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As well as unremarkable academics, assorted clergy and former politicians the signatories to this letter can be clustered into two main groups; a shadowy British front org for Assad, and an ‘NGO’ with explicit ties to the French far right (short thread): https://twitter.com/KreaseChan/status/1354141956557987840
The SOS Chrétiens d’Orient - founded by members of the far right, one of whom has signed the letter- ostensibly presents itself as a charitable NGO doing relief work in Syria. However, extensive investigative work by @elieguckert et al has shown that they directly fund Assad’s...
militias, most notably through giving money to the infamous Simon al-Wakil, head of the NDF militia in the Christian town of Maharda. The organisation gives around €7mn euros a year to Assad’s Syria and maintains a permanent presence in the country; its highly likely that its...
funding of militias accused of war crimes breaks E.U. principles on humanitarian intervention. You can read more about this here: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2020/11/04/how-a-french-charity-built-ties-with-pro-assad-christian-militias/
Another indication of the French far right’s involvement in the letter is the signature of Thierry Mariani, a Member of the European Parliament for the National Rally (formerly the National Front). He’s already infamous for his whitewashing of the Azerbaijani regime, and for...
being a particularly egregious example of “caviar diplomacy”; he also - completely unsurprisingly - supported Russia’s take over of the Crimea...
Another signatory is Pierre le Corf, a self styled “humanitarian aid worker” who showed an uncanny ability to present the Russian/Regime view of the conflict, and who funnily enough, is also party funded by SOS Chrétiens d’Orient. Le Corf is the worst kind of conspiracy...
theorist and used his time in Aleppo to assert a link between al Nusra and the White Helmets - part of an ongoing propaganda campaign to elicit support for targeting rescue workers - and cheered on Regime planes as they bombed East Aleppo. He also has links with HART, the NGO...
overseen by Baroness Cox, the organiser of this letter (more on that later).
The British presence on the letter is formed around two Assadist front organisations Euro CSE and the British Syrian Society.
The British presence on the letter is formed around two Assadist front organisations Euro CSE and the British Syrian Society.
Starting with Euro CSE, the organisation claims to be about counter terrorism but has focused largely on matters Syrian. It gained infamy when it held a conference where it platformed members of Assad’s government (in possible violation of E.U. law) as well as the notorious...
pro-Assad blogger and conspiracy theorist Vanessa Beeley. EuroCSE was founded by Makram Khoury-Machool, who was an adviser to Syria's previous ambassador to the UK, and has towed an aggressively pro-Assad line, leading the National Liberal Society to apologise for hosting one...
of its meetings. The former Archbishop of Canterbury - Rowan Williams - a signatory to this letter as well, is listed as a patron of the organisation. On that note, another of the group’s patrons is Peter Ford, a former UK ambassador to Syria, and...
the director of the viciously pro-Assad British Syrian Society, which was founded by Fawaz Akhras, the father-in-law of Bashar al-Assad. Ford has signed the letter alongside a Major General John Holmes, himself also a member of...the British Syrian Society.
Finally (for now) there’s the organiser of the letter, Baroness Cox. Cox has landed herself in hot water before, including leading a “fact finding” mission to Syria where her guests rebelled against the pro Assad propaganda she was attempting to ram down their throat, which...
included having tea with murderers (for more on that episode, see here: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/guests-rebelled-at-syria-trip-lunacy-6hcpgmkdg). She’s also used her position in the House of Lords to push a pro Assad agenda, as well as attending meetings on the Parliamentary Estate with well-known disinformation proponents...
including members of the canal of chemical weapon truthers clustered round the “Working Group on Syria”.
So it’s always worth unpicking who the signatories to these letters are; behind some impressive sounding names there’s the same old story of links to the far right and...
So it’s always worth unpicking who the signatories to these letters are; behind some impressive sounding names there’s the same old story of links to the far right and...
probably plain old corruption. I was surprised to see - despite his well known sympathies for the regime - that someone like Peter Oborne would put his name to this.
As a postscript; there is a legitimate debate to be had over the efficacy of sanctions, particularly with regards to who they actually hurt and what policy outcomes they're supposed to engender. But these people are Assad apologists and don't have a place in that conversation.
I forgot to mention the 'UN expert' that is cited in the letter; Alena Douhan of Belarus, who is the UN's new Special Rapporteur on “unilateral coercive measures". There's a lot of misunderstanding around the role of Rapporteurs, so it's important to be clear - they're given...
a mandate by the UNHRC, but are not employed directly by the UN itself and don't necessarily reflect the organisation's views. In this case, Alena used her first report to condemn Western sanctions that target Iran, Syria, Venezuela and Cuba and appeared on the not-at-all-...
Russian-linked Grayzone conspiracy blog, the import of which I will allow you to draw your own conclusions on.
