- Plan was underway weeks after MI6 helped send Libyan dissidents to Colonel Gaddafi’s torture chambers
- Blair sought intelligence sharing relationship with Assad, who UK foreign secretary David Lammy has called a “butcher”
Senior MI6 officials wanted help from Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad to stop terrorists entering Iraq in 2004, it has emerged.
US troops were coming under attack from foreign fighters with links to Al Qaeda, which had gained a foothold there following the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Among them was Syrian Islamist Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, also known as Ahmed al-Sharaa, who would eventually overthrow Assad.
British diplomats met Jolani this month in Damascus where he called for a terrorism designation on his rebel group to be lifted.
That group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), is currently listed under UK terrorism law as an alternative name for Al Qaeda.
Sir John Sawers, who was Tony Blair’s foreign policy adviser and went on to run MI6, has called Jolani’s group a “liberation movement”.
Yet 20 years ago when Blair was prime minister, Jolani and his associates were on the cusp of forming an Iraqi branch of Al Qaeda, which posed a real threat to Western forces in the region.
The risk was so serious that Blair was willing to ask for help from Assad, whose dictatorship was notorious for torture.
As Blair prepared to meet US president George W. Bush in Washington in April 2004, a British government briefing note set out how far Downing Street was willing to go.
It stated: “Our primary concern remains the flow of terrorists into Iraq through Syria. We are pushing the Syrians hard to accept a visit from a team of senior officials from the FCO [Foreign and Commonwealth Office], SIS [Secret Intelligence Service or MI6] and MOD [Ministry of Defence] to address this issue.”
The document, which was only made public at the National Archives in London today, added: “And separately, there are the beginnings of an intelligence relationship which we hope will bear fruit.”
To this end, Jack Straw, Britain’s then foreign secretary, wrote to his counterpart in Damascus “urging early cooperation on stemming the flow of terrorists entering Iraq through Syria.”
It is not clear from the file – pages of which are censored – whether the Assad regime agreed to provide assistance.
The Foreign Office told parliament a year later: “Syria remains the main point of entry for jihadists aiming to reach Iraq, and the Syrians could do more to tackle this.”
The Ministry of Defence declined to comment. Tony Blair, the Foreign Office and MI6 did not respond to enquiries from Declassified.
Outsourcing abuse
Although MI6 has spent much of the last decade trying to overthrow Assad, his secular dictatorship was considered a potential ally in the aftermath of Al Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks.
Assad and his British wife were invited to Downing Street the following year and met the Queen.
Behind the scenes, Western intelligence agencies used Arab autocracies in Libya, Egypt and Syria to interrogate and torture Al Qaeda suspects.
Robert Baer, a former CIA officer, told the New Statesman in 2004: “If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria.”
Blair’s plan for closer ties with Assad in April of that year came only a month after tip-offs from MI6 led to the capture of leading opponents of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
In March 2004, the CIA abducted Abdul-Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi from the Far East, together with their families, and rendered them to Libya where they were tortured.
Belhaj and al-Saadi were leaders of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which was banned as a terrorist group in the UK and allegedly had links to Al Qaeda.
Belhaj was released by Gaddafi shortly before the Arab Spring and soon became a rebel commander in the fight to overthrow him, gaining support from Britain.
When Tripoli fell to the rebels, files emerged at Gaddafi’s intelligence headquarters revealing MI6’s role in his abduction.
Whether equally embarrassing evidence of MI6’s support for Assad will emerge from Syrian government archives remains to be seen.
Britain’s current foreign secretary, David Lammy, recently told parliament that Assad was a “butcher with the blood of countless innocents on his hands”.
Lammy pledged to help Syrian civil society groups “hold to account those who kept Syria under this brutal regime not just for the last 13 years, but in the years before that under the regime of Assad’s father.”
Who is Abu Mohammed al-Jolani?
Britain’s current Labour government appears to have taken the opposite stance on Syria from Blair, by loudly condemning Assad’s brutality and adopting a softer tone towards Jolani.
Lammy noted that while Al Qaeda has killed “hundreds of British citizens in barbaric attacks spanning decades”, Jolani’s HTS group has offered “reassurances” and should be judged “by their actions”.
Jolani travelled to Baghdad shortly before the invasion in 2003 and fought for Al Qaeda in Iraq, which was notorious for car bombings and sectarian attacks.
He was captured and imprisoned by US troops for five years and released just as the Arab Spring erupted in 2011.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who went on to lead ISIS, gave Jolani tens of thousands of dollars a month to return to Syria and recruit fighters there.
Jolani set up the Nusra Front, which swore allegiance to Al Qaeda and became one of the dominant armed groups in Syria’s uprising against Assad.
In 2016, he began trying to distance his group from Al Qaeda, eventually forming HTS, which he claims does not support international terrorism.
Jolani led the lightning offensive which toppled Assad this month and is now Syria’s de facto leader. He says it may take four years to hold elections.
Read Blair’s Syria briefing notes for his meeting with President Bush in 2004 (National Archives file reference PREM 49/3786)
* This article was automatically syndicated and expanded from Declassified UK.
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