WikiLeaks uploaded Thursday some of its 2.4 million Syrian government emails revealing that business between the regime and Western companies continued despite United Nations sanctions and an international outcry over human rights abuses.
The whistleblower organization says the emails, dating from 2006 to 2012, reveal how some companies continued to work closely with the regime, ignoring sanctions. But those emails have not been verified by outside investigators.
The new charges come as fighting intensifies. The Syrian Expatriates Organization said the Syrian Air Force had bombed a Damascus suburb on Wednesday using government aircraft.
The bombing was followed by artillery shelling, “causing at least three deaths and wounded more than ten,” the group said.
The WikiLeaks documents appeared to show Western nations looking the other way as companies did business with the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
“At this time Syria is undergoing a violent internal conflict that has killed between 6,000 and 15,000 people in the last 18 months,” WikiLeaks said on its website. “The Syria Files shine a light on the inner workings of the Syrian government and economy, but they also reveal how the West and Western companies say one thing and do another.”
Several of the 2012 and 2011 emails reveal that Selex, a subsidiary of the Italian communications company Finmeccanica, sold communication technology, called Tetra, to Syrian police forces as early as this year, according to WikiLeaks.
A spreadsheet downloaded from the WikiLeaks site by The Washington Examiner displays the costs, addresses, antennas, call signs used by various police forces, and intricate details of the communication system. The documents appear to show the Italian company was involved with training Syrian police forces to use the equipment and implement it.
A Feb. 2 email from Selex officials to Syrian officials states “Selex Elsag engineers will be in Damascus on the 11th of February. They will stay until the completion of the following tasks”: training intracom engineers, delivery of training material, delivery of repair procedures, delivery of chopper cables and connectors, and cable fixing training.
Selex officials could not be immediately reached for comment.
WikiLeaks spokeswoman Sarah Harrison told reporters in London on Thursday morning that “the material is embarrassing to Syria, but it is also embarrassing to Syria’s opponents.” Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, is seeking asylum at the Embassy of Ecuador in London, as Swedish authorities attempt to make him answer to sex crime charges brought by two women.
WikiLeaks said it will upload additional emails in the near future that they say show how other Western nations and companies circumvented sanctions and continued to work with Syrian government officials.
Sara A. Carter is The Washington Examiner’s national security correspondent. She can be reached at [email protected].
