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mass destruction in Syria Top-secret documents tie Bashar regime to mass
annihilation.
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Selected from a shocking report investigation published by New Yorker
The investigation starts narrating the continuous brave triers
inside Syria, to collect several documents of torturing and brutal executions
inside Bashar administration and his direct ties on them.
Part Four
On March 30, 2011, Assad
addressed the nation from the rotunda of the Syrian parliament building. He had
just sacked his cabinet, and many people expected him to announce liberalizing
reforms. Instead, he declared his intention to suppress dissent in the brutal
tradition of his father, Hafez al-Assad. “Syria is facing a great conspiracy,
whose tentacles extend” to foreign powers that were plotting to destroy the
country, he said. “There is no conspiracy theory,” he added. “There is aconspiracy.” He closed with an ominous directive: “Burying
sedition is a national, moral, and religious duty, and all those who can
contribute to burying it and do not are part of it.” He emphasized, “There is
no compromise or middle way in this.”
Two days later, protests across the country grew
larger. Assad had already formed a secret security committee, called the
Central Crisis Management Cell, to coördinate a crackdown. Its chairman was
Mohammad Said Bekheitan, the highest-ranking official in the ruling Baath
Party, after Assad; the other members—who were all Assad-dynasty
confidants—were routinely shuffled among the top positions in the military, the
ministries, and the security-intelligence apparatus.
Every night, the Crisis Cell met in a drab
office on the first floor of the Baath Party Regional Command, in central Damascus,
and discussed strategies for crushing dissent. This required detailed
information about each protest, so the cell requested reports from security
committees and intelligence agents in the most rebellious provinces. The group
decided to hire someone to process all the paperwork.
One of the applicants was Abdelmajid Barakat, a
twenty-four-year-old with slicked-back hair. Barakat, who had recently finished
a master’s degree in international relations, was working for the education
ministry. At his interview, in April, a high-level official named Salaheddine
al-Naimi examined his résumé and asked whether he could use a computer. Next,
Naimi asked how he would resolve the developing crisis. Barakat replied that,
in order to avoid an armed response, the government should make some
concessions and enact moderate reforms.
Barakat was surprised to be hired. In college,
he had been questioned by military-intelligence agents about suspicions that he
and his friends were involved in anti-government political activities. Early in
the unrest, he had joined one of Syria’s first organized revolutionary bodies.
Now, in the regime’s haste to make the Crisis Cell more efficient, it was
employing a member of the opposition to process confidential security memos
from all over the country. On most days, more than a hundred and fifty pages
arrived at Barakat’s desk, cataloguing the minutiae of perceived threats to
Assad’s rule—graffiti, Facebook posts, protests—and, eventually, actual
threats, like the existence of armed groups. Barakat read everything and
drafted summaries, which Naimi delivered to the members of the Crisis Cell to
guide each meeting.
Barakat was never allowed into the meeting room,
but he saw the members walk in, and Naimi kept detailed minutes on Baath Party
letterhead. Occasional guests of the group included high-ranking Baathist
officials, Syria’s Vice-President, and Assad’s younger brother, Maher, a
short-tempered military commander, whom the European Union identified in a
sanctions list as the “principal overseer of violence against demonstrators.”
At the end of each meeting, the Crisis Cell
agreed on a plan for every security issue. Then Bekheitan, the chairman, signed
the minutes, and a courier delivered them to Assad at the Presidential palace.
Barakat learned that Assad reviewed the proposals, signed them, and returned
them to the Crisis Cell for implementation. Sometimes he made revisions,
crossing out directives and adding new ones. He also issued decrees without
consulting the Crisis Cell. Barakat was certain that no security decision, no
matter how small, was made without Assad’s approval.
Shortly after Barakat began working for the
Crisis Cell, he started leaking documents. Though the regime publicly claimed
that it was allowing peaceful demonstrations, security memos showed that
intelligence agents were targeting protesters and media activists, and shooting
at them indiscriminately. Barakat photographed the memos in the bathroom, and
sent the pictures to contacts in the Syrian opposition, who forwarded them to
Arabic news organizations. His plan was to steal as much information as
possible and then leave the country. But each leak heightened suspicion within
the office, increasing the chances that, sooner or later, the regime would
discover that he was the mole...
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