A British woman who became a prominent defender of Syria’s Assad regime resurfaced this week as an “international observer” for Russia’s sham referendums in Ukraine.
Vanessa Beeley – described by Russian broacaster RT as “an independent investigative journalist” – told a...
Blog archive: Syria
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1st October 2022
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24th September 2022A British academic whose Twitter account is tagged as "Iran state-affiliated media" was the main author of a report on Islamophobia published this week with funding from the EU's Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme. The academic in question – former professor David Miller – is a...
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8th August 2022Shortly before Christmas in 2012 a mass shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school in the United States left 20 children and six teachers dead. Eight months later an incendiary bomb hit a school in Syria's Aleppo province, killing at least 10 students on the spot. Six other...
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31st January 2022A new book containing a chapter by a prominent defender of Syria's Assad regime has been withdrawn from sale, the publisher confirmed today. The Research Handbook on Political Propaganda comprises 29 chapters by a variety of academic authors. When it first went on sale last December the...
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27th December 2021A man suspected of supplying equipment to the Syrian army – including components that could be used in the manufacture of chemical weapons – has been arrested in the south of France after arriving there for a holiday, French media reported on Sunday. The man has not been officially named but he...
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23rd December 2021The Research Handbook on Political Propaganda is a new book described by its publishers as "a crucial resource for both scholars and students". Optimistically priced at £195 ($258), it has 29 chapters by different authors presenting academic studies of propaganda in a variety of countries....
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14th December 2021A report in the Washington Post yesterday appears to confirm Syrian claims that Israel bombed chemical weapons facilities in the country last June – thus destroying evidence sought by OPCW investigators. Although the paper's story is based on unnamed intelligence sources, information from...
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29th October 2021Syria falls silent over claim that Israel destroyed evidence in Douma chemical weapons investigationSyria's Assad regime is resisting calls to substantiate its claim that Israel has destroyed evidence relating to an alleged chlorine attack on Douma in 2018. According to the regime, two gas cylinders at the centre of the Douma investigation were among the "losses"...
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28th September 2021In April last year a report by the OPCW, the international chemical weapons watchdog, blamed the Assad regime for two sarin attacks on Ltamenah in northern Syria. The implications of this were especially serious because the attacks took place in 2017 – four years after the regime had formally...
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17th September 2021Hundreds of people died – many of them in their sleep – when rockets laden with the nerve agent sarin hit Ghouta, a rebel-held area on the outskirts of Damascus, in the early hours of 21 August 2013. It was the deadliest chemical attack anywhere in the world since the 1980s and it caused...
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26th July 2021Syria's claim that crucial evidence relating to chemical weapons was destroyed by Israeli airstrikes has been greeted with widespread scepticism: it sounds too convenient to be true. In a diplomatic note to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Syria announced that...
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24th July 2021Two gas cylinders that formed crucial evidence in connection with a suspected chemical attack in Syria have been destroyed by an Israeli airstrike, according to the Syrian authorities. The cylinders were at the centre of an investigation by the OPCW’s Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) regarding...
