Bassar Al-Assad. Guardian picture
WIKILEAKS has begun publishing a vast database of 2.4 million emails it says involve the Syrian government and associated companies, spokeswoman Sarah Harrison told a London press conference.
Ms Harrison said 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”.
She said the emails had been set up in a multilingual data-mining system with languages including English, Arabic and Russian that can be analysed in many different ways.
The emails derived from 680 Syria-related entities or domain names, ”including those of the ministries of Presidential Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Finance, Information, Transport and Culture …
”The range of information extends from the intimate correspondence of the most senior Baath party figures to records of financial transfers sent from Syrian ministries to other nations.”
This leak dwarfed ”cablegate”, the release by WikiLeaks of previously confidential cable exchanges between American embassies and Washington. ”The data is more than eight times the size of ”cablegate” in terms of number of documents and more than 100 times the size in terms of data,” Ms Harrison said.
The first story would be about emails demonstrating that a Western defence company had been selling as late as this year technology to Syria, which has been enduring a bloody government crackdown on rebellion.
She said that SELEX, which belonged to the multinational defence leader Finmeccanica, had sold Syria a technology called TETRA, which allows police forces to communicate in a secure and reliable way. ”The selling, assistance and training by Selex continued through to this year,” she alleged.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/world/wikileaks-exposes-syria-files-20120705-21keo.html#ixzz1zmWvZM9V
