Inconsistencies and misrepresentation

Alistair Harris’s biography

• 1973 – year of birth
• 1996-2002 – FCO diplomat
  • Served in the Balkans, Central Europe and Pakistan.
• 2002-2005 – War Crimes Investigator, FCO and UN International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia
• 2006-2007,Consultant, British Embassy Beirut: Deployed Civilian Expert with the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Unit
• 2007-2013 Founder/director, Pursue Ltd, Lebanon and Yemen
• 2009- Founder/director, ARK Lebanon,
• 2011- Founder/director, ARK FZC (renamed ARK Group DMCC in 2015)
• 2014- Founder/director, The Stabilisation Network DMCC
• 2020 December – UK government Stabilisation Unit

Harris’s bio on the ARK Group DMCC site does not mention his career as a diplomat but describes him as “having spent 20 years working in conflict zones from Northern Ireland and the Balkans to Afghanistan, the West Bank and Lebanon”. This suggests that his real affiliation was with MI6, as a “UK diplomat” would not otherwise have been deployed to Northern Ireland. Harris’s companies and the transactions between them are described in detail in the Appendix.

The activities of Harris’s ARK Group in the Syrian conflict and in Lebanon are described in detail in batches of leaked FCO documents that appeared online in September 2020 labelled as Operation HMG Trojan Horse.

After the release on 11 December 2020 of documents describing in detail ARK’s role in Lebanon, Harris relocated to London, announcing on his LinkedIn profile that on 21 December 2020 he had been appointed to a new post with the Stabilisation Unit’s Civilian Stabilisation Unit.

A report to the FCO from ARK with title “UK FCO – STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS; RESEARCH, MONITORING AND EVALUATION SERVICES; AND OPERATIONAL SUPPORT IN THE SYRIA REGION” (TrojanHorse Ark 2.1.8.pdf) describes how CIJA was spun out from Alistair Harris’s company ARK and Wiley’s company Tsamota:

In 2011, in response to allegations of gross human rights violations committed by protagonists in the Syrian conflict, ARK and its justice sector partner Tsamota supported the establishment of the Syrian Commission for Justice and Accountability (SCJA). The SCJA has grown to be a majority-Syrian not-for-profit organisation with over 90 staff committed to ending impunity for crimes carried out by all armed factions in Syria. Initially working with seed funding from the UK Conflict Pool to support investigative and forensic training for Syrian war crimes investigators, the project experienced several stages of sustainable growth. It secured funding from the US-supported Syrian Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC) to extract contemporaneous documentation from the conflict zone, and in May 2012 obtained funding from the EU Instrument for Stability to support the development of its analytical and headquarters components. With a deployed in-country field team and trained investigators supporting documentation collection, exfiltration, archiving and analysis, the SCJA has grown to become a major component of Syria’s transitional justice architecture. By August 2014, when the EU component of the project ended, ARK and Tsamota were able, as planned, to step away from the day-to-day operations of the SCJA, which is now firmly established as a coherent, independent, Syrian organisation. To date the project has collected over 1,500kgs of contemporaneous documentation from inside Syria, scanned or is in the process of scanning over 310,000 pages of evidential material as well as reviewing and indexing over 12,000 videos, all of which had to be hand carried from Syria. This project marks a new development in international justice: the contemporaneous gathering of evidence of violations of international humanitarian law, whether conducted by regime forces or members of armed opposition or Islamist groups, whilst the conflict is ongoing. In addition to harnessing complementary funding streams (UK for in-country investigative capacity, US for documentation and archiving and EU for analysis and support) ARK and Tsamota were able, through a donor government project steering committee, to further expand the funding base. By September 2014, the project had secured Norwegian, Swiss, German and Danish funding, achieving sustainability, and realising core objectives.

A slightly different account is given in another document with title “AJACS Technical Proposal ARK FZC” (TrojanHorse 2.1.5 [4].pdf):

ARK is able to draw on transitional justice expertise from the independent Syrian NGO, the Syrian Commission for Justice and Accountability (SCJA). The SCJA was established in The Hague in November 2011 with direct technical assistance from ARK.

The SCJA first appeared online in September 2012 with four training videos on documenting evidence of human rights abuses, posted on a YouTube channel. CIJA’s letter to donors in May 2020 stated that SCJA was established in May 2012 and registered in the Commercial Registry in the Netherlands in November 2012. “Syrian Commission for Justice and Accountability” was the name of the recipient of the first tranche of FCO funding in November 2013. An article published in December 2012 described SCJA as “a non-profit organization based in The Hague but operating mainly in Istanbul”.

A guide to “documentation groups” in Syria posted by Public Law and International Policy Group in March 2013 described the relationship between SCJA and ARK as follows, quoting ARK’s website:

ARK has been working with implementing partner Tsamota Ltd. (see below) to provide pro bono training and support for investigators selected by the Syrian Commission for Justice and Accountability (SCJA) (see above) since May 2011. Together, these organizations have provided direct assistance to the UNHRC Commission of Inquiry (see above), which has acknowledged their TJE collection efforts.

The first component of ARK’s and Tsamota’s program involved training Syrian investigators in basic international criminal and humanitarian law. Specifically, trainings focused on the links between international humanitarian law and human rights law, as well as possibilities for a domestic justice process in a future transitional Syria. Simultaneously, ARK and Tsamota provided training on international criminal investigative methodology.

This partnership between Tsamota and ARK in 2013 appears to be the EU-funded Rule of Law project in Syria that was investigated by the European Anti-Fraud Office as described below.

Other key personnel associated with CIJA

Netherlands location (2012)

Belgian location (2013-2015)

CIJA insiders have informed us that Tsamota and CIJA are co-located, sharing not only their director but other key personnel. CIJA was based in central Brussels until 2016. In 2015 Adrian Powell was Chief of Staff of both Tsamota Limited and CIJA. The devex website gives the location of the headquarters of Tsamota Ltd as Brussels, employing two people, with a contact email for Wiley as the primary contact, including a Belgian phone number. It lists five contract awards to Tsamota Ltd, four from the UN and one from the EU. A LinkedIn profile for Oliver Cushing states that he was employed in Brussels by Tsamota Ltd from 2013 to 2015 and as CEO of Tsamota Certification Limited from 2015 to 2016. An advertisement in November 2015 for an internship with Tsamota Certification Limited also stated that the location was Belgium.

In 2014 two nonprofit organizations were registered by Wiley at Molièrelaan 59, 1190 Vorst, Brussels. The legal term for a non-profit organization in Belgium is VZW in Flemish and ASBL (Association sans but lucratif) in French.

Lisbon location (2016)

In 2015 several months after a visit to the Brussels office by investigators from the European Anti-Fraud Office, Tsamota / CIJA relocated to Lisbon.  Although press reports refer only to a city in western Europe, it is widely known in ICC circles that the city is Lisbon.  This can be documented in open sources.  A job advertisement was placed by Tsamota Ltd in April 2016, seeking a Business Development Consultant based in Lisbon. Under the heading “Organisation Profile” the advertisement states “Tsamota Ltd. is a limited liability company specialising in the delivery of justice- and security-sector reform initiatives in fragile and conflict-affected environments.” At the bottom, under “How to apply”, applicants are advised to send “a letter of motivation, stating”why you wish to work with the CIJA” to an email address at the domain cijaonline.org. There is no other mention of CIJA in the advertisement. A CIJA representative attended meetings with the Portuguese government in January 2017 when the EU terrorism coordinator was in Lisbon. Nawaf Obaid’s LinkedIn profile gives Lisbon as the location for his post as Commissioner. A US government database of applicants for funding lists The Tsamota Good Governance foundation ASBL with Wiley as the contact name at its registered address in Brussels, but with a Lisbon (+351 21 prefix) phone number. No business named CIJA can be found in the Portuguese business directory.

Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (2012-2019)

As the ARK report described, US funding for CIJA was routed through another NGO named Syria Justice & Accountability Centre (SJAC). Its website states that SJAC was founded after a meeting of the Group of Friends of the Syrian People in 2012 and was based in The Hague for three years. This can be identified as Stichting SJAC (KvK number 59036699) formerly at Laan van Meerdervoort 70, 2517 AN, The Hague, but no longer registered. An article in Foreign Policy in 2014 reported that SJAC had been the conduit for US government funding of CIJA:

the commission’s grant was negotiated directly with the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. “The SJAC was effectively a bystander,” she said. “The money was channeled through SJAC to simplify our financial reporting, and to enable the SJAC to take credit, with our blessing, for [our] document collection.”

In 2016, SJAC closed down its operations in The Hague and registered (file number N00005464748) as a non-profit corporation in Washington DC hon 22 June 2016 by Mohammad Al Abdallah but its status is now listed as “Revoked” in the DC business register, perhaps because SJAC did not file the second report that would have been due on 1 April 2019. Mohammed Al Abdallah is listed on the SJAC website as Executive Director, having “previously worked as a research assistant for Human Rights Watch in Beirut from where he covered Syria”. He is the only governor listed on the business register. In May 2019 SJAC published a lengthy report based on material produced by CIJA.

SJAC, SCJA and CIJA are distinct from two other similarly-named NGOs:

1. The Center for Justice and Accountability – registered in Washington DC (file number 980245) in 1998 with a business address in San Francisco.
2. Syrian Institute for Justice & Accountability based in opposition-held Aleppo till late 2016 and reported by the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission to have provided witnesses for their investigations of alleged chemical attacks in 2017

Belgian court case: project “Higher Legal Education in Iraq”

In August 2012 the EU Directorate General International Cooperation and Development (DG DEVCO) had issued an invitation to tender for “a project to provide support to higher legal education in Iraq.” The contract for €1.834 million had been awarded in 2013 to Tsamota as head of a consortium with Gent University and two commercial companies. After a commisisioning an audit of the project, the EU informed Tsamota that payment of the final invoice had been suspended because “important information was missing, for instance the VAT number, company number and invoice number, and the invoice had been issued by a different entity, as had the last three invoices”. On 18 June 2018 Tsamota Limited brought a case in Belgium against the EU. The EU issued a counterclaim for recovery of funds already paid. The judgement was issued on 6 January 2020 and the case was reported in an article on 5 May 2020 in the Belgian newspaper La Libre. From the court judgement, some additional details of the OLAF investigation into Tsamota / CIJA are available.

Tsamota prevented OLAF from doing any on-the-spot control since no administrative office address of Tsamota where the original documents are stored has ever been communicated to OLAF.

Tsamota presented itself as leader of a consortium that never took place. Each of the other consortium members confirmed that they never signed a consortium agreement until late in the life of the project.

Tsamota has no stable structure and employs only consultants some of them with oral contracts. The whereabouts of the company’s administrative locations are difficult to follow.

Payments for security services were made to a bank account in Dubai and a bank account in Hong Kong and subcontracting for security service is in excess of what is allowed.

The short-term experts were recruited only from January 2015, towards the end of the project, when that should have been done from September 2013.

Services rendered by a key expert for the HLE contract have been charged twice for the same month … Accommodation for the experts has been charged twice.

OLAF literally and expressly doubts whether the project was actually implemented.

The court dismissed the claim by Tsamota, and ruled additionally that Tsamota must repay €378,855 plus legal costs. On this specific dispute, the court did not make a finding that fraud was proven although there were irregularities and poor record keeping amounting to “general administrative ‘nonchalance’”.

CIJA’s reaction to the story of the OLAF investigation

From a request based on the Government Information (Public Access) Act (Wob) some heavily redacted correspondence between CIJA and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs is publicly available. On 11 May the Ministry sought CIJA’s advice about how to respond to a Trouw journalist who had asked about the Dutch role in CIJA. CIJA responded with an eight-page letter to donors. Possible reconstructions of the redacted text are shown in square brackets.

There are two separate issues I want to address with you today:

1. The claim –The claim – first put out by [Blumenthal and Norton] in outlets such as the [Grayzone site] (and now being picked up by newspapers in Belgium and the Netherlands) – that CIJA and [Tsamota] (a private company owned by [Wiley]) are one and the same.

2. The claim that a press release put out by the EU’s OLAF on 24 March 2020 concerns an EU grant awarded to CIJA.

Although CIJA and Tsamota are not legally “one and the same”, as noted above they are co-located, have the same CEO and share key personnel. One of the irregularities identified by OLAF was that resources for CIJA had been diverted to Tsamota’s Higher Legal Education project in Iraq, allowing the contractors to make a profit from that project. More generally it is clear from the limited information that is available about the OLAF investigation that it concerned CIJA as well as Tsamota.

CIJA’s letter to donors continues with reference to an article “the objective of which is to discredit CIJA and [Tsamota]” published in June 2019; this is presumably the article by Blumenthal and Norton in the Grayzone. A subsequent heavily redacted passage may refer to the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media. Wiley had been aware since February 2020 that WGSPM members had been investigating possible irregularities in his business activities, originally as part of a broader study of the FCO-funding strategic communication programme related to the Syrian conflict. Possible reconstructions of redacted text are shown in square brackets:

Summer 2019: [The WGSPM, known for its questioning of the chemical attacks narrative] as well as for its attacks upon the reputations of the [White Helmets] and [James Le Mesurier] commences work on a “research paper” about CIJA, [ARK] and [Tsamota]. The same collection of [UK academics is] involved in putting together an alleged [?] – in which they attempt to link business and non-profit interests to a conspiracy in order to discredit the [White Helmets] – starts asking exactly the same questions about SCJA/CIJA as they did about [Mayday Rescue].

The WoB documents show a coordinated effort by the foreign ministries of several countries to keep the lid on the story of fraud, rather than to freeze all further funding pending the outcome of OLAF’s recommendations for prosecution. By 25 May CIJA was reporting that “only the [redacted] have managed to locate the OLAF file and review its contents”. A telecon with donors was held on 27 May. On 31 May CIJA thanked the Dutch Ministry of Foreign affairs for their “interventions at the donor meeting”.

It has been reported to us that the OLAF report led to a police investigation in Belgium, but this was abandoned because the UK authorities never replied to requests for assistance. The Trouw article reported in May 2020 that the Dutch Public Prosecution Service “confirms that the Olaf report is being studied to see whether there are leads for prosecution or other legal action.”, but there have been no reports of any subsequent action.

The Central Crisis Management Cell documents

Brown’s report in the Colvin case summarizes a collection of documents known as the Assad files, obtained by CIJA from offices that were abandoned by the government during the Syrian conflict. From reports of the Koblenz trial, it appears that the testimony given by Christopher Engels representing CIJA also relied on these documents.

These documents, described as the “linchpin of the CIJA’s case against officials in the Syrian regime”, record the meetings and directives of the “Central Crisis Management Cell” (CCMC) established by the Syrian government in late March 2011 in response to the uprising that had begun a few weeks earlier. Section IB “Summary of Opinions” in Brown’s deposition outlines the case that he made based on these documents:

the security operations against opposition groups and individuals began immediately after the outbreak of demonstrations in February/March 2011 and escalated significantly as opposition activity spread (Section II and Section IV.A).

Regime security operations targeted those who participated in or supported demonstrations, opposition activists and those who organised, funded or disseminated materials to or had contact with media outlets (Section II and Section IV.A–B).

Regime operations resulted in mass arrests and detentions in security/intelligence run detention centres, the deaths of demonstrators, and the increasing use of the military in security

the Regime specifically targeted identified groups within the opposition. This included demonstrators, co-ordinators, funders and those who used the media to publicise activity within the country (Section II and III.A–B).

A key instruction in early August 2011 from the CCMC and disseminated by the NSB to governorate Security Committees directed that joint military/security operations were to be mounted against clearly identified groups (Section IV.B). This included those who were inciting demonstrations, financiers of demonstrations, members of opposition coordination committees and those who communicated with people abroad in order publicise demonstrations or ‘tarnish the image’ of Syria in the foreign media and within international organisations.

Many [of these identified groups] were detained for prolonged periods and were subjected to intimidation, physical violence, and torture, which at times resulted in death.

Brown’s deposition asserts that the Syrian security forces undertook mass arrests and detentions of protesters” immediately after the outbreak of demonstrations in February/March 2011″ and that the armed opposition emerged only in late summer 2011, after “security operations targeted those who participated in or supported demonstrations”.

As the summer developed [in 2011], the security situation continued to deteriorate. The increasingly violent response of the Regime inflamed the opposition, leading to additional protests and the emergence of an armed opposition.

Other accounts record however that ambushes of Syrian soldiers began at the end of March 2011, with 88 Syrian soldiers killed during April 2011 in separate attacks across Syria, even before the army had been deployed for internal security duties. The Syrian government did not report these casualties at the time, perhaps in the belief that publicity would help its adversaries. By 8 May 2011, the CCMC was requesting daily reports on casualties among “our own forces”:

You are requested to provide us with a daily written report for the period up to 18:00. The report shall include: 1. Our own forces – Position – Situation – Actions carried out – Losses in detail – Wounded – Martyred – Equipment
2. Hostile forces – Demonstrations and where they took place – Acts of rioting and sabotage – Shooting at our own forces – Killed – Wounded – Detained

An instruction issued on 12 March emphasized that citizens should not be provoked, and that security forces should “comply with the instructions issued by the National Security Bureau concerning the summoning and detention of citizens”:

In order to avoid the consequences of continued incitement, such as the call for organising the Day of Wrath on 4 and 5 February, and foil the attempts of inciters to exploit any pretext, civil police and security agents are requested not to provoke citizens. … it is necessary to study the sociological effects of any security related incident which involves citizens, who should not be provoked. And all security apparatuses and civil and military police should comply with the instructions issued by the National Security Bureau concerning the summoning and detention of citizens, as these instruction are aimed at preserving the integrity of security work whose objective is to achieve the stability and security of the country.

An instruction dated 6 April 2011 referred to recent events in which these demonstrations led to attacks on buildings and people.

You are requested, each in your work area, to call the security committee to convene to discuss the latest developments, particularly the calls for demonstrations, and organize marches in all districts given the information regarding the intentions of some opponent groups to carry out acts of sabotage—burning of political party offices and assaulting party comrades and security personnel… as happened to police members in Rural Damascus.

On 20 April:

Detailed plans should be developed to counter the possibilities of armed and unarmed demonstrations and sit-ins,

On 11 May the CCMC quoted a leaflet issued by the opposition which outlined a plan for using demonstrations to divert and exhaust security forces and to provoke foreign intervention as in Libya:

Therefore, if there were demonstrations in Damascus, Dar’a and As- Sweida, security forces will lose control of all regions. This is because they will be exhausted and distracted, and they will not be able to target a specific city, and their strikes will be lighter and less intense against the residents of all of these provinces together. This also applies to all regions as the regime will be confused and will not be able to bring enough forces to cover a specific region as its forces will be engaged with other regions. Besides, the continued state of high alert will quickly exhaust security forces because they will be taken unawares and will not be able to draw a security plan that covers all regions, which will make toppling down the regime [incomplete sentence] with the many convictions, and the decision of the Security Council to conduct a military strike against Qaddafi.

By June 2011 the weekly incident reports include mention of the abduction and torture of government supporters, and by November 2011 the security forces report finding bodies of unidentified victims:

A refrigerated vehicle was found on the Homs-Zaydal highway, containing (27) unidentified bodies displaying gunshot wounds and signs of torture.

By 23 August the Ministry of Security was requesting information on thse who had contact with foreign bodies that “took part in funding and arming demonstrators”. This implies that by this time the “demonstrators” were armed.

You are kindly requested to supply us with the information that has been available from your interrogation of detainees who incited demonstrations and those who had contacts with foreign bodies, whether they are media bodies or plotters, or bodies which took part in funding and arming demonstrators

The documents emphasize the necessity of avoiding bloodshed when dealing with peaceful protests. On 20 April 2011:

Counter with weapons those who carry weapons against the state, while ensuring that civilians are not harmed.

At a meeting on 24 April, the government appeared to blame security forces for failing to follow these directives on 22 April, when “rights groups” reported that protesters in Daraa and Douma had been shot by security forces:

Comrade Assistant Regional Secretary spoke, stating that 22/4/2011 was a difficult day in which several people died which created a new situation in the country, pushing us into circumstances we are better off without. If the directives previously issued had been adhered to we would have prevented bloodshed, and matters would not have come to this culmination.

The discussion alluded to the role of opposition snipers in shooting from roofs or “through” demonstrations, presumably to provoke security forces into opening fire.

Comrade Director of the General Intelligence Directorate expressed his willingness to present the images of those shooting from the roofs of houses or through demonstrations or ambushes, and to provide the appropriate evidence. Comrade Assistant Regional Secretary stated that surrounding and catching a sniper alive or injured and exposing him in the media is not impossible. This mission should be accomplished.

An Instruction dated 15 August 2011 specifies that police and anti-riot personnel must wear uniforms and must:

4 – Ensure that no drop of blood is shed when confronting and dispersing peaceful demonstrations.

A set of instructions issued on 9 November included an order to “prohibit harming any detainee”.

This comparison of Ewan Brown’s written evidence in 2018 with the original documents supports an earlier analysis based only on extracts from these documents, which argued that CIJA has distorted the original documents which record the Syrian government’s response to an armed insurgency to make it appear that the Syrian government was responding to peaceful protests with mass arrests and with militarization of the uprising. There is no evidence in these documents that maltreatment of detainees was sanctioned by the Syrian government. Again we emphasize that we take no position on whether such maltreatment occurred, only on whether these documents provide evidence for it.

The Caesar photos

As noted above, CIJA worked on the Caesar photos with Toby Cadman from 2015, and Fergal Gaynor’s CV records that he also worked on them as head of the Syrian Regime Team from 2017 to 2019. Although the Caesar photos formed part of the prosecution’s case in the Koblenz trial, it is not clear whether CIJA was involved in providing evidence.

The individual using the codename “Caesar” was first presented on 20 January 2014 as the source of an archive of photographs of thousands of deceased adult males taken over an eight-month period up to August 2013 at the mortuary of Military Hospital 601 (Martyr Youssef Al-Adhma Hospital) in Damascus. In July 2014, Caesar accompanied by his handler Mouaz Moustafa, a former Senate staffer gave a presentation to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives.

On December 20, 2019, the annual U.S. National Defense Authorization Act passed and became law. Included in that legislation was the “Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act,” an act named after Caesar. The act targets the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his allies, including Russia, Iran, the militant group Hezbollah, and those that support his regime, with economic sanctions.

Human Rights Watch, who were given access to the entire archive, reported in December 2015 that nearly half of the images were of government soldiers killed in action. The remaining images show at least 6000 adult males, many of whom had signs of starvation, other maltreatment, or mutilated bodies. These bodies were labelled with numbers.

In the original report released by Carter-Ruck and partners in January 2014, Caesar testified that he had been employed as a photographer at Hospital 601, and that most of the deceased were civilians detained and killed by Syrian security forces. At this stage Caesar did not mention that detainees had been held in the hospital itself, only that their bodies had been taken to the hospital “so as to document, falsely, that death had occurred in the hospital”.

Another witness testified that he was Caesar’s relative by marriage and that Caesar had been working with him since 2011. The identity of this individual was reported elsewhere to be Hassan al-Chalabi, secretary-general of the Syrian National Movement. Human Rights Watch reported in December 2015 that “Members of that group formed the Syrian Association for Missing and Conscience Detainees (SAFMCD), which took custody of the files.” The domain name safmcd.com was registered on 25 January 2015. The Syrian National movement (originally named the Islamic Current is an opposition group founded by the Islamic scholar Emad al-Din al-Rashid who was interviewed by the New York Times in Istanbul in 2012. From its posts on Facebook, the position of this group appears to be close to that of the Turkish government.

A report released by the Syrian Network for Human Rights in October 2015, including additional testimony from Caesar alleged that from 2011 onwards the Trauma Department of Hospital 601 had been transformed into a detention centre. By April 2017 another purported eyewitness reported that the hospital itself was a torture centre.

The Syrian government issued a statement that the photographs were of unidentified persons including foreign opposition fighters killed in the conflict and civilians who had been tortured and killed by the opposition, but provided no evidence to support this explanation. Several lines of evidence however cast doubt on Caesar’s story and support the Syrian government’s explanation:

1. Caesar’s testimony in 2015 that part of Hospital 601 was used as a detention centre was not mentioned in the 2014 report of his testimony.
2. The OPCW Fact-Finding Mission Team B led by Steven Wallis that investigated alleged chemical attacks on Syrian soldiers, visited Hospital 601 on 27 May 2015 and on 13 August 2015. The inspectors were given a tour of the facilities, were allowed to study the hospital’s record keeping systems and were allowed to select medical staff for interview. Their report noted that “Hospital 601 is operating under crisis conditions” but did not indicate that any part of the hospital was used to hold detainees.
3. Transfer of bodies to the morgue of a hospital to be photographed with numbered labels is consistent with the Syrian government’s statement that the victims were unidentified. If the victims had been civilians detained by security forces and killed within the prison system, security forces would have known their identities and there would have been no need to photograph them with numbered labels. Caesar’s explanation that the bodies were brought to Hospital 601 so that death certificates could be falsified is convoluted: falsifying death certificates would not have required transfer of the bodies.
4. None of the victims were wearing prison uniforms: their bodies were mostly naked, in underwear, or in street clothes.
5. The 2015 report by the Syrian Network for Human Rights noted “the presence of insects and dried wastes that appear to be bird wastes, in the victims’ eye sockets and mouths”, indicating that the bodies had been abandoned for some time in the open. This observation is more consistent with killing by the opposition (followed by dumping the bodies) than with killing within the state prison system.
6. Some victims had evidently died while receiving intensive medical care, with cardiac monitoring electrodes, central venous catheters and in one case an endotracheal tube still in place. As, the German forensic specialist who testified in the Koblenz trial noted, where electrodes were visible they were placed correctly for cardiac monitoring. This suggests that the hospital attempted to save those victims who reached the hospital alive, and allocated scarce intensive care resources for this.
7. In a few victims, tattoos indicating Christian or Shi’a Muslim religious affiliation were present. These groups were unlikely to have supported the armed opposition.

As Tim Hayward noted in April 2019, UK-based communicators who have promoted the narrative of chemical attacks in Syria have not promoted Caesar’s story. One possible explanation for this is the confrontation between Qatar, the initial sponsor of the story, and its Arab neighbours. More recently, a sceptical article by Max Blumenthal in June 2020, asserting that the Caesar affair was “a US and Qatari regime change deception” was mirrored` without comment on the website of the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, a UK-based outlet that has received FCO funding.

We emphasize that we do not know which side was responsible for starving and killing these victims: we note only that evidence casts serious doubt on “Caesar’s” story that the victims were detainees of the Syrian state.

Reports of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry

Brown’s deposition cited uncritically the reports of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry (CoI) on the Syrian Arab Republic. For instance this account of the fighting in Homs in early 2012 was quoted without any supporting evidence that security forces committed these crimes.

Several areas were bombarded and then stormed by State forces, which arrested, tortured and summarily executed suspected defectors and opposition activists.

Brown quoted the CoI’s account of a massacre of civilians in March 2012 without mentioning that the attribution for this massacre is disputed:

On 11 and 12 March 2012, the neighbourhood of Karm al-Zeytoun reportedly came under an attack by what was described as Shabbiha protected by the army. Multiple families were killed in their homes, apparently by knives or other sharp instruments. Estimates of casualties, unverified by the commission, ranged from 35 to 80 in that attack.

This massacre, and others in the Homs region at around that time, was reported in Syrian state media at the time and attributed to the opposition. The CoI’s report on this and other incidents relied entirely on anonymous opposition sources, and should not have been cited as evidence in a legal process.

The CoI’s reporting of the alleged chemical attack in Douma in April 2018, where information is available from independent sources, can be used to assess its ability to evaluate evidence. Thus in September 2018 the UN Commission of Enquiry on Syria reported on the alleged chemical attack in Douma on 7 April:

A vast body of evidence collected by the Commission suggests that, at approximately 7.30 p.m., a gas cylinder containing a chlorine payload delivered by helicopter struck a multi-storey residential apartment building located approximately 100 metres south-west of Shohada square.

As outlined in an earlier briefing note, by September 2018 there was compelling evidence favouring staging over a chemical attack as the explanation for this incident. The CoI’s report ignored all contrary evidence and reported only the opposition’s narrative. For CIJA’s analyst to adduce a CoI report as “evidence” thus casts doubt on CIJA’s own assessment of evidence.

Affiliations with US foreign services

Wiley and other CIJA officers have close affiliations with governments that are committed to regime change in Syria. Wiley worked during 2005-2008 for an office of the US Embassy in Baghdad, on an assignment – overseeing the trial of Saddam Hussein – so delicate and so critical to the legitimacy of the nascent post-occupation state that it would have been entrusted only to someone that the US government could rely on. Engels, whose post is described as Director of Investigations and Director of Operations, has worked for the US State Department for at least some of his career since qualifying as a lawyer, and so has Stephen Rapp. In an interview in September 2018 with the US Helsinki Commission, Engels made clear his close working relationship with US government agencies and his commitment to US government policy objectives:

By design, CIJA has a strong relationship with US law enforcement.

Links with western intelligence services

Both Ewan Brown, CIJA’s Senior Analyst and Peter Nicholson, Wiley’s business partner in Tsamota Limited who later worked for CIJA in 2015-16, are British former military intelligence officers. A hint of CIJA’s working relationship with intelligence services was revealed in the Koblenz trial of two Syrian defectors, where an inspector for the German Federal Criminal Police office (Manuel Deußing) reported to have described in September 2020 how he “received confidential information from the Commission for International Justice and Accountability, including a classified interview conducted with Raslan in 2012.” The use of the term “classified” appears to indicate that the source was an intelligence agency. The letter that CIJA sent to donors on 11 May 2020 alludes to a “narrative” that CIJA was a front for intelligence services:

it was agreed with donors in 2014 that CIJA had to absorb some risk and start appearing publicly in order to counter the damaging front-for-intelligence-services narrative.

Given the links of core CIJA staff with intelligence agencies, and CIJA’s origins in ARK (founded by someone who is widely presumed to be an MI6 officer), it is not surprising that such rumours were circulating. However one might expect the books of an intelligence front organization to be kept more scrupulously than those of CIJA.

Collaboration with armed groups

As noted above, the ease with which CIJA’s Syrian investigators were able to work in collaboration with some of the most extreme armed opposition groups in the Syrian conflict raises doubts about their neutrality and about their commitment to human rights.

Financial irregularities

From open sources and from the summary of the OLAF investigation, there is evidence of widespread irregularities in the documentation filed by Tsamota and CIJA and the reported accounting for EU-funded projects. These concerns are relevant to assessing the reliability of evidence provided by CIJA to the IIIM and to prosecutors and courts in European states.

Although CIJA’s operations have not so far led to prosecution of any serving Syrian government officials, they have contributed to delegitimizing the Syrian government and thus to laying the basis for sanctions and to the illegal US military occupation of Syrian territory.

Pursue Limited and Pursue a Local Perspective SAL

FCO expenditure records show payments totalling £3.2 million to Pursue Ltd between 2012 and 2015. The program headings for these payments include “Lebanese Conflict Analysis for Strategic Change”, “Target Audience Analysis”, and “DG Political”. Pursue Ltd (Cyprus) was registered as company number 196077 on 4 April 2007 in Nicosia, Cyprus. The directors are Harris and Kristoforos Kristofi as company secretary. In Cyprus it is a legal requirement for a limited liability company with a single shareholder and director to appoint another individual as company secretary. The domain name pursueltd.com is no longer registered, but there is a Twitter account @PursueLTD with last tweets in 2015. Pursue in Beirut trades as Pursue A Local Perspective SAL at Fifth Floor Samaha Building, Tabaris.

Ark-Lebanon, ARK FZC and ARK Group DMCC

According to a Lebanese civil society directory entry, Ark-Lebanon was founded in 2009. Its address is Saifi, Tabaris Square, Beirut, near the office of Pursue.

A networking page records that ARK FZC (Dubai acronym for Free Zone Company) was founded in 2011. FCO expenditure records show payments totalling £4.66 million to “ARK FZC” between 2013 and 2015, then payments totalling £19 million to ARK Group DMCC between 2015 and 2018. A search of the website of Global Affairs Canada (the foreign ministry) finds three grants totalling Canadian $2.81 million to “Analysis Research and Knowledge (ARK) FZC” in January 2013.

A written answer to a parliamentary question in July 2018 summarized what the FCO payments had been for:

ARK’s work for the FCO includes projects aimed at improving security stabilisation and communications in Lebanon; improving Security Sector Reform in Jordan; tackling sexual and gender-based violence in Syria; providing support to Syrian voices and civil society; and improving Community Resilience and Peacebuilding in Yemen.

An advertisement placed by ARK sought a Communications Project Manager based in Istanbul who would “oversee the implementation of ARK’s Syria Communications project” and will “represent ARK in Turkey.”, implying that the primary task of the Istanbul office is the Syria Communications project. Another advertisement dated 8 August 2017 for a media content Production Manager states that “ARK Comms is engaged in delivering a media capacity-building and support programme in Syria.” and that ARK has “offices in Dubai, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, London and Washington DC.” The Production Manager will:

draw on a strong professional track record in media production and/or journalism to overseeing and co-ordinate the delivery, production and distribution of media content, in a timely manner, within budget and in line with the programme’s strategic objectives.

Manage and co-ordinate a team of ARK media staff and freelance producers to generate and deliver required content.

Provide editorial supervision of all media content to ensure that messaging is in line with project objectives, and production style is tailored according to the output requirements.

Act as the ‘senior editor’ to sign-off scripts and other content, providing guidance and advice in the process in order to build the editorial skills of other team members. This may involve sub-editing scripts for TV packages, online videos and other content, to ensure high-quality, engaging content.

The requirement “to ensure that messaging is in line with project objectives” makes clear that this is not simply “media capacity-building” and “providing support to Syrian voices”, but a strategic communication programme.

ARK FZC appears to have become ARK Group DMCC (acronym for Dubai Multi Commodities Centre) in 2015. The LinkedIn page describes ARK Group DMCC:

ARK is a research, conflict transformation and stabilisation consultancy that supports local communities in conflict and fragile areas.

Information about ARK Group DMCC is available from the registration documents filed with Companies House on 11 October 2018, when ARK Group DMCC was registered in the UK as an overseas company, and from the accounts filed for 2018:

• ARK Group DMCC was incorporated on 14 January 2015 as a Free Zone Company with limited liability under a service licence issued by the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre Authority (DMCC). The DMCC registration document is dated a few weeks earlier: 21 December 2014.
• From 2016 to 2018 annual revenue increased from $7.29 million to $18.86 million and retained earnings from $627,722 to $701,894.
• Alistair Harris is the owner and sole director. Harris paid himself a salary of $300,000 in 2016, but only $246,422 in 2018. Harris’s address on the registration documents is a house in London that was last sold in 2011 and is currently valued at £4.4 million.

The UK registration lists an office in Southwark, London for which Gwenn Lainé, a former officer in the French Navy, is listed as the “person authorised to accept service”. On his LinkedIn profile Lainé describes himself as the “Client Engagement & Strategic Communications Manager” and provides a statement about his “career to date as an innovative and solutions-oriented Strategic Communications Specialist”. The Chief of Staff of ARK Group DMCC since June 2018, apparently based in Amman Governorate, Jordan is Henry Middleton. His CV before that included six years in the Army (2010 to 2015) and two years in The Stabilisation Network. His Army service included a spell in Afghanistan where he was “responsible for coordinating targeting operations within the American-British coalition operations room” and a later role (2015-2016) in the Defence Cultural Specialist Unit (DCSU) where he “managed multiple projects simultaneously across the Middle East and North African region”.

The Stabilisation Network DMCC and The Stabilisation Network Limited

The Stabilisation Network DMCC (license no: DMCC-072172) is described on ARK Group’s LinkedIn page as “our sister company”. The domain stabilisation.org was registered on 12 March 2014. A US government award compliance record gives the date of starting the business as 22 September 2014. The website gives an address in Dubai and states that that

The Stabilisation Network is a specialised C-VE consultancy that focuses on the production of research and analysis products to aid in the mitigation and reduction of the scourge of violent extremism globally.

A Zoominfo profile of The Stabilisation Network states that Alistair Harris is the CEO and gives the address as PO Box 23085, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. However no company of that name is registered in Canada. Four of the key people in Ark Group DMCC – Gwenn Lainé (authorised official in the UK), Veena Enlund (oversees corporate services), AnneSophia Gallagher (leads monitoring team), Rachael Tutungi (head of HR) – are also listed on Zoominfo as staff of The Stabilisation Network. Harris also registered a company named The Stabilisation Network Limited in the UK in October 2014, and changed the name to “Archipelago Global Limited” on 19 January 2018. This company has filed accounts as dormant up to 31 October 2020.

FCO expenditure records show payments totalling £4.65 million to “Stabilisation Network” from December 2015 to April 2019. Canadian public accounts show two payments totalling Canadian $3.9 million to The Stabilisation Network DMCC in 2018 under the heading “Contributions for Counter-Terrorism Capacity Building Program”.

PPM Arastirma Hizmetleri (PPM Research Services)

PPM Arastirma Hizmetleri has an address in Istanbul. The acronym PPM usually stands for Project Portfolio Management. A company lookup site gives Harris as the only director. This company also has an office near the Syrian border in Gaziantep, Turkey.

Transactions between ARK Group DMCC and other companies controlled by Harris

The accounts for ARK Group DMCC filed with Companies House for 2016 to 2018 show that Harris was paying himself a salary between $240,000 and $300,000 each year. During this three-year period there were several “related party transactions” with other companies controlled by Harris: these include The Stabilisation Network DMCC, Pursue A Local Perpective SAL in Beirut, Pursue Ltd (Cyprus), and PPM Arastirma Hizmetleri.

It is difficult to see how Harris, as sole director of six companies in five jurisdictions, could maintain effective oversight. It is also difficult to see how conflicts between Harris’s pecuniary interests and his stewardship of public funds could be avoided in these transactions between five companies all controlled by Harris, of which three – Pursue Ltd, ARK and The Stabilisation Network – are or have been in receipt of large sums of government funding. For instance the accounts for ARK Group DMCC for the year ending 31 December 2016 show a “management fee” of $2,099,303 under the heading Transactions with “related parties” who comprise “entities under common ownership and/or common management and control; their partners and key management personnel”.

The (barely legible) accounts for the year ending 31 December 2018 state that “The principal activity of The Stabilisation Network DMCC is providing management consultancy services”. During 2018 all the equity in The Stabilisation Network was transferred to ARK so that it became a wholly owned subsidiary. The accounts show a liability to The Stabilisation Network of $1,183,046 at end of 2017, falling to $221,741 at end of 2018. An expert who has examined these accounts tells us that it appears that Harris used ARK to buy out his own shares in The Stabilisation Network. This is entirely legal, but it raises questions about the FCO’s oversight of public funding. HMRC takes a dim view of such transactions if they are used for tax avoidance. Section 685 “Receipt of consideration in connection with distribution by or assets of close company” of the Income Tax Act 2007 makes clear that anyone receiving relevant consideration in connection with such a transaction is liable to “counteraction of income tax advantage” if income tax is not paid on this consideration. Harris did not respond to questions on this matter.

Hotch Potch Entertainment Ltd

On 18 November 2019 Harris registered a new company in Dorset named Hotch Potch Entertainment Ltd. The registration document gave the “Nature of business” as “59111 – Motion picture production activities; 59113 – Television programme production activities”. The other two founders were a solicitor and Simon Wilson, a former UK diplomat resident in Oman. Wilson appears on a list of MI6 officers posted in 1999 as “Simon Jules Wilson: dob 1966; 91 Athens, 93 Zagreb, 99 New York, 02 Budapest”. His biography lists these four postings in sequence, followed by postings to Oman, Iraq and Kuwait before leaving the Diplomatic Service in 2012. This company did not file any accounts. On 10 February 2021 Wilson and the solicitor applied for it to be struck off and dissolved.

The registration of this company one week after the death of James Le Mesurier (JLM), its declared nature of business, the identities of the directors (one closely connected with JLM, the other an MI6 officer whose posting to Iraq is likely to have overlapped with JLM’s post as adviser to the Minister of Interior around 2005) suggests that the intended purpose may have been to produce or sponsor a programme about JLM for broadcast in the UK. Work on a BBC radio series on JLM and the White Helmets begain in late 2019, and the series was eventually broadcast in November 2020. The series included an interview with Harris, and credited a former ARK staffer (Abdul Kader Habak) as a researcher. The producer, Chloe Hadjimatheou, declined to answer a question about whether she had had any financial relationship with Hotch Potch Entertainment Ltd. In November 2020 she was asked whether she had been aware that the researcher was an ARK staffer, but did not reply.