MSM Masterpiece Theatre: Claims of ‘800,000 Secret Documents About Assad’s War Crimes’

Smuggling documents out of Syria according to Daily Mail article. 

21st Century Wire says…

You can really tell the establishment are getting desperate when they start pushing out stories like this one – wildly creative tabloid tall tales, props included – all wrapped and packaged to look like news.

This latest installment of Mainstream Media Masterpiece Theatre is claiming that:

“Papers reveal corpses stacked in hallways, bodies with eyes gouged out and unexplained disappearances.”

“This innocuous room contains 800,000 pages of potential evidence to build a case that may lead to the most significant war crimes trial since Nuremberg.”

As it turns out, the man who drew the short straw and was asked to launder this story on extra-rinse cycle is none other than Ian Birrell, who has a tremendous set of awards to his name, but that might not be enough to prop-up this howler of story.

In this latest Mail on Sunday feature, Birrell is claiming that “operatives” have somehow smuggled 800,000 secret documents out of Syria to a super-secret hidden layer nestled away somewhere in Europe. Below, you can see him posing grandly in front of stacks of brown card board boxes. One can only wonder who they smuggled all of these secret files out of Syria, maybe on a C-130? Here is a clip from his story:

As a wonderfully skilled writer, Birrell goes on to weave an entertaining narrative – a story of a top-secret location holding all of Assad’s secret files, somewhere in heart of central Europe:

“The room looks harmless enough, with dull grey shelves and stacks of cardboard boxes packed to overflowing with maps of the Middle East and sheaves of documents filled with Arabic script. Yet the location of this repository in the centre of Europe is a closely guarded secret. To reach the office you climb several flights of stairs in a building deliberately chosen to avoid the prying eyes of those desperate to destroy the evidence of unspeakable horrors recorded in meticulous files housed within its bare walls. I promised not to reveal its whereabouts, yet the office feels like any other, filled with men and women tapping away on computers and chatting over coffee.”

This begs the question: has Ian Birrell actually read any of these 800,000 pieces of “potential evidence” yet? How does he know what’s in all of those boxes? These are fair questions, especially considering he’s gone for the iconic photo-op (arms crossed and all) in front of those mysterious boxes.

According to independent researcher Adam Larson, this is more likely to be an imaginative fiction on Birrell’s part, but that’s about it. He explains how the mainstream media have continually routinely recycle the ‘Assad Files’ story:

“Every 7-11 months this “Assad files” story re-emerges with the same couple of weak best examples cited. This adds one, so now 4 total documents cited out of 800,000+. None of these 4 proves much, but each has lines that sound ominous when taken a certain way. By these being the best few always repeated suggested they found nothing genuinely criminal, and the other 799,996+ docs prove even less than these, or make the government look good by detailing terrorist crimes, etc. So all their confidence is a fake show. This isn’t meant for trial, would never hold up. It’s just a publicity psyop.”

The Mail on Sunday piece also contains the canned line that “400,000 people have been killed” in this ‘civil war’ – without even attempting to properly source or break-down that figure down into soldiers, combatants, terrorists and civilians. The article also contains the obligatory staged “medical room scene” allegedly filmed after “a chemical weapons by Assad’s forces.”

Here are a few Ian Birrell’s many journalist awards:

“Foreign Reporter of the Year (2015) and Columnist of the Year (2015) in British Press Awards – a unique double win. Winner of London Press Club’s prestigious Edgar Wallace Award (2014) for fine writing and reporting. Highly commended as Foreign Reporter (2011) and Feature Writer (2013) in British Press Awards. Shortlisted in 16 other awards for columns, feature writing, foreign and news reporting, economic analysis, political journalism, science writing and ‘contrarianism’ since 2011…”

More than just a journalist, Birrell is not shy about his work as a political operative – working as an “adviser and speech-writer for David Cameron in the run-up to the 2010 general election.” Interesting why a supposedly hard-hitting journalist would want to include that on his CV.

Rather than trying to fabricate evidence of another International Criminal Court ‘human rights’ show trial in the Hague, it would be nice to see the Mail on Sunday at least try and cover some pithy domestic scandals – like maybe the wholesale suffering endured by the Syrian people under attack from NATO member state-sponsored terrorism and punishing economic sanctions.  It is therefore ironic that the UK Government funds the Syrian “opposition” via its Conflict Stability and Security Fund (CSSF).

READ MORE: White Helmets & ‘Local Councils’ – Is the UK FCO Financing Terrorism in Syria with Taxpayer Funds?

It seems that he’s traded-in all of those great accolades to carry water for an establishment who backed a losing side (‘the moderate rebels’) in the Syrian Conflict and failed to get their stated goal of “regime change” in Syria – now desperately trying give Syrian President Bashar al-Assad the Milosevic treatment, angling for another kangaroo court in the Hague based on fabricated ‘evidence’ provided by the “freedom-fighting opposition.” And like clockwork, that’s exactly where Oan Birrell’s novelette leads us:

“For this innocuous room contains 800,000 pages of potential evidence to build a case that may lead to the most significant war crimes trial since Nuremberg, one that could match The Hague’s current International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and make last week’s suicide in its dock by a former Bosnian-Croat general seem like a bizarre footnote in history.”

Did he say Nuremberg (maybe he’s better double check and be sure what’s actually in all his boxes, before that comes back to haunt him later on after this story completely collapses)? Yes, he said Nuremberg. All we need now are the references to “concentration camps” or the “holocaust” to complete the emotive imagery.

Birrell’s theatrical case seems reminiscent of a couple of other widely debunked pieces of mainstream media disinformation concerning Syria. In 2015, the infamous Caesar Photos were released, “… the story was that a former Syrian army photographer had 55,000 photographs documenting the torture and killing of 11,000 detainees by the Syrian security establishment…” – a work of war-fiction which is still cited regularly by clueless and otherwise illiterate US Congressmen and Senators when waxing lyrical on how “Assad Must Go” on the floor of the Capitol building.

Independent researcher Rick Sterling outlines the establishment’s fabricated narrative of the Caesar hoax:

“The Syrian photographer was given the code-name ‘Caesar’. The story became known as the “Caesar Torture Photos”. A team of lawyers plus digital and forensic experts were hired by the Carter-Ruck law firm, on contract to Qatar, to go to the Middle East and check the veracity of “Caesar” and his story. They concluded that “Caesar” was truthful and the photographs indicated “industrial scale killing”. CNN, London’s Guardian and LeMonde broke the story which was subsequently broadcast in news reports around the world. The Caesar photo accusations were announced as negotiations began in Switzerland. With the opposition demanding the resignation of the Syrian government, negotiations quickly broke down. For the past two years the story has been preserved with occasional bursts of publicity and supposedly corroborating reports. Most recently, in December 2015 Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report titled “If the Dead Could Speak” with significant focus on the Caesar accusations.”

DOWNLOAD STERLING’S REPORT ON THE ‘CAESAR’ FRAUD HERE

SEE ONE VERSION OF US-UK HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE REPORT HERE

This latest Assad fish story by the Mail on Sunday’s Ian Birrell’s also resembles another lemon which was floated-out by the same desperate establishment last year via the seemingly unimpeachable Amnesty International, with wild claims of “Mass Executions at Saydnaya Prison,” claiming that Assad had somehow set-up a an industrial execution, conveyor belt-type operation in a Syrian state detention facility where anything from between 5,000 and 17,723 (unfortunately Amnesty’s ‘journalists’ could never quite make up their mind on the numbers) were liquidated by President Assad, personally. Again, Rick Sterling explains how this piece of propaganda was constructed:

“On 7 February Amnesty International released a new report titled, “Human Slaughterhouse: Mass Hangings and Extermination at Saydnaya Prison”. It has received huge uncritical review in mainstream and liberal media. Like the Iraq/Kuwait incubator story and the Libyan ‘mercenary’ story, the “Human Slaughterhouse” report is coming at a critical time. The consequences of the AI report are to accuse and convict the Syrian government of horrible atrocities against civilians.  AI explicitly calls for the international community to take “action”. As will be shown below, the AI report is biased and partial. To the extent that it is resulting in a widespread kangaroo conviction of the Syrian government, the AI release can be called a ‘Kangaroo Report’…

The Assad Files is just the latest unbelievably desperate move by the US-UK establishment in an attempt to cover-up their own crimes over the last seven years in Syria. Expect more of these MSM click-bait stories to be drifted out as the public slowly come to realise that governments like the US and UK have been financing, arming & promoting terrorist groups in Syria, and beyond.

Our verdict: more fake news by the mainstream media.

READ MORE SYRIA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Syria Files

SUPPORT 21WIRE – SUBSCRIBE NOW & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV

21st Century Wire is an alternative news agency designed to enlighten, inform and educate readers about world events which are not always covered in the mainstream media.