http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/com ... 10993.html
The sad and puzzling story of Abbas Khan, the British doctor found dead in Syrian jail
What prompted the death of a man whose life was more valuable to Assad than any other foreigner’s in Syria?
I first met Fatima Khan in the Syrian embassy in Beirut early this year. She was pleading for a visa so that she and her daughter Sara could visit Damascus and seek news of her missing son. I knew nothing of Abbas Khan, but – aware that I had a visa waiting for me – I promised to find out anything I could once I reached the Syrian capital. Sara told me the story of her brother Abbas, his birth in London, his marriage and children, and of how – moved by compassion for the suffering of civilians in rebel-held areas of Syria – he had crossed the frontier from Turkey to take medical equipment to Aleppo last year.
There had perhaps been an argument with others there, as to whether the equipment should be sold or given away. Abbas was donating the medicines free. He was taking a walk down a road he thought safe when he was seized by Syrian government forces. Did they know he was coming? How was he captured? The family had no news – but they were sure he was alive.
I made my way to Damascus and raised the disappearance of Abbas Khan with several Syrian government officials. They were sympathetic. They wanted to help. I said that if we could establish that he was alive and in a security prison, I would like to see him – so that I could at least confirm to his family that he had not been killed. But after several weeks, I was informed that ‘state security’ was handling the matter, that Abbas Khan’s case was in the hands of higher officials in Syria, and that – and this was only an assumption on my part – the Syrian government might be trying to deal directly with the British authorities.
I decided to step back. Not least when I heard that Fatima Khan had herself been offered a visa to Damascus and was able not only to visit Syria but to see her son and ensure that he was transferred to a more lenient prison and to hire a lawyer for his appearance in a Damascus court. Mrs Khan visited various ministries and the Czech and Russian embassies, asking all the time for their help in releasing her son. As she obtained further visas, it seemed that Abbas Khan was safe. However long it took, he would be returned home.
And it became increasingly evident that President Bashar al-Assad himself was involved in the case. Mrs Khan would never have obtained access to her son without presidential permission. And it was not difficult to see how, after the West abandoned its military options against Syria under Russian duress – and after the British and American people expressed their refusal to embark upon another Middle East war – Syria’s international status was, to some extent, redeemed.
There were no more calls from Barack Obama for Assad to “step aside” or “step down”. There were no more claims by John Kerry that Bashar was Hitler or worse than Hitler. French foreign minister Laurent Fabius no longer announced – as he did more than a year ago – that Bashar no longer deserved “to live on this planet”. Assad’s enemies were increasingly identified with al-Qaeda – an enemy of the West infinitely more frightening than the Syrian regime. Assad was in a perfect position to release a British citizen – to George Galloway whom he knew personally – and obtain the gratitude, however churlishly given, of the British government.
And then it all went wrong. Abbas Khan was dead. And Faisal Mokdad, the Syrian foreign minister – a decent and intelligent man – was forced to explain a suicide which I frankly do not accept that he himself believed. What happened?
Back in 2005, when former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri was assassinated in Beirut, the world blamed Bashar al-Assad. Bashar denied this – and an American journalist who was with him when he heard the news of Hariri’s death described Bashar’s surprise. Then word got around that Syrian state security had their own reasons for wanting Hariri dead – they believed he was plotting with the French to destroy Syrian power in Lebanon and thus decided to kill him – even if this provoked an outcry which would force Syrian troops to leave their satrapy in Beirut. Treachery is a more powerful emotion than real politic.
But if this is true, then the implications are now made manifest in the death of the young and brave Abbas Khan. A man whose life last week was more valuable to Assad than any other foreigner’s in Syria was suddenly ‘found’ dead in a state security prison, on the very eve of his release to a British MP who is a trusted figure in the Assad household. Was someone trying to destroy the Syrian president’s steadily improving if still frozen relations with Britain and the US? Who would want to prevent such an improvement? Saudi Arabia? Of course. Qatar? Absolutely. Israel? Why not? But to suggest than any of these three could engineer the killing of a young Englishman in a Damascus prison is surely preposterous.
In the coming days, we shall assuredly find out more. Assad will be among the keenest to know what happened in the cell in the Kfar Soussa prison where Abbas Khan – so happily awaiting his release and to be reunited with his family in London – ended up hanging from his pyjamas on the very eve of his freedom. How did he die? is one question. Who killed him? is quite another.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 10003.html
British prisoner Dr Abbas Khan found dead in Syrian jail days before he was due to be handed over to MP George Galloway
Tuesday 17 December 2013
Despite the outrage of his grieving family and persistent questions from the UK Foreign Office, Syria has so far failed sufficiently to explain the “suicide” of a young British doctor in a Damascus prison - only four days before he was to be released on the personal orders of President Bashar al-Assad.
The death of 32-year-old Abbas Khan while in the hands of the country's state security police was described by the Foreign Office minister Hugh Robertson as “very suspicious” and “in effect murder”, but it also raises questions about the degree to which Assad commands the loyalty of his own security services after almost three years of civil war.
The Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad claimed that a government post-mortem examination proved that Dr Khan had hanged himself. But his death in the Kfar Soussa prison near the centre of Damascus, revealed by his family, is a scandal likely to embrace Assad, who had personally arranged that the MP George Galloway should travel to Damascus and take Dr Khan home to London before Christmas.
Indeed, given the growing belief - in Damascus as well as in London - that Dr Khan was murdered, his “suicide” may well necessitate an explanation from the President himself.
Dr Khan was arrested by Syrian government forces while working as an orthopaedic surgeon in the Aleppo region in 2012 and was held incommunicado for almost a year.
His mother, Fatima, who was in Damascus and had seen her son four times in the last four months, was eagerly awaiting his release at the weekend when she received a telephone call from a Syrian official to say that he had hanged himself in prison. His family in London - where Dr Abbas was born - had received a bundle of letters from him in the last few weeks expressing his delight at his imminent release.
“He was saying, 'I can't wait to be back with you guys',” his sister Sara told me. “He did not commit suicide.” Dr Khan leaves a young wife and two children.
Even in Damascus, his death elicited expressions of shock and disbelief. Unable to bring herself to identify her son's body, his mother told her family she was leaving Damascus at once for Beirut.
George Galloway was flabbergasted.
When I telephoned him, he described Dr Khan's death as “inexplicable”. He had just booked his air ticket to Damascus when he heard the news from Dr Khan's family - and then from the Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister himself.
“As yet, no satisfactory explanation has been given to me. The idea of a man committing suicide four days before he was to be released is impossible to believe. The Syrian government knows my stand on the war and on [American] intervention.
”A Syrian minister called me on behalf of the President to come to Damascus before Christmas and take Abbas Khan home. We need an explanation.“
A spokesman for the Foreign Office said: ”We are extremely concerned by reports that a British national has died in detention in Syria. We are urgently seeking clarification of this from the Syrian authorities.“
Quite apart from the grief and outrage of Dr Khan's own family, Syria is now certain to become embroiled in a political crisis that suggests President Assad may not be able to control his own security authorities.
Dr Khan was a London born doctor and no longer had any political importance - he had been arrested after treating women and children in rebel-held areas of Aleppo well over a year ago - yet he was taken from the Azra prison where he was being held last week to the Kfar Soussa interrogation centre, a jail where inmates are held just after arrest and just before their release.
A tragedy of this importance - a British citizen whose release has been ordered by President Assad found dead in state security police custody - will require a full explanation not only from the Syrian government but from Assad himself.
Repeatedly, Assad has claimed that he is solely in charge of Syria, and - despite disquiet among Syrians at his decision to hand over his chemical weapons to the United Nations last summer - nothing has hitherto suggested that Assad's word might be crossed.
Yet the death of Abbas Khan now raises the possibility that there are those in authority in Damascus who want to challenge the power and prestige of their own President.
It is clear the Syrians intended to make a conciliatory gesture towards the West by releasing Dr Khan - yet his death suggests there are those who wish to destroy Assad's chances of a reconciliation with Western powers which only a few months ago were set on destroying his regime in a military attack.
Mr Mekdad has reported that guards visited Dr Khan at 7am to take him his breakfast but that, when they returned to take him for exercise at 9am, he was hanging by his pyjamas. The wife of another prisoner at Azra had told Dr Khan's family last week that he was taken from his cell by national security police who ”wanted to ask him a few questions“ before his release.
When originally arrested in 2012, Dr Khan was believed to have been severely tortured - or so he managed to inform his family - but later received better treatment.
Yet his very detention was difficult to explain. He had apparently argued with rebel supporters in Aleppo about the medical equipment he had brought to Syria after crossing the border illegally from Turkey.
Some thought he should sell the provisions but Dr Khan apparently insisted that they should be given away free.
Dr Khan's brother, Afroze, was flying to Beirut to meet his mother at the Lebanese-Syrian border. Last week, Afroze did say that he feared for his brother's mental health - but the family explained on Monday that he was referring to Dr Abbas's feelings when held incommunicado, and that this did not refer to his current mental state.
Afroze had been trying to put pressure on the Syrian authorities to bring forward the date of Dr Abbas's release - although the family realise that this original statement may now be used by others to ”prove“ that Dr Abbas may have taken his own life.
In private, the family complained at the unwillingness of the UK authorities to make any serious gestures on Abbas Khan's behalf.
Mrs Fatima Khan had spent weeks in Damascus pleading for her son’s release, even hiring a lawyer to represent him in court. Overwhelmed by a phone call to her hotel asking her to identify her son’s body, she refused to visit the hospital where his remains were held.
Statistics: Posted by cptmarginal — Sun Dec 22, 2013 5:34 pm