“We stopped working there 18 months ago,” he told the Mail on
Sunday. “I can’t comment any further.”
The correspondence is among 2.6 million documents and emails pertaining to
Syria that WikLeaks has begun to publish.
The latest tranche to be released showed that Mr Assad provided money to a
female aide, Lamis Omar, a doctorate student at the University of Durham.
Emails released earlier this year have demonstrated a surprisingly
affectionate relationship between the Syrian president and a number of young
women, and Miss Omar wrote effusively about Mr Assad in her emails.
“My life is no longer my own,” she declared in one. “I
willingly dedicate it for all the meanings I find in you and in all those
loved by you. Please allow me to further prove it.”
It is unclear whether or not Mr Assad directly paid Miss Omar’s university
fees.
Brown Lloyd James, an Anglo-American public relations firm also faces
embarrassment from the latest disclosures. In may last year, as the violence
was worsening, it wrote to Mrs Assad’s office proposing that she and her
husband burnish their image by embarking on a “listening tour” of
Syria.
The firm, founded by former Beatles manager Peter Brown, has previously
insisted that it had ended all work with the Syrian government in December,
2010.
A spokesman for the firm said the email was an “unsolicited last-ditch
memo” to try to persuade the regime to implement reforms and that no
money was received for the advice.
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