Syria's Assad hints at CIA role in death of White Helmets co-founder Le Mesurier
Damascus/Sputnik/UNI: Syrian President Bashar Assad has suggested that whichever intelligence agency had killed White Helmets co-founder James Le Mesurier, the US Central Intelligence Agency was the one pulling the strings.
Le Mesurier, a suspected Mi6 officer linked to the self-styled Syrian first-respondents group, was found dead at his Istanbul home on Monday, with media reports suggesting that he had fallen from a balcony. Turkey is investigating.
"These are the acts of intelligence agencies, the question is which ones? …When we refer to Western intelligence agencies, including the Turkish and some other intelligence agencies in our region, we know that … they are branches of the main intelligence agency, the CIA," Assad said in an interview with Sputnik and the Rossiya-24 channel.
He compared Le Mesurier’s death to that of Jeffrey Epstein. The well-connected US financier was suspected of running a sex network, pimping underage girls to the US and British elite. He is believed to have killed himself in federal custody in August.
"He was killed because he had many important details and secrets about prominent figures in the American and British regimes, and possibly other countries as well," Assad argued.
He said Epstein’s and Le Mesurier’s deaths, as well as that of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State terror group (banned in Russia), were part of a bigger picture, in which the CIA was getting rid of people who had served their purpose.
"Were they to remain alive, there may have come a time or circumstance where they would have revealed the truth. Maybe the founder of the White Helmets was writing his memoir and this is not acceptable. These are all probabilities, but they are very likely probabilities, because the alternative is not convincing for me," Assad claimed.
Turning to US operations in Syria, the president described Washington’s objective as "expansion, invasion, undermining the interests of other nations, trampling on international law, international conventions, human principles, and others — all for the sake of oil."
US President Donald Trump suggested as much this week when he announced his country would be bringing a lot of troops home but insisted that "we are keeping the oil."
Assad said the fact that the United States was "looting oil" was "the expected result of the American regime, which is led by companies acting for their own interests."
"America is structured as a political system of gangs. The American president … is the company CEO, and behind this CEO there is a board of directors which represent the big companies in America — the real owners of the state — oil and arms companies, banks, and other lobbies," he explained.
A vast majority of Syrian oil is concentrated east of the Euphrates River. The United States pulled its forces from northeastern Syria ahead of a Turkish cross-border offensive last month, but later said it would keep a small military presence in the area to protect oil fields.
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