in Syria
began. They all left at the same time, as if it was an orchestrated event. Now, we
know it was. They all went to Turkey. They were promised, and received large
monthly paychecks, more than some had ever made in Syria. The paychecks were
given to them monthly in Turkey by an official of the Saudi Arabian government. The
beginning paychecks were 2,000 US dollars per month. This was at least double the
paycheck of many Turkoman working in Syria.
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March 2014, these are Free Syrian Army and their Al Qaeda affiliates fighting under
the flag of Turkey, at Kassab.
The Turkoman knew personally every farm, home and business in Kassab. They
knew the roads, trails and foot paths going into Syria and going out to Turkey. They
knew everything, because they were Syrians. They made the choice to betray their
country, and to work for Radical Islam and the supporters of Radical Islam, which
are: Saudi Arabia, United States of America, Qatar, Turkey, United Kingdom,
France, Italy, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Germany.
They made a choice to stand with their religious sect against their neighbors, friends,
co-workers and classmates in Syria. They had no patriotism, only a religious
identity.
When the terrorists burst into Kassab the unarmed civilians were still asleep. They
burst into each home and asked the same question: where are your weapons? The
people of Kassab had no weapons. Healthy people could run: they threw kids and
ladies into the available cars and drove away to Latakia, to safety. Some residents
were shot and killed immediately, without reason. One young man of 21 yrs of age
was slaughtered in front of his father, just for the sheer fun of watching the father’s
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reaction. The father begged the terrorists to please allow him to quickly bury his son,
before leaving Kassab. The killers refused. It was so much pleasure to see the
father’s face, and it was even more pleasure to take the body away, and refuse the
father his request of a burial. These were special terrorists: they were straight from
the devil.
The survivors who were able to run, or drive away, made it finally to Latakia, and
they were sheltered at the Armenian Church, which was originally built as a refugee
camp for the survivors of the first Turkish genocide of Armenians.
However, there were a number of elderly residents who were unable to move
quickly. The terrorists rounded up these 22 elderly folks, some men and some
women, and incarcerated them in a cold room. They were mistreated for 12 days, in
which they suffered greatly, all the while watching from the windows as Turkoman
men in civilian clothes went house to house looting. They stole every refrigerator,
stove, TV and washing machine. They stole video games, DVDs, CDs, dishes, pots
and pans. The terrorists stole money and 21 carat gold jewelry. The Turkomans
used large commercial vans to transport all the various appliances and goods to
Turkey and those items now fill the stores in Turkey, from Antakya to Iskenderun.
The Syrian TVs from Kassab are offered for 5 US dollars each in Turkey. They stole
every farm tractor and most farming equipment in Kassab. Everything stolen was
taken to Turkey to be sold.
The 22 kidnapped Syrians repeatedly asked to be allowed to join their friends and
relatives in Latakia. It would have been so easy to simply have called the Syrian
Red Crescent to come and fetch the elderly people. The decision was made in
Ankara, by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to kidnap the 22 Syrians and
transport them to Turkey against their will. In fact, they were even told they were
going to Latakia, but along the road the elderly people could see they were going the
opposite direction. They were held against their will in a small village 23 kilometers
north of Kassab named Vakifli, Turkey. They were held there almost 3 months and
everyday they begged to be released. Finally, after almost 3 months of suffering
they were allowed to leave Turkey and they were dropped off in Lebanon, then to
face the grueling ordeal of making their way through Al Qaeda check points in
Tripoli, Lebanon on the way to Latakia, Syria.
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June 16, 2014: this is an ambulance used by terrorists in Kassab to transport
terrorists back to Turkey for medical help. This ambulance was originally owned and
operated by the Spanish government of Castilla y Leon. This ambulance was
procured at some point by the terrorists, perhaps it was shipped from Libya by USA
on the Rat Line to Turkey.
http://eaworldview.com/2014/04/syria-daily-opposition-head-jarba-visits-insurgentfrontline-latakia/
April, 2014: The President of the Syrian National Coalition, Ahmed Jarba toured the
occupied and devastated village of Kassab, Syria. He was accompanied by Free
Syrian Army terrorists and their Al Qaeda affiliates.
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May 2014: Washington, DC. Ahmed Jarba meeting with President Barack Obama
and Susan Rice. President Ahmed Jarba is the leader of the Free Syrian Army, who
has pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda, and all affiliates.
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Ahmed Jarba meeting with the Foreign Minister of Turkey Ahmet Davotoglu. The
Republic of Turkey assisted the Al Qaeda terrorists as they attacked, massacred and
occupied Kassab, Syria. The supreme leader of Turkey, Erdogan, personally gave
the order to kidnap 22 elderly Syrian Christians and take them to Turkey.
May 7, 2014: Ahmad Jarba, the President of the Syrian National Coalition, which is
the US backed opposition to the Syrian President Assad, had been to Washington,
DC personally to ask for more weapons for his armed wing, called the Free Syrian
Army, who are fighting the Syrian Arab Army.
President Jarba insisted that the US weapons would not fall into the wrong hands, by
which he refers to Al Qaeda terrorists in Syria. He confirmed that the Free Syrian
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Army had already received weapons in the past from the US government, and now
needed more.
While in Washington, DC Pres. Jarba met with Pentagon military leaders, the US
Congress, Sec. of State John Kerry and personally with Pres. Barack Obama, at the
White House.
While in USA asking for weapons, and promising that they would never be shared
with Al Qaeda, the US State Dept. upgraded the status of Pres. Jarba, and the SNC
and FSA, to diplomatic status, and confirmed $27 million dollars of additional aid to
the group. Along with diplomatic status came official offices to conduct affairs in
Washington, DC and New York City, paid for by the United States of America.
On June 15, 2014 the Syrian Arab Army freed Kassab. The terrorists went back
over the border to their safe haven there. The Turkish government supports and
aides the Radical Islamic terrorists in their midst. The Turkish citizens and residents
have been suffering for 3 years under this decision to support and shelter Al Qaeda
and all the various forms of Al Qaeda, such as: Free Syrian Army; Jibhat al Nusra;
Islamic Front; Muslim Brotherhood. Now they have to deal with ISIS. All of these
various terrorist groups are the same, just different names. They are all from one
exclusive religious sect, and they all are on the same payroll and taking the same
orders. The Turkish people went into the streets to protest, but 10 of the protesters
were killed by the police, and now they are too afraid to complain. The Turkish
government is watching Facebook and has turned off YouTube access and has shut
down the internet before. The Erdogan government is brutal and repressive and
does not tolerate complaints from citizens.
The terrorists burnt houses, businesses and the churches as they left in defeat.
When I got to Kassab the church was still smoldering. The exterior of the church
was in good condition, proving that the damage was not from any battles, or
missiles, it was deliberately set on fire from inside by the terrorists. The Erdogan
government has issued statements that the attack on Kassab was not religious and
that no churches or religious property was damaged. That is a lie.
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June 16, 2014: Kassab, Syria. The church was burned from inside deliberately upon
retreat of the Al Qaeda terrorists, along with the Free Syrian Army.
As of June 26, 2014 the residents of Kassab are still not able to go back home. It is
true the drive is just 1 hour from their shelter at Latakia, and an easy drive at that,
but Kassab is in such a total state of destruction, some may not be able to return for
a very long time. Homes, Churches, businesses are all destroyed. Burnt up from
inside without reason: except for the love of destruction. What devils are these
terrorists?
The electricity wires were all cut, the water supplies sabotaged. The simple farmers
and retired people of Kassab cannot return home until the basic services are
restored. They must plan on expensive and extensive repairs. It could be years
before normal life resumes in Kassab. Meanwhile, the Turkish citizens enjoy
complete peace, safety, prosperity and success. Where is the justice? International
justice and human rights are something which we must all laugh at and ridicule.
These words and values are meaningless as long as the most advanced countries
on earth, such as USA and others are supporting and complicit in the massacres of
Kassab. We cannot blame terrorists who represent no specific country, we must
place the full blame on the governments and leaders of those countries who have
signed the agreements to destroy Syria and to rape, maim and kill the unarmed
civilian population of Syria: Abdullah al Saud, Barak Hussein Obama, David
Cameron, Angela Merkel, Giorgio Napolitano, Recip Erdogan, Khalifa bin Zayed Al
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Nahyan, Abdel Fatah Sissi, Tamim al Thani, and Abdullah al Hashemi. These are
the names of the true terrorists who destabilize our globe.
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APPENDIX 9: THE EMBEDDED MINDSET OF THE WESTERN MEDIA
Concerned readers might wonder why so much of the information in the preceding
pages was previously so unknown to them. Much of the reason for this is a biased
and bought media. Though there is nothing new in any of that, the link between the
narratives some of our key media opinion formers and that of the war hawk lobby
has never been closer. The following snippets are just to give an indication of the
dark powers peace faces and why slick but dubious groups have been allowed to
gain so much traction
Roger Cohen: Let us unleash mayhem on Syria’s Christian, just like we did on the
Copts and Africans in Libya. The free world must kill, Arabs in particular. Cohen’s
sociopathic views do not belong in a mainstream media publication.
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We have met the notorious Mary Fitzgerald before in her role as a camp follower
of the Libyan cut throats who decamped to Syria. Though there is something about
the smell of cordite that attracts those suffering from Stockholm Syndrome,
Fitzgerald’s emergence as a Irish mini-propaganda hub via Barry University, a
private Miami Catholic university, the CIA’s Amman hub and her love affair in Libya,
Ireland and Syria with Libyan murder gangs is worth taking into account when we
read her “reporting”.
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Charlatans: Certainly, many feel “white man speak with forked tongue”. And that
Israeli war mongers and African psychopaths do as well, as often as not through
their compliant media Though the Charlie Hebdo attacks were horrific, they are, as
we have seen, everyday occurrences in Syria and their perpetrators are feted in the
West.
Human Rights Watch: ISIS are good guys. The controversial Human Rights Watch
group stayed silent for a month about the August 2013 mass abductions and
murders in Latakia as they lobbied for the “humanitarian bombing” of Syria to allow
ISIS turn it into a second Libya. They are one of the most well-funded and one of the
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most despicable groups shilling for “humanitarian mass bombing” of states NATO
opposes. The above screengrab of one of their leading mouth pieces praising ISIS
shows where their loyalties lie.
Iraq: A million dead, no Western leaders held to account by the courts or by the
media who embedded themselves with the invaders.
Though Michelle Obama did send a single solitary powerful tweet about Nigeria, the
girls, like their Latakia counterparts the Free Syrian Army abducted, raped and sold
into sexual slavery, have not been brought back and the slaughter continues
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Ruth Sherlock: Another one who made her name by hanging out with the Christiankilling moderate rebels and hearing their tales of woe, wonder and warfare.
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Syria, Why Weren’t We Told? You were told but, like the Germans from 1933 to
1945, you heard what they wanted you to hear. They told you who the heroes were,
who the villains were and who the expandable “collateral damage” were. Hundreds
of thousands of Syrians, in addition to a million Iraqis and countless others have died
on the pyre of their tissue of lies.
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Internet Warriors: Prof Postol is forced to waste his valuable time clinically ticking
off a Walter Mitty Internet warrior, one of a number in the image of notgeorgesabra,
who we already met. Though Kaszeta works closely with Higgins, who has similarly
no relevant experience or knowledge, both are widely cited in the pro-war Western
mainstream media. The mercenary van Dyke, who we have also met, is likewise tied
into them on a number of money-making schemes. These Walter Mitty types make a
good living surfing the net and opining to the world’s media on technical issues they
know nothing about. Syrians die as a consequence. Syrians die because the media
accept the words of these mercenary crackpots in this, our common world.
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Michael Weiss: A member of the extreme right-wing Henry Jackson Society who
we have already met in conjunction with the uninformed, fascistic attacks on Mother
Agnes Mariam aka Fadia Laham and who has holed himself up in Lebanon, all the
better to fuel the fires consuming people of the Middle East. Though ShamiWitness
was, of course, exposed as a fraud, this work has hopefully shown he is not the only
fraud with Syrian blood on his hands.
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This is a screengrab from an incisive video by Mimi Laham aka Syriangirl aka
partisangirl, a young Australian-based Syrian PhD chemistry student. Her videos and
tweets are informative, much more so than the embedded mainstream press.
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Appendix 10: A selection of correspondence from Nelson’s solicitors, acting on
behalf of Hand in Hand for Syria, and form the University of Southampton,
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Hand in Hand for Syria

Transcription

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