Konflikten i Syrien

A Syrian film director working on a movie detailing the Assad regime's prison abuse "planned and faked" his own assassination attempt to help promote his work, an investigation by The New Arab has revealed.

Muhammad Bayazid was in Turkey last month promoting his film The Tunnel, which documented torture at Syria's notorious Tadmur prison, when he was allegedly stabbed in the chest.

Bayazid, who studied film-making in the US, claimed the attack was an assassination attempt by Syrian regime agents, apparently because of his work.

The film focuses on the story of a Syrian-American man who spent 20 years in Palmyra prison, where thousands of opponents of the Assad regime were tortured and summarily executed.

Two reliable journalists, Ibrahim Al Amin of Al-Akhbar and Elijam Magnier of Al-Rai report (auto-translated) that a high level CIA official recently visited Damascus to inquire about missing U.S. intelligence agents. The official asserted the U.S. has no design for permanent bases in Syria and is only there to defeat ISIS. The official did not say how many additional years "defeating ISIS" would take.

The efficiency of the EU-imposed sanctions on Syria was one of the topics of the agenda of the visit.

“Without taking a stance on them as such, I can say that all parties we meet, be it the church, the government or UN agencies, all feel the same,” Kinnunen said. “The Syrian government thinks the sanctions should be completely removed. UN representatives in place believe the sanctions should be mitigated because they mostly affect civilians,” Kinnuned said. “We have not taken a stance and are here to gather information. Then we shall see whether it affects the party’s policy in the future,” he concluded.

SD group leader Mattias Karlsson was supportive of his party comrades’ Syria trip, while questioning Sweden’s policy in Syria. According to Karlsson, who called it “strange prioritizing,” Sweden does not contribute a single krone for food to the most distressed, while raining money to support healthy young men who immigrate from Syria illegally, Nyheter Idag reported.
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​In Sweden, however, their visit was met with severe criticism.

Annika Söder, cabinet secretary of Foreign Minister Margot Wallström, told the Aftonbladet daily that the Foreign Ministry discouraged fellow Swedes from traveling to Syria, while Conservative Foreign Policy spokesman Karin Enström called the visit inappropriate, suggesting that it “legitimized Assad’s regime.”

The Swedish media were particularly triggered by photographs of SD MPs under the portrait of Assad, with Aftonbladet suggesting they could be used for propaganda purposes.

“If you are going to enter Syria legally, you must obtain permission from the Syrian state. You must have a visa,” Kinnunen explained. “We also meet with representatives from civil society, the UN and all UN agencies,” he added.

​Nevertheless, columnist Patrik Oksanen of Hela Hälsingland went so far as to call SD “Putin’s useful idiots” in a tweet.