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Moscow comments on Assad poisoning rumors

RT | October 13, 2025

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has rejected rumors that former Syrian Bashar Assad has been poisoned, saying that Assad and his family are safe in Moscow and have been living there without any problems since being granted asylum.

Earlier this month, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) cited an anonymous source as claiming that Assad had been discharged from a hospital in Moscow Region after a supposed poisoning attempt in September. The rumor has since been widely circulated by both Western and Russian media outlets.

SOHR consists of a single individual – Rami Abdulrahman – who runs the organization from his home in Coventry, England, which also functions as a clothing shop. SOHR’s reports on the war in Syria have been cited by Western governments and media, although it has consistently faced accusations of anti-Assad bias and sympathy toward armed opposition groups.

Lavrov stressed that Assad “has no problem living in our capital” and that “no poisonings have occurred.” “If such rumors appear, I leave them to the conscience of those who spread them,” he said.

The minister added that Russia had provided asylum to Assad and his family “for purely humanitarian reasons,” noting that they had faced threats of physical harm after last year’s change of power in Damascus.

Lavrov drew parallels with the 2011 conflict in Libya, recalling Muammar Gaddafi’s public killing which was widely broadcast on television – an event that the Russian foreign minister said “delighted Hillary Clinton, who watched his physical annihilation live and clapped her hands.”

Assad, a longtime Russian ally, was overthrown last December when forces led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) seized Damascus. The situation in Syria has remained unstable since, with clashes between Islamist factions and government units under the new leadership.

Russia has maintained its military presence at the Khmeimim Airbase and Tartus naval facility, and says it plans to repurpose them for humanitarian operations in coordination with the Syrian authorities.

October 13, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

‘Deliberate hoax’: Russian military denies NGO report of airstrikes in Idlib

RT | February 24, 2020

Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports of Russian airstrikes on two villages in Idlib province have nothing to do with reality, the Russian military said, adding that none of its planes operated in that area on Monday.

“The information provided by the British NGO is a deliberate hoax,” Rear Admiral Oleg Zhuravlev, head of the Russian Center for the Reconciliation in Syria, said at a briefing.

Earlier in the day, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) claimed that an airstrike by Russian and Syrian forces on the villages of Kansafra and Al-Bara in Idlib led to the “killing and injuring of nearly ten Turkish soldiers.”

Ankara has not reported any casualties among its troops in Syria, however.

The SOHR claim came at a moment when Russia and Turkey stand on the brink of war over Syria. Ankara sent troops to Idlib – the last remaining terrorist stronghold in Syria – two weeks ago, provoking deadly clashes with the advancing Syrian army. Turkey has demanded Russia to pressure its allies in Damascus into ceasing its operations in the area, while Moscow blamed Ankara of not fulfilling its earlier promise to separate the “moderate” rebels from terrorists.

Last Thursday, Russian bombers struck militants who had launched an attack on Syrian positions with the support of Turkish artillery. However, both Russia and Turkey said they weren’t looking for a military conflict. A new round of consultation between the sides is being prepared in order to defuse the situation in Idlib, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced on Monday.

SOHR has been one of the key sources of Western media since the conflict in Syria broke out in 2011. However, a 2015 investigation revealed that the entire organization was run by a single man in Coventry, a former convict who fled Syria for the UK and has not been back since.

February 24, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Video | , , , | 1 Comment

‘Independent’ Syrian Observatory for Human Rights receives nearly £200k from UK – Peter Hitchens

By Omar Baggili | RT | May 14, 2018

The British government has given the self-described ‘impartial’ Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) £194,769.60 for a project to help fund “communications equipment and cameras,” according to journalist Peter Hitchens.

The Sunday Mail’s Hitchens, a regular critic of British foreign policy, tweeted on Sunday: “Boris Johnson’s Foreign Office admits it gave £194,769.60 to the supposedly ‘independent’ Syrian Human Rights Observatory. How many other ‘independent’ bodies in the Syrian controversy aren’t as ‘independent’ as they look?”

The SOHR declares on its website that it’s “not associated or linked to any political body.” Hitchens in his Sunday Mail blog asks: “Is Boris Johnson’s Foreign Office not a political body?” Hitchens appears to question the legitimacy of the relationship, in relation to the Syrian conflict “in which the British government clearly takes sides.”

Fellow Mail journalist and author of ‘Not the Chilcot Report,’ Peter Oborne has added that the “Syrian Observatory has been treated as a gold standard for information on Syria. Quoted by BBC all the time. Always described as independent.”

The group has come under criticism, being accused by some as a tool of Western propaganda due to its location and lack of staff. Its operation is managed by one man in Coventry in the UK, Rami Abdurrahman, who fled Syria in 2000. He relies on a handful of Syrians to assist him in collating information from “more than 230 activists on the ground”, a network of people from his youth, reports New York Times.

Abdurrahman’s neutrality on the Syrian conflict came under fire when he told Reuters in 2011 he would return to Syria only “when Bashar al-Assad goes,” and according to CNN, was part of a delegation of Syrian opposition officials that met with the then-Foreign Secretary William Hague, that same year.

It’s not the only Syrian-focused human rights group to come under the spotlight with accusations of questionable neutrality because of UK government links. The White Helmets, officially known as the ‘Syria Civil Defence’ has also come under fire. Since 2011, the UK has provided the organization with £38.4m of funding, a freedom of information request has revealed, as reported in The Guardian.

The group operates in areas under the control of the Syrian opposition forces, including Islamist rebels such as Jaysh al-Islam, who controlled the city of Douma until recently, and the location of the latest alleged chemical weapons attack.

According to reports, Theresa May is preparing to increase funding to the White Helmets in response to media claims that President Donald Trump is to withdraw US support for the organization. In March, Trump froze a $200m (£148m) package of US aid to Syria, including money for the White Helmets.

The US President has said he would like to see his country relieve itself of military and humanitarian duties in Syria, calling on other countries to help fill the financial void to fund stabilizing and rebuilding projects in the country after the fight against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS), claims ABC news.

Addressing parliament on Wednesday, the UK PM said: “We do support them [the White Helmets], we will continue to support them and … the international development secretary will be looking at the level of support in the future.”

Two Syrian groups claim to be impartial, yet are happy to receive funding from the UK government who, as Hitchens says, are clearly taking sides on the Syrian conflict.

May 14, 2018 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

As the US and EU disintegrate, is it time for a French renaissance?

By Gearóid Ó Colmáin | April 6, 2017

Things were looking good for days. President Donald Trump had reportedly sent US senator Tulsi Gabbard on a fact-finding mission in Syria and wanted to know if President Assad would cooperate with the US in defeating ISIS. Assad was willing to cooperate with the new American president. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s recent statement in Ankara that the US had renounced its desire to remove Assad seemed to mark a major policy shift in the right direction.

French presidential favourite Marine Le Pen was unequivocal in her desire to work with the Syrian government to defeat Takfiri terrorism. France’s Popular Republican Union party (UPR) recently invited journalist Vanessa Beeley to address their election campaign where she delivered an inspiring speech on Syria. Francois Asselineau, the party’s leader, is the most progressive and anti-imperialist candidate in the French election.

For a few days, it seemed as though the tide was turning in favour of peace and good sense. Then, as peace negotiations with the Syrian government were progressing, the Syrian gas saga returned with a vengeance.

If you are new to the topic of Syria, there are a few matters which need to be cleared up here. The country’s leader, Bashar Al-Assad, is democratically elected. He is neither dictatorial nor brutal. All of the “sources” which the mainstream Western media use to write their stories on Syria come from organisations such as the ubiquitously cited Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). SOHR is neither Syrian nor a human rights organisation. It is a one-man show run by Rami Abdel Rahman, an anti-government exile based in Coventry England. He hasn’t been in Syria for more than two decades. Almost all Western media sources come from this man!

So, the intrepid and indefatigable purveyors of “serious” journalism in France’s Le Monde were busy yesterday doing what they do best: war propaganda. Having implanted the belief in the uncritical reader’s brain through headlines accusing the Syrian government of gassing its own people – this time in Khan Cheikoun in the outskirts of Idlib – according to “the sources”, the real story emerges from the rubble of the aforementioned “sources”: the Syrian Army have intensified operations against “rebels” in the area contiguous to Idlib and Hama in recent weeks.

“The Operation” writes Le Monde’s Benjamin Barthes “which enabled the insurgents to come to at least within 10 kilometres of their aim, was led by the Jihadists of the Fatah Al Sham Front, an emanation of Al Qaida”. So there you have it! Le Monde has just told you once again that the “rebels” and “insurgents” are in fact led by an “emanation of Al-Qaida.

Our governments are supposed to be fighting Al-Qaida, supposed to be protecting us from them. The Syrian government – which NATO admitted in 2013 has the support of the majority of the Syrian people – claims to have bombed a chemical weapons depot in Khan Cheikoun. The information has been confirmed by the Russian military.

Even if you believe Bashar Al-Assad is secretly a devil “killing his own people”, surely the man is intelligent? If he wants to stay in power, getting the United States off his back would be a major help, would it not? So, just days after the United States looked like it was going to work with Assad against ISIS, he just couldn’t resist spraying that gas on innocent children and all the war-weary generals of the Syrian Arab Army are cowering in the barracks, abjectly carrying out every whim of the Damascene butcher and now facing a carpet bombing campaign by NATO! How did such a crazy fool manage to stay in power so long!?

Yesterday morning on France Inter radio station, academic dullards were pontificating about “post-truth”, “fake news” and of course, “conspiracy theories”. Russian media in France is increasingly coming under the spotlight. Some pundits have accused Moscow of destabilising European opinion. But critical minds always seek clarity and the French are a most critically-minded people. The war lobby is howling in Washington and Brussels and a silence of cruel complicity was observed in Western capitals following the terrorist attacks in St Petersburg on Monday. We have been taught to hate Russia.

In the French presidential debates on the 4th of April there were only two candidates the establishment fear: François Asselineau and Marine Le Pen. Of the two, Asselineau is unquestionably superior. Unlike Le Pen, Asselineau wants to leave NATO and not just the Military Command Structures. He wants  leave the EU and not just have a time-wasting referendum on it. Asselineau wants to reform the Conseil de Resistance Nationale (the National Council of the Resistance) – the post war council formed by patriots and communists to reconstruct France.

Asselineau’s UPR could be the surprise in this election. No genuine communist could vote for that perfidious caitiff, that execrable little Trotskyite trashbag Jean-Luc Mélenchon! The pseudo-leftist defends wars of aggression as long as they have their UN mandates and ‘humanitarian’ cover. Mélenchon is the incarnation of everything that is putrid and pathetic on the “Left.” In fact, he is not left-wing at all. He is a right-wing demagogue who pipes the far-left tune – another Alexis Tsipras, another Sorosite, fake social-democratic class traitor!

Yesterday morning the republican presidential candidate was drilled by France Inter’s war-monger-in-chief Patrick Cohen concerning the French government’s response to the alleged gassing in Syria. Fillon, who has faced an avalanche of dubious allegations due to his connections with pro-Assad Lebanese businessmen and his desire for peace with Russia, said tellingly that  the Syrian leader makes “incredible mistakes”. Fillon seemed to suggest that Assad couldn’t be that stupid and demanded “proof”- to the chagrin of Patrick Cohen!

Trump has now excluded Chief Strategist  Steve Bannon from the National Security Council. The CIA and Joint-chiefs of Staff are also back in the council. The US Deep State is triumphant and the White House is pushing UN war resolutions against Syria. In France we need a patriotic leader capable of challenging the Empire; we need the National Council of the Resistance. In the aftermath of American populist failure, now is the time to build the European popular front!

April 6, 2017 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Guardian’s Ian Black on the latest death toll figures from Syria: spot the glaring omission

Interventions Watch | December 3, 2013

From an article published December 2nd:

‘The UN commissioner’s statement, reported from Geneva, coincided with the publication of a new death toll of 125,835 for the last 33 months. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), based in the UK, said the dead included 44,381 civilians, including 6,627 children and 4,454 women. The SOHR said at least 27,746 opposition fighters had been killed, among them just over 19,000 civilians who took up arms to fight the Assad regime. The opposition toll also included 2,221 army defectors and 6,261 non-Syrians who joined the rebels’.

The glaring omission is, of course, the ’50,430 deaths among the Syrian armed forces and local militias supporting Assad’ – the biggest single documented toll among any of the groups.

Why Black would omit this figure is anyone’s guess. But it’s a strange oversight, and one you couldn’t imagine him ever making if it was the supposed Good Guys being killed in such numbers.

December 3, 2013 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment