Since his arrival two years ago, a suspected Syrian war criminal and member of a regime militia has been living a comfortable life in Montreal, according to regime critics.
George Youssef Al-Sheikh is a Christian who received a religious sponsorship as a refugee and a victim of the Syrian civil war.
The information obtained by Zaman al-Wasl has already been used as a source for a number of credible journalistic investigations in Europe.
George Youssef Al-Sheikh is a member of an armed militia affiliated with the National Defense Forces which was among the first to participate in the bloody crackdown on the protests that shook the country in 2011.
Zaman al-Wasl had access to this database, which the QMI Agency was able to consult.
According to various testimonies, George Al-Sheikh was also a key member of Al-Hout, an armed criminal group linked to numerous horrific crimes in Douma and Sednaya.
In a recent report, Zaman al-Wasl exposed the Al-Hout gang for being behind several kidnappings, rapes, and murders, as well as drug and arms trafficking. Together, its members have looted more than 20 villas in Sednaya alone, as the townspeople fled.
Al-Sheikh currently lives an extravagant life with a fortune he had amassed through his crimes. On his Facebook profile, George Yousef Al-Sheikh lists Montreal as his city of residence in 2019, and Sednaya as his city of origin.
“I deny all of the false accusations listed in your article and consider it to be nothing more than the imagination of someone who wants to create false stories. The Canadian government has sifted through every inch of my life and I wouldn't be here if these accusations were true,” Al-Sheikh said in a Facebook message written in English.
The member of Zaman al-Wasl’s investigative team, with whom the QMI Agency corresponded, insisted on remaining anonymous, since revealing his name could be life threatening.
Immigration Canada, the Canada Border Services Agency and the RCMP declined to comment on this particular case, citing privacy laws that prevent the disclosure of a specific individual's personal information.
Immigration lawyer Hugues Langlais said it would be difficult, if not impossible, to prosecute George Youssef Al-Sheikh for his alleged war crimes.
“We do not prosecute [alleged war criminals] for their war crimes, but for lying in their declarations of immigration forms, either for not having declared a fact, a name, an address, a situation, or a job which, had it been known [at the time of the asylum application], the government would never have accepted it,” explained Me Langlais. “Often, proof is impossible to provide in the context of a criminal trial.”
Putting together an evidentiary case would require collaboration between Canada, the Syrian government and their respective police forces, which is unlikely in the current context.
According to Sami Aoun, a political scientist at the University of Sherbrooke and an expert on Middle East issues, Zaman Al-Wasl is deemed a credible source of information, consulted especially by circles of the Syrian opposition.
The credibility of opposition media was also validated in a report from 2019, written Swiss Refugee Council OSAR, which detailed the fruitful collaborations of Zaman al-Wasl with European media in the last decade.
In 2016, Zaman al-Wasl published, together with Britain's Sky News, a list containing the names of thousands of ISIS soldiers in more than 40 countries. The Independent then quoted experts who considered this information to be of paramount importance.
Zaman al-Wasl has access to valuable Syrian government sources and continues to investigate war criminals who participated in destroying the country since the 2011 uprising, several of whom are now in Europe.
Edited translation by Zaman al-Wasl
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