In the wake of the arrest of Eric Harroun, a former U.S. army veteran who has openly fought alongside the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Nusra front against the Assad government in Syria, evidence is mounting that Harroun was, in fact, working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) the whole time.
In a recent report released by PressTV, upon Harroun’s arrest by the FBI after arriving at Dulles International Airport, Darryl Harroun (Eric’s father) has stated that his son was working for the CIA and reporting back to the intelligence agency from Syria. Darryl Harroun further stated that his son was truly patriotic and would never actually join such militants.
“I know he was doing some work for the CIA over there,” Darryl said. “I know for a fact that he was passing information onto the CIA.”
However, the FBI documents related to Harroun’s arrest do not contain any reference to Harroun’s employment with the CIA.
Harroun has already confessed to shooting 10 people, downing a Syrian chopper, and firing a rocket-propelled grenade during his tenure in the country with the death squads. He was also charged with “plotting to use a weapon of mass destruction outside the U.S.”
Harroun has been openly been fighting alongside al-Nusra since January. However, he also spent some time inside Egypt where he took part in the overthrow of Mubarak and the installation of an even more heavy-handed regime made up of fascists, fanatics, and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Although Darryl Harroun’s comments are not conclusive evidence with regard to his son’s employment with the CIA, such a situation would be entirely within the realm of possibility. Indeed, given the history of the CIA method of destabilization and control of terrorist networks, Harroun’s link with the agency is more likely than not.
Forces loyal to President Bashar al Assad have reportedly used helicopter gunfire and mortars in the battle for Aleppo, amid fresh claims British intelligence is helping rebel fighters to oust the Syrian leader.
According to an opposition official, information on Syrian troop movements is helping rebels launch successful attacks on regime forces in the second city, where both sides have been locked in fierce fighting for weeks.
“British intelligence is observing things closely from Cyprus,” the official told The Sunday Times.
“It’s very useful because they find out a great deal.
“The British are giving the information to the Turks and the Americans and we are getting it from the Turks.”
TEHRAN (Source: FNA)- A defected Syrian rebel who worked as a reporter for armed terrorist groups to produce a fake image of the unrests in Syria revealed that the reports he sent from Lebanon were falsely broadcasted as reports from the conflicts in Homs city.
“They transferred me to Lebanon and then forced me to appear before the camera and speak about the current events in Homs and give some reports from there, while I was in Lebanon,” Sali Haza’ al-Qabani told FNA on Tuesday.
He said that before surrendering to the Syrian forces after President Bashar Assad issued amnesty for all opposition forces, his family was threatened by the terrorist groups and he was obliged to continue his fake reports about events in Syria.
Qabani also said that he himself has witnessed the massacre of Syrian protestors by the terrorist groups which was then allegedly blamed on the Syrian security forces. Continue reading →
The Syrian government and the rebels blame each other for an alleged massacre in the village of Tremseh. As with the previous mass murder news in Syria, reports of the bloodshed appear just in time of a crucial point in foreign diplomacy over Syria.
Initial opposition reports of some 200 people killed in the village in the central province of Hama emerged at the time when the international community represented by the United Nations remains paralyzed on whether to extend its observer mission, which expires on July 20. The number of those killed began to vary right away with different sources, AP reports, with local activists backing away from the previous figure of 200 people. One said he had confirmed 74 deaths, but had only 20 names. Another provided a list of 103 names.
One activist called Jaafar quoted by AFP said the majority of those killed were rebels, while seven were civilians. He said a Syrian military convoy was on its way to the region of Hama when it was attacked by the Free Syrian Army, and then government forces staged a counter-attack with the support of pro-regime reinforcements from nearby Alawite villages. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported that “several dozen rebel fighters were among those killed.” The official Damascus calculations’ on the victims in Tremseh operation amounted to 50 people on both sides. They described the event as a “deliberate provocation”, adding that government forces only entered the village after residents asked for their help.
On Saturday UN monitors in a convoy of 11 vehicles met residents of Tremseh and inspected sites that were targeted by Syrian army tanks and helicopter gunships. They have not yet officially reported on their findings.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was quick to say that the use of artillery, tanks, and helicopters by the Syrian military provide “indisputable evidence that the regime deliberately murdered innocent civilians.“
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that the attack on Tremseh puts President Assad’s commitment to a peace plan under “serious doubt“. He called on the UN member states “to take collective and decisive action to immediately and fully stop the tragedy unfolding in Syria,” adding that “inaction becomes a license for further massacres.”
It comes as the UN Security Council is discussing two competing drafts of a resolution – introduced by Britain and Russia – aimed at breaking the diplomatic gridlock surrounding Syria.
‘Credible reports emerge about deliberate rebel atrocities’
Author and Middle East expert Tariq Ali says that the UN Security Council remains divided over Syria because there is no such thing as the “international community” in the first place.
“What you have is a divided Security Council, with Russia and China so far resisting attempts by the West to take Syria over,” he told RT. “These attempts are continuing, and we are now seeing a pattern.”
At the same time, Ali continued, new evidence destroying the official Western view on the Syrian events begins to come from trustworthy sources in the media.
“I have now seen evidence from journalists in the field I trust – [like] Charles Glass, who’ve been there – who insist that atrocities carried out by the Syrian National Council and their organization’s supporters are creating mayhem in some areas and they are deliberately carrying out these atrocities so that they can be blamed onto the regime,” he said.
“A journalist from Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung some weeks ago explained what happened in the Houla Massacre and was denounced. But we now have other reports coming from journalists. Charlie Skelton in The Guardian has written a very detailed text pointing out extremely ably as to who the people are, who we see on CNN, BBC, and who are promoted by the [US] State Department and the British Foreign Office, who control these networks or influence them,” Ali went on to explain.
He added that the West itself has unleashed the rebels, while Saudi Arabia and Qatar – “those beautiful examples of democracy” – are arming them, and the Turks are playing their part too – all in order to get rid of the regime.
A Middle East expert from the University of Mainz, Dr. Guenter Meyer, is even more direct in his assessment of the latest developments. He says the rebels are trying to drum up support for their cause.
“It’s quite obvious that the rebels were responsible for the Houla Massacre. Germans, just a few days ago, interviewed Bashar al-Assad, [and] he described this tragedy as a ‘massacre marketing,’ which means that rebels on purpose kill as many people as possible in order to incite worldwide public opinion and to promote the invasion from abroad into Syria in order to oust Bashar al-Assad,” he told RT.
Homs (Agenzia Fides) – More than 300 fighters in the various armed factions of the Syrian opposition in Homs have agreed to surrender, to come under the protection of the interfaith People’s Committee “Mussalaha” and continue an “unarmed political opposition.”
This is the result of a historic agreement promoted by the movement “Mussalaha” (“Reconciliation”), born spontaneously from Syrian civil society, which is gaining the confidence of all the warring parties, families, clans, communities, sectors of the government and armed opposition.
The more than 300 armed are mostly young people who are barricaded in several streets in the old town of Homs such as Khalidiye, Jouret al shiyah, Qarabis, Hamidiyah, Bustan Diwan and surrounding areas, still besieged by the forces of the Syrian army. Overall, it is estimated that the armed fighters in that area of the old city are more than 1,000.
The Committee of “Mussalaha” in Homs, which includes the Syrian Catholic priest Fr. Michel Naaman, and other Muslim religious leaders and several civil society leaders and community representatives, after a lengthy mediation effort, managed to achieve something unthinkable until yesterday. “The 300 young people ready to lay down arms are young teenagers who had decided to fight, due to the spirit and ideals of the revolution. Among them are relatives, children, friends, people that are part of Mussalaha and this has greatly facilitated dialogue and agreement. They are the children of the Syrian people,” the priest of Homs told Fides.
Young people had warranties that the Syrian army, on laying down its arms, will be free and will be able to continue a “non-violent political opposition.” The Committee of “Mussalaha” will be the guarantor of their safety and freedom, in an atmosphere that wants to encourage confrontation, dialogue and reconciliation. It is not excluded, the “Mussalaha” leaders noted, that many other fighters can follow this example and come under the tutelage of the Committee for reconciliation.
The main problem, note sources of Fides, is represented now by over 100 armed men who are not Syrian and are present in the area and who have no intention or possibility to qualify for this delicate operation of “internal Syrian dialogue.” They demand the involvement of the Red Cross, so this is why representatives of the CRI are alerted for a possible intervention in the mediation. (PA)
Syrian armed gangs operating in the flashpoint city of Homs have threatened to start killing civilians if the Army refuses to leave.
Officials say up to 5,000 civilians have been taken hostage by armed gangs in Homs, where the gunmen are attacking both private and public properties.
The sound of gun-fire and explosions could be heard from the city on Wednesday.
The army has reportedly halted its operations to avoid civilian casualties there.
Syria has been experiencing unrest since mid-March 2011.
Both the government and armed groups accuse each other of intensifying the violence.
The head of the UN mission in Syria Major General Robert Mood suspended the group’s operations on June 16 due to “intensification of armed violence.”
On June 16, the Norwegian general said in a statement that the “lack of willingness by the parties to seek a peaceful transition, and the push towards advancing military positions is increasing the losses on both sides: innocent civilians, men, women and children are being killed every day.”
Mood said that some of the observers were targeted and prevented from implementing their mandate to oversee the UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan’s six-point ceasefire plan.
Meanwhile, the Syrian ambassador to the UN, Bashar Ja’afari, told reporters in New York on June 19 that armed groups in Syria were violating the Annan peace plan and that the “only way to push forward is to guarantee the success of the six-point plan.”
The CIA agents in southern Turkey are secretly helping the armed groups fighting against the Damascus government in Syria, a report says.
According to a New York Times report published on Thursday, some US and Arab intelligence officials say a group of “CIA officers are operating secretly in southern Turkey” and that the agents are helping the anti-Syria governments decide which gangs inside the Arab country will “receive arms to fight the Syrian government.”
“CIA officers are there and they are trying to make new sources and recruit people,” said one of the Arab officials, whose name was not mentioned in the report.
The arms include automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and antitank weapons, which are being transported “mostly across the Turkish border,” the report said.
Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar pay for the transport of the weaponry into Syria, according to the US and Arab intelligence officials cited in the report.
The CIA spies have been in southern Turkey for the past several weeks and Washington is also considering providing the armed gangs with “satellite imagery and other detailed intelligence on Syrian troop locations and movements,” the report adds.
The Thursday New York Times report comes two days after the Syrian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the government was trying to evacuate civilians from the western city of Homs.
“Contacts have been made with the leadership of the international monitors, in cooperation with the local Syrian authorities in the city of Homs, to bring out these Syrian citizens,” said the statement issued on June 19.
“But the efforts of the monitors were unsuccessful… because the armed terrorist groups obstructed their efforts.”
Western intelligence agents in Syria are passing vital intelligence gathered by U.S. and British agencies to rebel forces in the country, according to a report in a British newspaper.
CIA operatives and their counterparts in MI6, the United Kingdom’s foreign-intelligence wing, have been gathering reams of raw intelligence gleaned from American and British satellites and other electronic intelligence assets in the skies above Syria, according to reports in the U.K’s Daily Star.
After parsing though that raw data, analysts in Washington and London have passed on those bits of actionable intelligence to CIA and MI6 agents on the ground, who then pass the information to rebel leaders. That information includes images of troop movements of forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as well as captured communications between top Syrian military officials in Damascus to commanders in the field, a British defense source told the Star.
