Le Monde doubts credibility of Syrian Observatory

Translation by Yusra Ahmed

(Zaman Al Was)- French Le Monde newspaper suspected the credibility of Rami Abdul Rahman, Director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Right, considering that it was not helpful for the revolution or the opposition, to be categorized as Islamic, Liberal, Secular and so on.

The article titled: “the Lost Credibility of Rami Abdul Rahman’s, the manager of Syrian Observatory for human Rights”, within the newspaper’s blog called “an eye on Syria”.

Zaman al-Wasl translated the important points in the article, as it mentioned how Bash al-Assad controlled the Syrian Association for Information Technology, and how he tried to enlarge the bubble of freedom of speech and news and media in the country by letting number of news websites to establish. However they explicitly looked like news and events’ sites, while they implicitly controlled by the regime security and intelligence forces.

Le Monde newspaper mentioned in the article that Bashar al-Assad followed the same strategy in regard to human rights, as instead of complete silence about this issue, regime spoke with explicit openness about it via human rights bodies controlled by its intelligence.

In summary, the article showed its point of view that Bashar al-Assad had established the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights directed by a person nicknamed “Rami Abdul Rahman” to cover its crimes, and tired to make it look as an independent association to be accepted by the West media and take it as source of information. Moreover, the regime benefited from the “Observatory” as it put aside most of the bodies interested in human rights and disclosing the regime’s crimes and human rights violations, like the Syrian Committee for Human rights, created by Walid Safour, and the violation’s documenting Centre. After a while the “Observatory” became the only source for information, and its news were taken as facts.

The article reminded of the fake attacks against Rami Abdul Rahman, by the Syrian regime and its media in the beginning of the Syrian revolution, but despite that it failed to cover the real person behind the name, who was Osama Solaiman, an Alawite from Banyas.

Moreover the French newspaper mentioned that Abdul Rahman had a good relationships with opposition’s figure from the National Coordination body, which was disliked by Syrians, because it tried to trim and conceal the regime’s crimes, and refused to help Syrian people under claims of fighting terrorism, beside refusing the external intervention, which helped Bashar to go on in his crimes.

The article suspected the sources of Rami Abdul Rahman, inside Syria, as how one person can have sources from the opposition and the regime in same time and report accurate information and events. Beside query about the way the Observatory followed to protect its sources from killing and arresting, which affected most of people.

One of the most things increased the suspicion about the reality of the “Observatory” was the number of loyal people who were killed, which gave an impression that what had been happening in Syrian was not a revolution, but it was a pure civil war.

Moreover, the “Observatory” insisted that the number of victims in the “Chemical Weapon Attack” on al-Ghouta did not exceed 183, but in reality it almost reached to 1400, nearly 8 folds.

Le Monde newspaper’s article concentrated on the ongoing flood of news about the human rights violations by the opposition and rebels, aimed to defame the revolution and reduce the shock toward the regime’s crimes.

The deliberate ‘mistake” in the report about “Hatlah” village in Deir Ezzor was the biggest attention drawing toward the hidden agenda of the “Observatory” by circulating the regime’s story: in 12th June 2013, the Observatory issue a press release in English in which it mentioned that 60 Shiite people in the village were killed in cold blood by rebels. Then that information was taken by most international newspapers , in the same time the observatory publish an Arabic version of the incidence in which it mentioned that rebels attacked the Shiite militias as a response to their attack in which 2 were killed. After the obvious contradiction in the two versions the “Observatory” translated the Arabic version into English, but it was too late, as the fake story had already been distributed all over the world.

The newspaper consider that fault was not spontaneous, but it was deliberate and organized to defame the ant-regime’s fighters.

The article presented many examples about the false news the “Observatory” published like: killing a Christian Family in Sadad village in Homs’s countryside, but a resident from the village denied that and confirmed that “Shbiha” were who killed the family after stealing their furniture and selling them in Sunni’s market in Tartus.

Another fake news was the 30 women and children who were killed in Nabek by the Syrian regime’s shelling, but the “Observatory” preferred to claim that they were Islamic fighters.

In February 2014, 170 people were killed in a trap, all the Observatory and the regime and its loyal media published that the killed were Islamists from Afghanistan, Shishan and Saudi Arabia. Abdul Rahman ignored on-ground reporters who mentioned that 75% of the killed were civilians.