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❊ The Curious Case Of The Syrian Ambassador in France

It all started with a phone call by a woman claiming to be the Syrian ambassador in France who made a live phone call to the channel:

“I can no longer continue to support the cycle of extreme violence against unarmed civilians [...] I can no longer ignore the young men, women and children who have died. [...] I have informed the president’s private secretary that it is my intention to tender my resignation to (Syrian) President Bashar al-Assad

Usually, when a high-ranking diplomat calls a news channel to make potentially consequential statements, you expect any self-respecting, professional channel to triple check the identity of the caller.

But then, an obviously infuriated Lamia Chakkour (the ambassador) called Syrian TV to categorically deny that she made that call. She then called Al-Arabiya, and with equal fury denied the “impostor” and said that she will sue the “vindictive” France 24 channel. Alarabiya then played the France24 clip while Ms. Chakkour was on air, and it was obvious that the voice of the woman who called the channel is not the same as that of Ms. Chakkour.

So France 24 was caught red handed? Not so fast. Here’s the channel’s statement following Ms. Chakkour’s denials:

Ahead of Tuesday’s “Debate” show on FRANCE 24, the channel invited the Syrian ambassador to France using the email address commonly used by our channel to contact the Syrian Embassy press office. Since Ms. Lamia Chakkour’s response was favourable, we called her at the appointed time on a number that was provided to us by the embassy press office [...]

Following the broadcast, the Reuters press agency received an email from the Syrian embassy in Paris confirming what she had announced [...] We cannot rule out either manipulation or provocation

In other words, someone from Inside the Syrian embassy in France was engaged in a massive act of deception. That happened on the same day that France’s foreign Minister Alain Juppe said that President Assad has “lost all legitimacy” to rule Syria. This could of course be a coincidence, but I’m smelling a botched act of intelligence by the French, perhaps calculated to start a snowball of international resignations of Syrian diplomats.

Let’s wait and see how this plays out..

10 thoughts on “❊ The Curious Case Of The Syrian Ambassador in France”

  3. I have mentioned before that the Syrian Regime will try to play games. You never know, may be the Regime sent a test balloon to see what will be the reaction of some people!

    I still believe that the Regime sooner or later will topple! Let’s see what will happen in Jisr Al-Shakhoor! Al-Asad will probably will commit another war crime and the chips will be accumulated against him and his Regime.

  5. It could be the curious case of “Anonymous”.
    A guy who calls himself Anonymous, has vowed to take revenge on Middle Eastern regimes that have smothered freedom of speech.
    Here’s a note to President Assad: http://pastebin.com/dYsiB2bt

    Also “The gathering of Internet activists swore to remove Syrian Embassy websites from the internet, stating that it would also use Black Fax and E-Mail Bomb campaigns.”

    Read more here: http://ht.ly/5bPTe

  7. Well until now it is not clear who said what. To my knowledge, Lamia Chakkour did not see fit to give any “sound and image” interview to any TV station. The identity of the person issuing the denial is still unconfirmed. Because of the email to Reuters, the embassy has a responsibility to issue an official denial, she could have at least recorded her declaration on a webcam in English and put it out on Youtube. Until now, no such thing happened, to my knowledge. We are left with conjectures as to which voice belongs to whom. It is clear that something abnormal happened at the embassy, but what happened exactly isn’t clear.
    I don’t think at all the French services have anything to do with that. If they had, the best way for the Syrian embassy to deal with it would have been to record the ambassador message with a webcam and send it to all TV stations. It would have left no doubt in anyone’s mind.

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