Bridge: Translation:
The New Yaker has published a long investigative investigation around the Syrian intelligence officer, Brigadier Khaled Al -Halabi, since his defection in Raqqa until his escape and his disappearance somewhere in Europe, and his potential relations with Israel.A bridge that publishes a non -professional translation of the investigation.
One of September 1961, a slim man with a small mustache entered a post office in Damascus to take a slogan directed at George Fischer. Few people know that Fisher, a bad -mood Austrian arms dealer, was actually SS Hauptsturmführeer Alois Brunner, “former assistant of Adolf Eghman in the extermination of the Jews”, and expressed a secret American telegram. But among those who were aware of his identity was one of the Mossad agents who infiltrated the Syrian elite. When Brunner opened the package, it exploded, killing two postal workers and being blinded in his left eye. The Israeli spy was later arrested, tortured and executed. Bruner publicly lived in Damascus for several decades, in an apartment on the third floor on 7 Haddad Street. The Nazi fisherman Simon Wizental wrote in 1988: "Among the third Reich criminals who are still alive, the Louis Bonner is the worst is the worst." France has sentenced Brunner to death in absentia. Israel tried to kill him for the second time, but the bomb took only some fingers. Bruner told a German magazine that his main remorse was only because of the "murder of more Jews". Hafez al -Assad, the Syrian dictator, ignored several requests to deliver Bruner. Brunner was useful - as an emphasis on the sovereignty of the Syrian state, a mockery of international standards and values, and an insult to Israel, Syria's and its enemy. It was, as one of the members of the circle close to Assad later, “a paper kept by the regime in his hand.” But in the late 1990s, with the deterioration of Assad's health, he became devoted to the task of preparing his cruel world for his son. After inheriting the presidency, Bashar al -Assad was depicting himself as a reformer. It may be responsible for the presence of an announced soldier in the diplomatic district, surrounded by the Syrian guards. Over the next fifteen years, the Nazis fishermen assumed that Brunner was hiding far away on Haddad Street, perhaps even after his birthday. But no one saw him, so no one knew him with certainty.
Bruner and other Nazis helped structure the Syrian intelligence services, and trained its officers in the arts of interrogation. In Syrian detention centers, their technologies are still used to this day. Among the practitioners Khaled Al -Halabi, an officer in the regular Syrian army, was transferred to the General Intelligence Service, “State Security”, in 2001. According to his own novel, he was a hesitant spy - he wanted to remain a soldier. However, in the following twelve years, he served and promoted in the ranks. When the revolution broke out in Syria in 2011, Assad and his deputies blamed the protests on external forces. They imprisoned the activists who spoke to the foreign media, and targeted the arrest of the people whose phones contained songs that were "somewhat offensive to the president." Even internal government contacts confirmed that instability in Syria was the result of "American Zionist conspiracies". But Halabi realized that the crisis was real. He expressed his fears of his boss. Al -Halabi later recalls his saying: “ninety -five percent of the population against the regime.” I asked him if we had to kill everyone. He could not respond to. Diplomats and spies from other governments of the previous service of Halabi and Bruner balanced and realized their benefit in exchange for the potential risks in the future - and sometimes they made a mistake in the accounts. The two men trade even in countries. In some respects, they were not the same: Austrian was a monster; The Syrian, according to most of the novels, is not. But every man made a deadly regime. In the end, their actions as intelligence officers became their only protection - and the reason for their need for them. By the end of February 2013, the time of Khaled Al -Halabi was running out. Over the past five years, he held the position of head of the General Intelligence Branch in Raqqa, a vast desert province in the northeastern part of Syria, away from his wife and children. For the local population, it was an intruder with the authority to arrest, torture and kill them. But Halabi, who was the dean of fifty years of age, felt insecurity within the Syrian intelligence service. An employee in the directorate's branch described him as a "educated and generous man" and not a strong or firm leader. Another indicated that Halabi, who belongs to a religious minority known as the Druze, was afraid of two Alawite subordinates, such as the lion. He overlooked the rampant corruption and their violations.
Through this sectarian lens, Halabi seemed to understand his career disappointments in part. He later said he considered himself a "brilliant officer", and the Druze was the only one in the Syrian intelligence, who became a regional manager. But he added: “Frankly, Raqqa is the least important region in the country. For this reason they put me there. It was like a situation in a wardrobe. They were tribal and conservative. He was a secular man with a law on law, drinking wine and reading Marxist literature. As far as he had political beliefs, she was in line with the beliefs of some leftist intellectuals who were ordered to be arrested from time to time. His wife and children refused to visit Raqqa. They stayed hundreds of miles away, in Damascus and As -Suwayda, the city with a druze majority from which I was Halabi. Over time, Halabi started an affair with a woman who was working in the Ministry of Environment. A nurse states that he asked her Viagra. Revenge campaign in
He took advantage of his opponents such abuses. The Syrian Security and Intelligence Service consists of four parallel devices with overlapping responsibilities, and has sparked Halabi in Military Intelligence, and he is a top named Jami Mosque, a special hatred for him. Halabi complained: “He was publishing rumors that I was drunk all the time, and that I did not work, and that I am not leaving the office because there are boys who come to see me.” One day, after Halabi left Raqqa to visit his family in As -Suwayda, his car was ambush at a checkpoint. He later said that he escaped with difficulty in the assassination, and he was convinced that he was the one who ordered the killing. If a paranoidal evaluation is bone, it is not baseless. Military Intelligence was eavesdropping on his phone. The residents of Raqqa were overwhelmingly the Sunnis, and they did not benefit much from the government in Damascus. When the protests began, the governor of the region informed his security committee that "the threat and intimidation is the only one to succeed." I initially tried to act as a moderate voice. According to one of the dissidents, his officers asked not to arrest the minors, and, as possible, to take patrols without weapons. But in March 2012, after the security forces killed a local teenager, the armed conflict erupted in the province. One day, Halabi gathered his heads and ordered them to open fire on any gathering of more than four people. He said he was not his decision. He had received the matter from his boss in Damascus, Ali Mamlouk. Halabi saw that the circle close to Assad dealt with Raqqa as a party that must be sacrificed in order to protect the "heart of the country". They deployed only a thousand soldiers in the province, the size of New Jersey. By the end of 2012, the Free Syrian Army - which is a group of rebel factions with varying ideologies - seized major parts of the road from Raqqa to Damascus. It joined the Islamic and jihadist groups in the surrounding countryside. In a sweet estimate, the battle ended before it started. He said: “Everyone who thinks otherwise is a fool.”
There are five main entrances to Raqqa, and by February 2013, the city was threatened by all of them. Four were under the guard of other intelligence branches. The fifth, which led to the outskirts of Eastern Raqqa, was the responsibility of Halabi men in the General Intelligence. Hundreds of police and army officers and intelligence officers have already defected to the rebels or fled - including nearly half of the two two subordinates. Many of them urged Al -Halabi to join the revolution, but he remained in office. On March 2, the rebels stormed the city of Raqqa through Halabi checkpoints, as they did not face any real resistance. By lunch time, the revolutionaries had occupied their first regional capital. The local residents overthrew a gold -plated statue of Hafez al -Assad in the main Raqqa roundabout, looted government buildings fighters and destroyed Bashar's photos. The body of the main mosque investigator was thrown from a building, then dragged into the streets. Meanwhile, Islamic battalions seized the Al -Hakim Palace and detained the regional leader of the Baath Party and the Governor of Raqqa as hostages. By the end of the weekend, the regime's intelligence officers who did not flee to a military base close to prisoners, defectors or dead were. He was only one senior official missing. Khaled Al -Halabi had disappeared.
More than a year passed, and the immediate collapse of Raqqa was a fodder for regional conspiracy. A Lebanese newspaper published rumors that Halabi may be "lying in Mount Lebanon." An Iranian port claimed that the Western powers paid him more than a hundred thousand dollars to help jihadists topple the regime. On the day of 2014, a Syrian opposition writer and poet named Najati received a disturbing phone call. Perfume, who was almost seventy years old and lived in exile in France, was entered and left the Syrian detention several times in the past decade, for criticizing the Assad government. Tayyer now learned that Halabi was in Paris and wanted to meet him. “Before I came to France, I was in prison. And now he is a intelligence officer - he came here, asking about me. It was a part of the circle of dissidents and intellectuals who kept salons in their homes. After every arrest, he felt that Halabi was hesitant to interrogate him. "He was an educated man - gentle and polite with me." He told me: I am obliged to send you to Damascus to interrogate. Excuse me - I cannot refuse. "This is the way Al -Halabi dealt with people like me - human rights advocates and general intellectuals." But with the Islamists? Maybe he is a different man. I cannot be a witness to what it was with others. ” When Halabi continued in Paris, a pilot agreed to the meeting.
Halabi told a pilot that he had not seen his wife or children for more than three years. After the fall of Raqqa, his eldest daughter, who was studying in Damascus, was forced to leave the school and briefly forced. In the endosperm, her mother and siblings were under constant monitoring by the regime. Halabi has never announced his defection and joining the opposition. But a pilot recalls, saying: “He told me that he left Syria because he contacted the Free Syrian Army - and that he gave them the keys to Raqqa.” According to members of the attacking force, negotiations began weeks ago. "To ensure that he is not manipulating us, we asked him to do things in the city that facilitates the matter on the demonstrators and the revolutionaries." “I was wanted by its security branch, but he suspended the arrest warrant so that I could move freely.” A few days of the attack, a strong Islamic battalion leader communicated with Halabi. He promised to arrange Halabi's escape and save the lives of his subordinates, if the revolutionaries can enter Raqqa from the eastern suburbs of the city. On the eve of the attack, gunmen smuggled Halabi to the town of Tabqa on the Euphrates Dam. They handed him over to another battalion that I took to a safe house near the Turkish border owned by a local tribal leader named Abdel Hamid Al -Nasser. "Some elements of the Free Syrian Army wanted to arrest him, but since my father was a respectable local figure, no one can do anything." The next morning, Nasser Halabi led to the Turkish border. He crossed a man, while officers of other intelligence branches were slaughtered in their positions. Turkish border areas were filled with refugees, jihadist recruits and spies. Halabi stayed in contact with the Islamic leader, but he did not feel comfortable in Turkey. Through intermediaries, Boulaid Jumblatt, a Lebanese politician and a former prince of war, called the actual leader of the Druze community. In the nineteenth century, the grandfather of Ibn Jumblatt, Bashir, led a mass migration of the persecuted Druze, including ancestors of Halabi, outside the Aleppo Governorate. Halabi now asked whether he could resort to Lebanon. But Jumblatt stated that Halabi will never reach there, and that Hezbollah, who sent fighters to Syria to support the regime, had a controlled presence at Beirut Airport. Instead, Halabi later remembers that he “advised me to go to Jordan.” The journey was impossible by land. Therefore, in May 2013, Jumblatt sent an envoy to Istanbul, who accompanied Halabi on a plane. Halabi did not have a passport - only a Syrian military identity card. But in Amman, the capital of Jordan, Jumblatt Al -Halabi's contacts were accompanied by immigration. Halabi later said: “Walid Jumblatt was the one who coordinated everything with the Turks and Jordanians.” “I do not know how he did so.” Jumblatt's men arranged a Halabi meeting with other Druze officers, Syrian dissidents, and Jordanian intelligence, to support the revolution. (Jumblatt's father was assassinated in 1977, and it was always believed that Hafez al -Assad was the one who ordered his killing). But most of the Druze began to complain that Halabi is still working for the regime. Jumblatt told me: "We discovered that he played a very bad role in Raqqa," Jumblatt told me. “We believe that he did his best to show the system weaknesses of resistance to Raqqa” and turned only in the last moments to save himself. Cut the side and its followers all the connections with my ribs. Jumblatt said: “Now I do not know where he is.” Later in 2013, after his Druze colleagues, Halabi entered the French embassy in Amman. He presented himself as a heinous intelligence chief in line with his political and cultural tastes with the tastes of the French. He later said: "I love alcohol and secularism." "France. food. Napoleon. ” He added that since the beginning of the Syrian war, he was "convinced that this system will not last - and that anyone talking about longevity is a fool." At this point, even the supreme leader responsible for preventing defections had been defected. "I decided not to link my destiny with it," said Halabi, after decades of service.
The French government had spent more than a year to extract information from senior defectors of the Syrian army and intelligence - in anticipation of Assad's loss of the war, in part to facilitate this result. A hundred years ago, France occupied Syria and Lebanon as part of the mandate after the Ottomans. Now I have begun to conclude deals with anyone who considers him acceptable to lead him in the post -Assad era - an era that seemed increasingly likely. At some point in 2012, there was a shooting near Assad's house to the point that he and his family fled to Lattakia, a loud stronghold on the Syrian coast. “If we did not want the regime’s collapse - perhaps as happened in Iraq, with severe consequences after the American intervention - then we had to find a solution that mixed the moderate resistance and elements of the regime that were not of great danger,” said French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius to Sam Dagher in his book. Al -Assad or the burning of the country ”for the year 2019. Meanwhile, Assad excluded many potential candidates for his succession, including, apparently, his son -in -law, Asif Shawkat. He was in contact with French officials before his death in a bombing was widely considered an internal liquidation. He said to the French: “If the regime did not kill people - if I would not dirty my hand in blood - it is possible that I would not have left.” For this reason, the extremist opposition hates me. The system is considered a traitor, because I did not kill them. ” He said: As long as his family is still in the endosperm, "I am stuck between these two fires."
After months of dealing with embassy officials, Halabi met a man he knew only as Julian. Halabi later said: “As soon as I saw him, I understood that he is from the intelligence service, because I am working in this field.” Julian seems to have commented on the possibility of a relationship with French intelligence, but Halabi rejected his ideas for free. He said, "I am not a child, I am an intelligence officer." Julian told that he would not think about helping the French unless he was brought first to Paris and obtained political asylum, and if his family is smuggled from As -Suwayda. In February 2014, the French embassy in Amman issued a travel document valid for one time and an entry visa. He landed in Paris on February 27, according to the entry conclusion, and he went down in a hotel. Then I started "Intelligence Game", as Halabi said. “You need money. They wanted to pressure me, to make me in need. A person at the hotel was supposed to meet him within two days of his arrival, to take care of the bill, help him apply for asylum and housing, and start interrogating him. But no one came. Two weeks later, the money was ran out of Halabi. Desperate, communicate with a Druze financier in Paris that had a link with spies in the Middle East. After receiving money, a French intelligence officer appeared at Bab Halabi. The intelligence officer who presented herself as a lady. Helen, cited the Druze relationship as evidence of a Halabian association with another foreign intelligence agency. She added that there is no point in submitting the asylum application. Halabi did not see her again. After ninety days, a Halabi visa has expired, and he applied for asylum in any case. Halabi complained to the asylum officer about his experience with the French intelligence: "They brought me here and left me." “If they were professionals, they would have been trying to win me.” Halabi refused to talk to me. But the French refugee interview - which lasted for more than four hours, and a person who had a deep knowledge of Syrian affairs - performed a glimpse of his personality, background, priority and mental state. Halabi insisted, in the interview, "I was cheating - this is not in line with French ethics." "They can do it with a small soldier, but not a general like me."
The asylum officer answered: “Ethics and intelligence services are not the same.” Halabi said: “I am sure they will intervene.” “I know that I deserve a ten -year residence document - ask your conscience.” The officer said: “If they enter, they intervene, but we will not call them.” “We will make our decision ourselves.” “Your conscience is interrogated! No one in Syria is more threatening than me. "The asylum officer continued," We will do due care. " “As you can imagine, in light of your profession, we will have to think about it for a while. We cannot make a decision today. ”By the end of 2015, nearly a million Syrians to Europe escaped from the conflict. Throughout the continent, the survivors of arrest and torture began to discover their former torturers in grocery stores and asylum centers. Immigration was forced victims and perpetrators at the same points of suffocation - the Greek coast, Balkan roads and bus warehouses in Central Europe. Local European police agencies were filled with reports that they have no ability to follow up. One day, a Canadian war crime investigator named Bill Waili led me to a closed door in a cellar in Western Europe. Inside, there was a large room with moisture remover, metal shelves and cardboard boxes stacked from floor to ceiling. The funds contained more than six hundred thousand Syrian government documents, most of which were taken from security -intelligence facilities that were invaded by rebel groups. Using these documents, the Wiley group, N.G.O. It is called the International Justice and Accountability Committee, and it has rebuilt a large part of the Syrian leadership sequence.
شكّل ويلي وزملاؤه استجابة Cijain لما اعتبروه أوجه قصور رئيسية في نظام العدالة الدولي. ولأن حكومة الأسد لم تصادق على الوثيقة التأسيسية للمحكمة الجنائية الدولية ، لم تتمكن المحكمة من فتح تحقيق في جرائمها. وحده مجلس الأمن التابع للأمم المتحدة يمكنه تصحيح هذا الأمر ، وقد أعاقت حكومتا روسيا والصين الجهود المبذولة للقيام بذلك. لقد كان الرمز النهائي للفشل الدولي: لم يكن هناك طريق واضح لملاحقة أكثر الحملات توثيقًا لجرائم الحرب والجرائم ضد الإنسانية منذ الهولوكوست.غالبًا ما تركز المحاكمات الجنائية الدولية على السلطة والواجب وتسلسل القيادة. قوة المشروع في الردع – في توضيح أن هناك معايير غير مرنة للسلوك في الحرب. إن الافتقار إلى الحماس لا يرقى إلى مستوى الدفاع. ما يهم هو ما يتم فعله – وليس ما شعر به الضابط حيال القيام بذلك. في ظل وضع من المسؤولية يُعرف باسم “مسؤولية القيادة” ، يمكن مقاضاة ضابط كبير ، على سبيل المثال ، لفشله في منع أو معاقبة الإجرام المنتشر والمنتشر بين مرؤوسيه.يبدو أن هذا التمييز قد فقد على حلبي ، الذي يبدو أنه لم يفكر في “القانون” إلا على النحو الذي تم توجيهه إليه. وقال حلبي لضابط اللجوء الفرنسي “عندما تتلقى أمرا ، كجندي ، عليك أن تنفذها”. ولم يبد أنه يربط طاعته بما تلى ذلك: أكثر من مائتي فرد من فرع الرقة التابع لمديرية المخابرات العامة سيتلقون الأمر ، وعليهم تنفيذه. قال: “لم أفعل قط أي شيء غير قانوني في سوريا ، باستثناء مساعدة الناس”. “إذا كانت هناك محكمة دولية لهؤلاء الناس” – الأسد ونوابه – “سأكون أول من يظهر”.أعدت لجنة مكافحة الإرهاب (Cija) موجزًا قانونيًا من أربعمائة صفحة يثبت المسؤولية الجنائية للأسد وحوالي عشرة من كبار مسؤوليه الأمنيين. يربط الموجز بين التعذيب والقتل الممنهج لعشرات الآلاف من المعتقلين السوريين بأوامر صاغتها لجنة أمنية رفيعة المستوى في البلاد ، ووافق عليها الأسد ، وأرسلت سلاسل قيادية موازية. تحتوي وثائق Cija على مئات الآلاف ، إن لم يكن الملايين من الأسماء – معتقلون ومحققوهم ، ومخبرون بعثيون ، ورؤساء كل وكالة أمنية – وكانت بمثابة الأساس لعقوبات اقتصادية تستهدف مسؤولي النظام. في السنوات الأخيرة ، أصبح القانون الجنائي السوري مصدرًا لوثائق النظام السوري للقضايا المدنية والجنائية في جميع أنحاء العالم. منعت معلومة من أحد محققيها في أراضي تنظيم الدولة هجومًا إرهابيًا في أستراليا. في غضون ذلك ، تلقت المجموعة طلبات من وكالات إنفاذ القانون الأوروبية بخصوص أكثر من ألفي سوري. وفقًا لستيفن راب ، المدعي الدولي السابق الذي شغل منصب سفير الولايات المتحدة المتجول لقضايا جرائم الحرب وهو الآن رئيس مجلس إدارة Cija ، فإن الأدلة الموجودة في حوزة Cija أكثر شمولاً من تلك التي تم تقديمها في محاكمات نورمبرغ.قد لا يطأ الأسد ونوابه أبدًا في اختصاص قضائي حيث سيتم توجيه تهم إليهم. لكن في عام 2015 ، تلقى كريس إنجلز ، رئيس العمليات في Cija ، معلومات من محقق في سوريا تفيد بأن خالد الحلبي قد تسلل إلى أوروبا. في البداية ، كان إنجلز يأمل في إجراء مقابلة معه بصفته منشقًا ، من أجل موجز الأسد. ولكن ، عندما بدأ محللو Cija في بناء ملف عن حلبي – بالاعتماد على وثائق النظام الداخلية ، وكذلك على شهادة من مرؤوسيه – بدأ إنجلز يفكر في حلبي كهدف محتمل للملاحقة القضائية بدلاً من ذلك.“كم عدد الاعتقالات التي أمرت بتنفيذها؟” سأل ضابط اللجوء الفرنسي حلبي.“لا أتذكر – في السويداء لا شيء.”“وفي الرقة؟”“أربعة أو خمسة.”بحلول منتصف عام 2012 ، وفقًا لتحقيقات Cija ، كان فرع حلبي من المديرية يعتقل حوالي خمسة عشر شخصًا يوميًا. تم تجريد المعتقلين من ملابسهم الداخلية ووضعهم في زنازين قذرة ومكتظة حيث عانوا من الجوع والمرض والعدوى. قام الفرع بتحويل وحدات التخزين في الطابق السفلي إلى زنازين فردية تضم في النهاية عشرة أشخاص أو أكثر.قال أحد مرؤوسي حلبي السابقين: “كان يتم نقل المعتقلين إلى مكتب الاستجواب ، وعادة ما يتم نقعهم في الماء البارد ، ثم وضعهم في إطار احتياطي كبير”. “ثم دحرجوا على ظهورهم وضُربوا بالأسلاك الكهربائية أو أحزمة المروحة أو العصي أو الهراوات.” وتذكر ناجون تعرضوا للصعق بالصدمات الكهربائية والتعليق من معاصمهم على الجدران أو السقف. سمع صراخ في جميع أنحاء المبنى المكون من ثلاثة طوابق. بعد الاستجواب ، كان المحتجزون يُجبرون بشكل روتيني على التوقيع أو وضع بصمات أصابعهم على وثائق لم يُسمح لهم بقراءتها.لم ير Cija أي دليل على المعاملة المقيدة التي وصفها طيارة. الرعاية التي أظهرها له الحلبي قبل الثورة كانت بعيدة كل البعد عن الوحشية التي تعرض لها فيما بعد من قبل نشطاء حقوق الإنسان والمثقفين الآخرين.
Many of the worst violations were implemented by the head of Halabi's investigations and the chief of staff, who were apparently afraid of them.These men and others used regularly the threat of rape or rape themselves during interrogation.The dissidents said that Halabi, whose office shares a wall with the interrogation room, was "completely aware" of what is going on."No one will do anything without his knowledge," the branch."Often, he was entering and watched torture."As the head of the branch, Al -Halabi signed every order to transfer a detainee for more interrogation to Damascus, where thousands of people were tortured to death.
A few weeks after the fall of Raqqa, Nadim Houry, who was then the main Syrian affairs analyst for Human Rights Watch, traveled to Medina. He has been studying the structures and violations committed by the Syrian intelligence services since 2006. Now he made his way to the looted Halabi branch. Then the stairs come down. You see cells. I spent years documenting how they were crammed into solitary confinement cells. Now it is somewhat embodied in front of my eyes. ” In a room near a Halabi office, the wind rug was found, which is a large wooden torture that resembles a cross but detailed in the middle, used to bend the appearance of people, sometimes until it is broken. Nadim Houry said: “This is the essence of the Syrian regime.” “It is a modern bureaucracy, with many distinguished people, but it is based on torture and death.” Halabi met two or three times in Paris. The meetings were friendly, if they were charged; A plane did not fully understand a Halabi motivation to communicate with him. He said, perhaps the unit, or the desire to forgive. The poet and intelligence man drink black coffee with sugar on the Seine. They wandered in the city's gardens, discussed the challenges of living in exile as elderly men. Their lives as opponents seemed far away. Both of them were broken and only, unable to master the local language, displaced in a safe land that felt indifferent to everything they care about and everyone who loves it. He lived a plane in a small studio. Halabi told his former captive that he was staying in an additional room for an Algerian who lived in the suburbs. France was deeply involved in Syrian affairs. But in France, the well -known Syrians from each faction drifted in not revealing their identity, eager to return to their homes, and suffer from the events that were not seen by the people around them - on buses, metro cars, parks and cafes - that they are not related to the extent that they are just not noticeable Absolutely, I asked if my Halabi had asked to help him at any time. He said, "No, no, no." “It was only to inquire about my health and my family. Everything was very beautiful. I did not need anything. ”But it seemed as if Halabi was preparing a witness - that he planned the French authorities to contact a battle, and he used to take advantage of his goal and his longing for the past. When the French asylum officer asked about a Halabi role in the repressive measures against the demonstrators, he nominated a pilot. Halabi said: “There is a person here in France.” “Who was arrested?” Halabi said: “He is a friend. “A famous opposition member.” He started the story of the first pilot. Halabi said: “He knew very well that the matter came from above - and that I had nothing to do with him.” “I bought him even pajamas, from my own money, because I loved him. I prevented my men from nerve his eyes and restricting his hands - well, that I only nerve his eyes when he was entering national security facilities. He went, returned, we stayed friends. . . . You can ask him. ”The French officer said:“ I understand that you reduce your role a little. ” You say you were against violence, torture and death, but you continued the position of intelligence chief of a regime that was known for his suppression. Why did you stay with this system for a long time? “
Halabi did not wait for a decision regarding his status as a refugee. After several months without news, he chose to disappear again. Before leaving Paris, he mentioned to the pilgrim that Austria, according to one of his friends, said a more welcome place to the refugees. It was a strange confirmation. The right -wing government of Austria has increased the opposite position. Stephanie Krisper, a member of the Austrian Parliament, who was terrified of this approach told me: “We are trying to get rid of asylum seekers from the moment they touch our land.” I met a pilot in Paris, on the afternoon of a rainy day in November 2019; He and Halabi did not speak for years. I asked for help in contacting my milk, but a plane was kindly refused. He said, "I am an old man." “I am looking for peace. I am looking for beauty for hair. I love watching ballet! This puzzle is very difficult. I don't want to continue to do so. ” He sighed and seized, and his face partially blocked. He said, "I am afraid to continue investigations on it." "There are many of them - a lot of Syrian officers here."
At CIJA headquarters, Engels and Willi concluded that there is no more important goal within the reach of the European authorities from Khaled Al -Halabi: as dean and head of a regional intelligence branch, who was the highest Syrian war criminal. It is known for its presence on the continent. CIJA formed a team that follows to find it and other goals: the investigators worked on the sources and the dissidents, the analysts fill the documents captured, and an electronic unit looking for digital effects. It was not long before the tracking team has a circular account on social media. On Facebook, his name was Akil; On Skype, Abu Qutaiba was. On the Internet, Halabi claimed that he lives in Argentina. However, the descriptive data on Skype revealed that he had told the truth about his plans. He was constantly registering an entry from a mobile phone tied to the IP tool. The title in Vienna. From time to time, CIJA investigators receive advice about ISIS members in Europe, and Waili immediately alerts the local authorities. But when it comes to former Syrian army officers and intelligence, who are not a direct threat, his organization is wise. Willie said: "We do not go to the local authorities and say," Yes, we hear so and so in your country. " "If these men are still loyal to the regime, they may pose a threat to other Syrians in the diaspora in Europe, but they will not blow up or stab people in the shopping area." Besides, a person's larger notification like Halabi can push the underground disappearance. By January 2016, Santa's Halabi file was completed. For four months, the login site has not changed to its Skype. Stephen Rap requested an Austrian Ministry of Justice. The response came on an official paper titled of the wrong year: “Dear Mr. Rap! I am pleased to invite you and Mr. Engels to the Austrian Federal Ministry of Justice. ” And she continued: “All the expenses of the delegation, including simultaneous translation, / or translation, residence, transportation, meals, evidence and insurance during your stay in Austria, will bear it next to you.” Engels told me: “We have not worked with the Austrians before - they are not very active in the field of crimes International War. ” But this is usually a very cooperative process. And quickly. ”On the morning of January 29, 2016, Rap and Engels entered the room 410 in the Austrian Ministry of Justice. Five officials - a senior judge, a senior administrative official, a deputy head of the International Crime Department, and two men were waiting for them. After Engels and Rap showed CIJA guide, one of the officials in a government database and confirmed that Khaled Al -Halabi was registered in the address in Vienna. The meeting ended. Engels and Rab scale the Halabi file. Once they left the room, the two men whose names - who worked in B.V.T. were asked to be asked. , Austrian Civil Security Agency - Looking at whether the man described by CIJA is the man in the address of Vienna. They agreed to do this, without giving any indication that they heard about my Halabi before that morning. In fact, two weeks ago, one of them, an intelligence officer named Oliver Lang, took a shopping shop to buy storage drawers in IKEA, and he wrote the delivery title using his operational cover name. Lang looked at the receipt, then subsequently provided it to cover the expenses. It also has the signature of Al -Halabi, which he did not make up for the days of signing the arrest orders in Raqqa. The funds allocated to the drawers came in the form of a drop of money from the old passengers of the passengers: Israeli intelligence services.
After the Second World War, the Austrian government confirmed that its people were the first victims of the Nazis, instead of their enthusiastic supporters. School children were not taught about the Holocaust, and for about half a century, the Jews who returned to Vienna were unable to restore confiscation property. In 1975, Austria stopped all the prosecutions of the former Nazis. Ten years later, the Times newspaper reported that the country "abandoned any serious attempt to arrest Mr. Bruner", the Nazi who was living in Damascus at the time, and who deported more than a hundred and twenty -five thousand people to detention and extermination camps. From his apartment on Haddad Street, Bunner sent the money to his wife and daughter in Vienna, where he led the office that saved the city from its Jewish population. It seems that the Austrian counselor, in a conversation rejecting the Nazi fishermen, accepts the official position of the Syrian government - that it has no idea about Bruner's place. In 1986, it was found that the most famous Austrian diplomat, Court Valdheim - who served most of the previous contract as a United Nations Secretary -General - He was a Nazi military intelligence officer during the war. Initially, Valdheim, who was running for the position of President of Austria, denied this claim. However, with the emergence of more information, he began defending himself as a "decent soldier", and claimed that the real "scandal" was an attempt to bulldozing the past. Other politicians came to defend him. "As long as it cannot be proven that he strangled six Jews himself, there is no problem," Valdheim party leader told a French magazine. Valdheim won the elections and served until 1992. The US Department of Justice concluded that he had participated in many Nazi war crimes, including the transfer of civilians to work with forced labor, the execution of civilians and prisoners of war, and collective deportation to arrest and genocide. As for the rest of his mandate, Valdheim was only welcome in some Arab countries and in the Vatican. It took it even after the presidency of Valdheim until the Austrian government began to recognize the crimes committed for decades. Only last year, Austria began granting citizenship to the grandchildren of victims of Nazi persecution. There is still a shadow of the country. "The Austrians, in European war crimes, are known to be particularly inexpensive," said Bill Waili, who was the first investigation into war crimes in the 1990s. “You never know what the inefficiency, laziness and lack of attention pay, and what corruption pays.” In recent years, Austria has been excluded from European agreements to exchange intelligence information, including Club De Berne - an informal intelligence network that includes most European countries The United Kingdom, the United States and Israel. (Austria withdrew after the confidential review of the club's electronic infrastructure, building security, and anti -deployment procedures - all found that it was very bad - to the Austrian press.) Accused of spying in favor of Russia and Iran, as well as with a high -level smuggling of Austria on board private plane. Iranian spy was working under a diplomatic cover in Vienna and was listed in B.V.T. A document "As a Possible Call to Recruitment", convicted of planning a terrorist attack on an agreement in France; Belgian prosecutors later decided that he had smuggled explosives via Vienna airport, in a diplomatic bag. “The Austrians are not seen as a particularly good service,” said one of the retired CIA. The officer told me. Public opinion within the European Western intelligence agencies is that what Vienna is sharing on his way soon to Moscow - an anxiety that was amplified when Vladimir Putin danced with Austria's Foreign Minister at her wedding in 2018, but in March 2015, Mossad called B.V.T. Leadership for a meaningful operation: One of the assets of the Israeli intelligence needed Austrian help. Three months have passed since the French asylum interview, which was hidden and at risk, in search of a way out of the country. Deputy Director B.V.T. He traveled to Tel Aviv. According to B.V.T. The memo, the Israelis said that because of the "cultural origins" of Halbi, he was about to "play an important role in the structure of the Syrian state after the fall of the Assad regime." Halabi will not work in B.V.T. But the Israelis promised related information with the agency from time to time. All the Austrians had to do was bring Halabi to Vienna and help him establish his life.
Bernard Bercher, head of the B.V.T. Intelligence Unit, created , A file called a Halabi symbol: white milk. The case was charged with two officers, Oliver Lang and Martin Philipovts. Soon after, they received orders to go to Paris, meet with French intelligence, and return to Vienna the next day, with Halabi. There were no clear challenges. The Mossad had authorized the smuggling process with French intelligence, according to B.V.T. The Israeli activists were on a "permanent contact" with Halabi in Paris. Lang and Philipovts set out at dawn on May 11, and they boarded a trip to Charles de Gaulle - Row 6, with two seats in the C. and D. and D, a bill with them was sent to the Mossad. When they landed, they went through a metro to the headquarters of the French Intelligence Agency, D.G.S.I. There, according to Lang's official account of the meeting, they met with the Vice President of the Anti -Spy, a specialist in Syria, and a translator. Three representatives of the Mossad, including the head of the Paris station and the local customer with Halabi, also attended. But d. to reject. A French official said that Halabi submitted an asylum request, and the local law stipulates that asylum seekers cannot travel outside the French border until a decision is made. The Austrians and the Israelis suggested that Halabi be removed from the French asylum application, but D.G.S.I. He replied that in this case it will be illegally halabi in France. After the meeting, according to Lang's observations, the Israelis told Lang that the French had changed their position since they learned that “B.V.T. He is also involved. ”Lang suggested that the Israelis smuggle Al -Halabi from France in a diplomatic car, via Switzerland or Germany. The B.V.T. He was waiting at the Austrian border and accompanying them to Vienna. "The proposal was well received," he wrote. But the Mossad team will first have to verify the headquarters, in Tel Aviv, “because this approach can have a permanent impact on relations” between Israeli and French intelligence agencies. In the early twenties of the last century, the Mossad had used to work in Paris without French permission. The agency, which is not subject to the legal framework of Israel, and only responds to the Prime Minister, has lured French intelligence officers with inappropriate relationships. Try to sell suspicious communications equipment, through a façade company, to the French National Police and the local intelligence service; A room was used in a hotel in Paris as a starting point for a murder in Dubai. Members of the killing team entered and left the United Arab Emirates with false passports that used the identities of real French citizens - an accident that the head of the judicial police in Paris later described to the newspaper Le Monde as "an unacceptable attack on our sovereignty."
في الثاني من يونيو ، التقى لانج وفيليبوفيتس وبيرشر بضباط من الموساد. كتب لانغ: “تم الاتفاق على تسليم” الحزمة “في غضون أحد عشر يومًا. ربما يكون الإسرائيليون قد توصلوا بهدوء إلى اتفاق مع المخابرات الفرنسية ، لتجنب الاحتكاك ، لكن النمساويين لم يعلموا أبدًا بأي ترتيب من هذا القبيل ؛ بقدر ما كانوا معنيين ، فإن D.G.S.I. سيبقى في الظلام.على عكس فرنسا ، لم تسع إسرائيل علانية لإسقاط نظام الأسد. تركزت عملياتها في سوريا على الأمور التي ترى فيها تهديدًا مباشرًا: الأفراد الإيرانيون ، ونقل الأسلحة ، ودعم حزب الله. منذ عام 2013 ، نفذت الطائرات الحربية الإسرائيلية مئات القصف على أهداف مرتبطة بإيران في سوريا. نادرا ما تعترض الحكومة السورية. إن الاعتراف بالإضرابات يعني الاعتراف بأنه لا حول لها ولا قوة لمنعها. من غير المحتمل أن يكون حلبي، من مخابئه في أوروبا ، مفيدًا بأي شكل من الأشكال للاستخبارات الإسرائيلية.قبل يومين من خلع حلبي ، تمت ترقية تصريح لانغ الأمني إلى سري للغاية. خارج B.V.T. القيادة ، كان هو و Filipovits فقط على علم بالعملية. لا يزال لانغ يعتقد أن حلبي لديه إمكانية الوصول إلى المعلومات التي كانت “ذات أهمية كبيرة” للدولة النمساوية. كتب لانغ إلى بيرشر: “المعجزات تحدث”.أجاب بيرشر: “اليوم مثل يوم 24 ديسمبر”.“حسنا اذن . . . عيد ميلاد مجيد.”في 13 حزيران (يونيو) ، انتظر لانغ عند معبر فالزربيرغ ، على الحدود مع ألمانيا ، وصول الإسرائيليين. من غير الواضح ما إذا كانت الحكومة الألمانية على علم بأن الموساد كان ينقل جنرالًا سوريًا من فرنسا وعبر أراضيها في سيارة دبلوماسية. حجز لانغ غرف فندق في سالزبورغ لنفسه وللإسرائيليين والرجل الذي بدأ في الإشارة إليه باسم White Milk في تقاريره. مرة أخرى ، اهتم الموساد بمشروع القانون.قال كيم فيلبي ، الجاسوس البريطاني الذي انشق عن الاتحاد السوفيتي ، في عام 1967: “لكي تخون ، يجب أن تنتمي أولاً”. “لم أنتمي أبدًا”.في العامين الماضيين ، ناقشت قضية حلبي مع جواسيس وسياسيين ونشطاء ومنشقين وضحايا ومحامين ومحققين جنائيين في ست دول ، وقمت بمراجعة آلاف الصفحات من الوثائق السرية والسرية باللغات العربية والفرنسية والإنجليزية والعربية. ألمانية. كانت العملية مليئة بالخيوط الكاذبة والمعلومات المضللة والشائعات المعاد تدويرها والأسئلة التي لا يمكن الإجابة عليها – وأحدها هو التوقيت الدقيق وطبيعة تجنيد حلبي من قبل المخابرات الإسرائيلية. لم يكن لدى أحد تفسير واضح ، أو يمكنه أن يقول ما الذي ساهم به في المصالح الإسرائيلية. ولكن ، ببطء ، بدأت الصورة في الظهور.
B.V.T. The memorandum describes Israel, in its leakage from Paris, as "committed to its customers who have already completed their duties." This led to a solution to whether it was recruited in Europe. "Nobody really wants the defectors," said the retired official of the CIA. The officer, who has contracts for experience in the Middle East. "What you really want is an agent in place." Halabi's transfer to Vienna, the Israelis were convicted of an old source. How did the relationship started? Sixteen years later, he obtained a law on law from Damascus - a qualification that led him to the General Intelligence Directorate. He told the French asylum representative: "I did not choose work on the security apparatus - it was a military matter." I was a brilliant military officer. I was angry to transfer to the intelligence service. ” He served in the Damascus Directorate for a period of four years. In 2005, he became a regional director - first in As -Suwayda, then in Homs, Tartous and Raqqa. In asylum interviews, Halabi shed light on the exact nature of his first job in the Damascus Directorate, and the investigators focused on what he did in his last position. But at a very secret meeting, the Israelis erred. According to the BVT meeting notes, an Mossad officer said that Al -Halabi could not be involved in war crimes, because he was the "head of the 300" branch "in Raqqa", who was "exclusive responsible" for thwarting the activities of foreign intelligence services. The B.V.T. The error was not recorded: There is no branch 300 in Raqqa - Halabi branch was 335. However, the Mossad agent accurately described the duties of anti -spy for the real branch 300, located in Damascus. I started searching for signals to the 300 branch and anti -spy in various Halabi files and leaks. A dissident told Cija that Halabi may have served in the 300th branch, but he did not specify when. To date, there have been hundreds of pages of government documents scattered on my ground. One day, I re -cleared a handwritten solution request from France, from the summer of 2014. There was, in a description of his date of work, and his first function in the directorate: “I served in Damascus (the anti -espionage service). According to Halabi's private account of his life, it could have been a classic goal: approaching middle age, and feeling as if his military ingenuity was not estimated; Understanding the idea that, regardless of the extent of his service, in a country run by the Alawite sectarian elites, it will never get recognition or power. Even after his promotion to the position of regional director, “as a member of the Druze minority, I was marginalized,” Halabi told the French asylum presenter. It seems that he considers himself Druze first and Syrian second. The Druze are not particularly committed to the policy of any country. They simply make practical arrangements to survive. It is very difficult to penetrate the anti -spy branch in Syria from abroad. But the rest of the Syrian defense agencies are not. In the decades before the revolution, a former member of the American intelligence community told me: “Everyone was spying for a person - if not the Israelis, we and the Jordanians.” The entire Syrian army - they were just a criminal act, mafia. They had no loyalty alongside the small inner circle. The work was difficult, because they were spying on each other as well. But there were not many secrets. ” For this reason, among other things, his recruitment of Israeli military intelligence is more likely to be more than Mossad. A secret military intelligence component known as the unit 504 recruits and deals with sources in the areas of conflict and neighboring tensions, including Syria, and routinely targets the promising young military officers. If unit 504 reached Al -Halabi when he was a soldier, his appointment to the 300th branch will be an unusual intelligence coup. Perhaps Halabi may not have known for some time that he was working for Israel. Its spies routinely demonstrate that they are foreigners from other countries, especially during operations in the Middle East. Or maybe he was assigned a narrow task related to a common interest. Halabi felt disgusting from Iran's growing influence on Syria, and Assad described as an "Iranian doll" "not suitable for the rule of a country."
The extent of Halabi's service to Israel is unknown. But I did not find any evidence of Israel's involvement in his escape from Raqqa to Turkey, or in his efforts to persuade the French embassy in Jordan to send him to France - where his contact with the Druze financier was revealed. Similar to the attention of Walid Jumblatt - his men discovered an extraordinary flow of money and communications to the Syrian Druze community via Paris. He told me, from his elegant stone palace in Mount Lebanon, "This money did not come from here." She was coming from Israel. “We believe that Halabi is working with our other evil neighbors, Israeli.” With the abandonment of Halabi in Paris, it fell on the Mossad to help an Israeli origin. (It is not known that unit 504 operates in Europe). A memorandum, Mossad established a "phased plan" for Halabi - infiltrating to Austria, in addition to a first salary of several thousand euros per month. In the long run, the goal was to become "financially satisfied". But it was not, as stated in the memo, “in the open.” Oliver Lang was also an officer in the anti -espionage, and his specialization was in B.V.T. It was Arab affairs. But he never learned the Arabic language, so his boss brought another officer, Ralph Bushker, who claimed his linguistic mastery. But when Lang presented him to Halabi, the two men were unable to communicate. "Oh, well, you can forget about Ralph's matter." “Ralph does not understand his accent in one way or another.” Short Berscher, with long blond hair and feverish social energy. (Behind his back, people call him Rumpelstiltskin.) Before becoming head of the B.V.T. Intelligence Unit B.V.T. Through his political party, in 2010, he had little understanding of the police or intelligence work. After two days of Halabi crossing to Austria, Lang pushed a translator to accompany him with Halabi to an interview at a asylum center in Treeschen, thirty minutes south of Vienna. In previous weeks, Filipovits examined the legal options for obtaining Halabi residence, and decided that asylum comes with a major advantage: any government official participating in the process will be "subject to the duty of comprehensive secrecy." Lang confirmed that Halabi is "isolated, and that other asylum seekers did not see him." "I didn't get a reason for that." Lang never presented himself. Although his presence was removed from the record, he sat in the interview. Why, according to the legal basis of B.V.T. An official participated, I could no longer say, "" Penthys. " “He only stayed there.” A throat lied to the Thursday about entering Austria. A friend in Paris told me, "He bought me a train ticket," and put him on a train heading to Vienna - and in any exact way, he did not know. It is clear that the story was ridiculous. B.V.T. He arranged for the interview with the asylum office a long time before the automatic arrival in the train. However, on the age of Penmeer did not ask any follow -up questions. “The attention of the company B.V.T. She was clear, ”she said. Now Lang has tied the risk of death. He wrote, "The situation in France is of the type in which violent clashes are repeated sometimes between the supporters of the regime and its opponents, some of which lead to serious injuries and deaths." He added that because "Al -Halabi's knowledge of the secrets of the Syrian state, it must be assumed that if Al -Halabi is arrested by the various Syrian intelligence services, he will be filtered." The B.V.T. Langta notes submitted to the asylum agency, whose manager, Wolfgang Totcher, ordered a Halabi file "under the lock and key". The B.V.T. She had no safe homes or black operational budgets, so she rented a flat from the father of Bercher's husband. During the next six months, Lang carried out low tasks on behalf of the Mossad. “Dear Bernard! Please remember to contact your wife's father about the apartment! He wrote to Pircher. “Dear Bernard! Please refute the message related to preventing registration! Bercher replied, "Oh my God, you are annoying."
"Dear Bernard!" Lang wrote, in early July. He did not like the fact that, with all these small tasks, he had to use his real name. He wrote: "It will definitely not be bad to have a cover name." "What's your opinion?" By the end of the month, Lang was presenting itself throughout the city - in IKEA, the bank, the post office, and the electronic installation services of Bob and Bens - Bassem Alexander Lamberg. The Israelis prompted the Eg about five thousand euros per month in exchange for the accounts of Halabi that passed through the Mossad station in Vienna. Lang kept accurate records, sometimes mentioning the names of the Israeli officers who met them. Halabi found that the apartment's father's father's apartment is very small, so, after a few months, Lang began searching for another place. "Dear Bernard!" Lang wrote in July 2015. “If we succeed, the monthly rent we agreed with with our friends will be slightly increasing. However, my opinion is that they will only have to coexist with it. ”On October 7, Halabi Lang was provided with intelligence information that one of the potential defense men submitted asylum in Austria. Lang presented a report, quoting a "reliable source" and sent him to Bercher, who sent him to the unit of terrorism. An officer there was confused by tipping. He replied, "Perhaps the source processor can talk to us." The same information was published throughout Facebook and News. In the following week, Lang and Philipovts went to a meeting in Tel Aviv. When they returned, Langlangi took the second asylum interview. Since Halabi has already applied for asylum in France, the officer asked his permission to contact the French government. "I am afraid of my life, and therefore I do not agree," Halabi said, according to a copy of the registration record. “Are you not afraid here?” Halabi said, “The number of Syrians in Austria does not approach the number of France, so it is easy to stay away from them here.” And above all from the Arabs. I stay away from all these people. ”In fact, in both countries, Halabi was in contact with a group of Syrians who were trying to establish projects for civil society in the land -controlled lands. But they suspected that he was collecting intelligence information about their members. One of the members of the group told me: “All other dissidents and officers know that they do not ask many questions, to avoid doubt between us.” But Al -Halabi was the opposite. He always asked the questions. "How many people attend the meeting?" "Where is the meeting?" "Can I get everyone's names?" "Everyone's phone numbers?" They cut off the flow of information. The member continued, "One of the possibilities is that he simply cannot leave his intelligence mentality behind him. And the other - in which we started doubting more and more over time - is that he is still related to the regime. ” According to a person who attended one of these events, many Syrians in his astronomy boasted about their prayers with foreign intelligence services and the lifestyle that came with them. The source, a Syrian exile, has good connections, independently concluded Halabi's relationship with the Israelis, and said he believed it dates back to the past decade and is likely to be narrow -scale - reporting Iranian arms shipments, for example, or in matters related to Hezbollah.
The man said that at the moment when Al -Halabi left Syria in 2013, it became "the weakest and the least important in the context of the war." "Most of the persons associated with foreign agencies - and in some cases they continue to - continue to crimes much worse." He added: "They have full access to Russia and the West, with all the money they need, and all diplomatic protection." In the search for intelligence, not every useful person is a good person - and most of the good people are not useful. On December 2, 2015, Austria gave a asylum. Within a few days, a five -year passport was issued. Languel Halabi helped apply for advantages from the Austrian state. The B.V.T. He supported his request, noting that he "has no information" that he was "involved in war crimes or other criminal business in Syria". After seven weeks, the Austrian Ministry of Justice alerted B.V.T. CIJA has identified a high -level Syrian war criminal in Austria. Justice officials had not heard about Halabi and were not aware that a member of their intelligence agency, at the request of a foreign agency, meets all his needs. In Austria, war crimes fall within the jurisdiction of an investigation into the extremism unit in B.V.T. But no one in that unit was aware of the process of white milk and B.V.T. Lang and Bircher sent to the January 29 meeting with CIJA officials instead. The Ministry of Justice maintains detailed meetings. At some point, Stephen Rap, CIJA Chairman and former International Public Prosecutor, indicated that CIJA witnesses included many Halabi subordinates from the intelligence branch, and witnessed against their former president. Against Al -Halabi. It was as if the only thing that he absorbed was the urgency of the threat. Lang and Bircher told the Ministry of Justice that they would consider whether Halabi is present in the country. However, they secretly began collecting intelligence information about the Sega crew and its witnesses, and the distortion of the organization, under the title "Red Paul". Before the meeting with CIJA, a mistake occurred in the communication between B.V.T. The Ministry of Justice Bercher and Lang had to believe that Rap and Engels, the head of SEGA Operations, were part of an official American delegation. When they finally understood that CIJA is NGO, he was astonished by his investigative efficiency, and they believed that the group's ability to track my Halabi to Vienna indicates that there are links to an intelligence agency. Most CIJA employees are from Europe and the Middle East. But since the men on the table were Americans, Bercher Wang concluded that the CIJA case against Halabi reflects a break in relations between Mossad and the CIA. They believed that Rap was particularly suspected because he previously served in the government. Lang began searching for Rap, and sent the results he reached e -mail to the Operations Chief Bercher and President of Bercher, Martin Weiss. Subject: Information about Stephen Rabda, respectable! For your information, if you write Stephen Rapp in Google. . Lang discovered the same basic CV information that he and Bercher would have known if they were listening during the meeting - or if they had read the minutes Newspapers in Vienna, and Lang is now summarized: A thirty -year -old Syrian refugee was arrested named Muhammad Abdullah in Sweden, on suspicion of his participation in war crimes somewhere in Syria, at some point in the previous many years. “The Swedish authorities continued the path of Abdullah through posts and images on the Internet. Lang books seem suspicious like the way Sega works for me. Assuming that there are countless crimes of war crimes in Sweden, Abdullah must be the alleged deputy. ” (Abdullah has no apparent relationship with Aleppo). On February 15, 2016, representatives of B.V.T. The Mossad met to discuss the SEGA law and its results. According to a very secret memorandum formulated by Weiss, the Mossad team indicated that CIJA is a "special organization without a governmental or international mandate" - you do not have to worry, in other words, because it cannot try anyone. Courts in Europe and the United States have opened cases based on CIJA evidence. But this does not mean that Austria should do the same.
In mid -April, Bercher issued instructions to Lang to find the title of the headquarters of the Suma. For security reasons, the organization tries to maintain the privacy of its location; The documents in his possession indicate that the Syrian regime is trying to track its investigators. Lang concluded that CIJA is sharing an office with the Hague Global Justice Institute, in the Netherlands, where Rap got an unsafe fellow. After a few days, Pircher and B.V.T. The officer, Monica Jashel, set out to The Hague. The official purpose was to attend the firearms conference. But Bercher sent Jassel to verify the Hague Institute. "People working are visible in front of their screens." At lunch time, the food was brought to the building. It is clear that the food was requested. ” Gaschell took at least eight photographs - pictures of a wide angle showing the street, the sidewalk, the entrance and the building of the building - and presented it to Bercher, who sent her an email requesting "tourist pictures from The Hague".
But Lang presented the wrong address, so Gaschell spied on a random office awaiting lunch. CIJA has no connection to the Hague Institute. Its headquarters is not even in the Netherlands. The Austrian Ministry of Justice agreed that the CIJA file represents a "sufficient" basis for an investigation - as long as B.V.T. He emphasized that Khaled Al -Halabi, who is residing in Vienna, is the man in the file. (After three weeks without updating, the judge who attended the meeting called Lang, who informed her that the results of his investigation showed that Halabi “was, in all manifestations, is already residing in Vienna.” "Engels said. During the next five years, CIJA continued with the Austrians at least fifteen times. Vienna Prosecutor, Edgar Lucin, opened an official investigation, but he showed little attention to him. Initially, according to CIJA, Luschin rejected the evidence as insufficient. He later explained that the quality of evidence related to war crimes is not important; He simply cannot go ahead. Al -Namasa is a member of the International Criminal Court for more than twenty years. However, until 2015, it was not that the Austrian parliament updated the list of crimes covered by the global judicial jurisdiction law - an affirmation that the duty to prosecute some hideous crimes exceeds all limits - in a way that applies permanently to Halabi. For this reason, Luchin decided that Austria has no power to trial Halabi on charges of war crimes or crimes against humanity. Everything that happened under his command happened before 2015. “Why is this the Austrian position, I can only speculate,” said Willie, the founder of Cijafnder. Other European countries have overcome similar legal obstacles. He added: “The Ministry of Justice, as part of the broader Austrian tradition, could be unable to raise the issue of war crimes.” In fact, Luschin's position guarantees that there will be no significant investigation - and he promised B.V.T. In December 2016, Martin Philipovts, Lang's partner, asked Lucin about his case. But when Philipovts used the phrase "war criminal", referring to Halabi, Lucin stopped him. "It does not apply from a legal point of view," said Luschin. He added that he might meet Halabi, but only to ask whether he had personally tortured someone - not like an international war, but out of local law, in a violent attack. Otherwise, Luschin said, “There are no necessary achievements in Austria, and a tangible investigation order will not be issued to B.V.T.” General. Then the French asylum agency sent a letter that refused to the old Halabi title in Paris. "The fact that he did not desert until two years after the beginning of the Syrian conflict, and only when it became clear that his men were unable to resist the progress of the rebels in Raqqa, he cast a shadow of doubt on his supposed motives to flee," reading the message. She added that the asylum agency has "serious reasons" to believe that because of the "increasing responsibilities" that Halabi bears within the system, he is "directly involved in repression and human rights violations." In April 2018, the agency sent a Halabi file to the French Public Prosecution, which also requested documents from Cija. After it was found that Halabi was no longer present on French soil, the prosecutors issued a request to all European police services to help follow him. The warning caused an internal crisis in B.V.T. This is the first time that the unity of extremism has heard that the war crimes investigate the name of Halabi.
In late July, Lang was forced to inform Sibel Gissler, head of the extremist unit, for everything that happened in previous years. I told Luchin that Halabi still lives in the Vienna apartment that Lang rented to him. It was also handed over by the CIJA file, which the French just submitted to her office. Luschin behaved as if he saw him for the first time. On that week, there was a spray of correspondence between B.V.T. And the Mossad. Lang was desperate to remove Halabi from the apartment. On the first of August, the Mossad Lang Land Communication officer called goodbye; According to Lang's notes, the officer left Austria the next day. Two months later, B.V.T. The white milk process has officially ended. During the discussion of the final case of B.V.T. With the Israelis, the Mossad asked to remain Halabi in Austria. After seven weeks, on November 27, B.V.T. According to the Austrian police officers to the Halabi apartment and opened their lock with a backup key. The clothes were scattered, and there was corrupt food in the refrigerator. “The current location of Al -Halabi cannot be determined,” said B.V.T. said. An officer indicated, according to the police report. "Investigations are ongoing." Not Oliver Lang is still working in B.V.T. His boss, Bernard Bercher, was dismissed after a different scandal. Martin Weiss's president, Martin Weiss, was recently arrested for secret information to the Russian state. Three years ago, when Lang Jesler briefed on the white milk process, I asked him about what Austria gained from it. She said later: "Lang replied by saying that we may get information about the internal structures of the Syrian Intelligence Service." “I considered that this is useless.” Nazis fishermen never abandoned the pursuit of Alois Bruner. But by 2014, when Brunner would have reached a hundred years, there was no confirmed vision for more than a decade. A German intelligence official told a group of investigators that Bruner definitely died. One of them told the Times: "We have never been able to confirm this criminal." However, he added, "I deleted his name from the list."
Three years later, the French journalists, Hadi Awij and Matthew Balin, tracked the Syrians guards in Jordan. Apparently, when Hafez al -Assad was about to die, his preparations to succeed Bashar included hiding the ancient Nazi in a cellar full of pests. One of the guards recalls that Brunner was "very stressful and very sick." He suffered and cried a lot. Everyone heard him. ” The goalkeeper added that Brunner could not even wash. He said, "Even animals - you cannot put them in a place like this." Soon after Bashar took power, he closed the door, and Bronner did not see him open again. “Died a million times.” Bruner's guards were chosen from the Syrian intelligence - the branch 300 - and the cell where he died in 2001 was under its headquarters. Perhaps it was Halabi in the building during the last weeks of Brunner. Now Austria is paying attention to the Halabi case, just as Syria has done with the Brunner case. A year after Halabi's exit hurry up from his home in B.V.T., Rap met with Christian Bilk, the second highest official in the Ministry of Justice in Austria. According to Rap notes, Pellasic said that if CIJA really wants to arrest Halabi, he may have to inform the ministry about his place. Last fall, Rap returned to Vienna to get an appointment with the Minister of Justice - but she did not attend. Among the last Halabi phone numbers, two had Austrian symbols, and the third was running. Until last fall, the image of his personal file on WhatsApp showed him wearing sunglasses on the Széchenyi Bridge in Budapest. There were unconfirmed views in Switzerland, and speculation that he fled from Vienna on the phrase below the Danube, to Bratislava, Slovakia. But the most reliable advice from the Syrians who know him still puts it in Austria.
One of these Syrians is Mustafa Al -Sheikh, who is the Dean of a dissident and head of the Supreme Military Revolutionary Council of the Free Syrian Army, who appointed himself - a group he founded, causing the existing Free Syrian Army confusion. The factions. In a recent phone call from Sweden, Halabi described him as his "best friend." The Sheikh insisted that "Major General Al -Halabi is one of the best figures in the Syrian revolution." He said that Halabi's links to war crimes and foreign intelligence services were lies that the Syrian intelligence invoked and was washed through the "deep state" networks in Europe, as part of a plot to undermine Al -Halabi as a possible alternative to Assad. He said, "I am sure that the French and the Austrians are the ones who are trying to cut off my wings, because his ilk undermines their agendas in Syria." But Halabi told the Mossad about the activities of the Sheikh. On January 4, 2017, Mossad agent Oliver Lang told Halabi that he would travel abroad, because one of his friends received an invitation from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to discuss a political settlement on Syria. Lang indicated in a very secret memo that "the friend wants your tendency to negotiate," adding that the Mossad will tell Halabi upon his return. Lang believed that the negotiations were "probably in Jordan." Instead, after five days, Halabi traveled to Moscow, where he joined Mustafa Al -Sheikh at a meeting with the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Mikhail Bogdanov. In the past months, the Russians have helped the Syrian army and the Shiite militias associated with it to displace tens of thousands of civilians forcibly from the opposition control areas in Aleppo. Now the Russian government formulated its discussions with Sheikh and Halabi as "a meeting with a group of Syrian opponents", while "emphasizing the need to end the bloodshed." The sheikh appeared on Russian state television and said that he hoped that Russia will do the rest of Syria what it did in Aleppo - a statement of accusations of betrayal from his former opposition partners. Halabi remained in the shade. I have heard rumors that he made three other trips to Moscow, but I did not find evidence of this. His Austrian passport expired last December and was not renewed. In late August, she traveled to Vienna and traveled to Bratislava. Every day, over the next four days, the Slovak border to Austria crossed the train shortly after dawn. I could see a group of satellite dishes on the hill in Königswarte - an old hearing station for the cold war to spy on the east, which was now updated and operated by the National Security Agency. In the last century, Vienna became known as the city of spies. It is located on the outskirts of East and West, according to the Cold War standards, and Austria has committed to neutrality, similar to the Swiss, since the 1950s. These conditions attracted many international organizations, and in recent decades, Vienna has been a high -level spying site, peace negotiations and unnoticed assassinations. Now, as Adam Antos, the Havana syndrome - is an invisible attack, of inconvenient origin, directed to officials of the American embassy. The Austrian legal framework is effectively allowing foreign intelligence agencies to act as it deems appropriate, as long as it does not target the host country. But Austria has a little ability to impose this even. According to Sigfred Bear, the Austrian historian of espionage, “When we discover a mole within our services, it is not because we are good in fighting spying - but rather because we get a hint from another country.” The biggest problem with B.V.T. It is the characteristic of people. ” With a few exceptions, "it works with unlimited people, who have arrived there through police stations or political parties." Most officers do not have language training or international experience. In 2018, and after a series of scandals, the Ministry of Interior decided to solve B.V.T. It is supervised, and replaced by a new organization called the State Security and Intelligence Directorate. The officers are currently re -applying for their own positions within the new structure, which will be launched at the beginning of next year. But, as Bear sees, the effort is useless: “Where will you get six hundred people, suddenly, can they do intelligence?”
Press officers at the Ministry of Interior have hinted that it may be illegal for them to comment on this story. Bercher refrained from commenting. Weiss and Lang's lawyers did not participate. The Office of Economic Crime and Corruption at the Ministry of Justice, which investigates the circumstances of granting Al -Halabi asylum, said that he “has no files against Khaled Al -Halabi”, but I have several thousand pages leaked from his investigation. A week of my arrival to Austria, I sent a detailed request to the Mossad ; He went without an answer. Likewise, three requests were done to the Israeli embassy in Vienna, and one to unit 504. On a sunny morning, I walked to the embassy, on a quiet street on both sides of the trees. "We did not respond to you, because we do not want to respond to you!" An Israeli official was removed through the loudspeaker at the gate. “Spread what you want! We will not read it. When I approached, I noticed that on Google Maps, the name of the building was referred to in Arabic letters, the house - the house. For a few minutes, I sat on a bench near the entrance, listening, through an open window, to a woman speaking Arabic that was cooking in the old Halabi apartment, 1A. Then I reviewed the door bell: “Lamberg” - the name of the cover of Oliver Lang. A teenage boy answered the door, but he was younger than being a sweet son, Qutaiba. I asked if I was there. The boy said: “He left long ago.” I asked him how the name knew. He replied that Austrian journalists had come to the apartment before. The next day, I visited the attorney of Halabi, Timo Jeppraver, in his office in the tenth district of Vienna. He said that the government abolished a Halabi situation, because it was obtained by deception, and that he appealed the decision, on the pretext that the disclosure of Halabi's work for Israeli intelligence poses a major threat to his life to the point that Austria should protect him forever. . He said: "No one can obtain asylum in Austria if he says the truth." According to Jeperfar, my Halabi is confused. It seems that the Mossad has stopped paying its expenses. A few months ago, Halabi tried to stay in a shelter with other refugees, but the shelter looked at his background and kept him away. I discovered a new title for Halbi, in the twelfth neighborhood, a home area for many immigrants from Turkey and Balkan. Later on that afternoon, I walked in the streets near the building where he lives, where people returned to their homes from work. The neighborhood was full of men -like men - in the last middle age, with weight gain, with a length of five and a half feet. I must review a thousand faces. But none of them was for him. However, according to a person familiar with Luchin's thinking, public opinion in the Ministry of Justice is "it is Syria, which is a war. Everyone is tormented. ” Other European governments have expressed their openness to normalizing diplomatic relations with Assad, and took steps to deport refugees to Syria and neighboring countries. If my Halabi is the highest Syrian war criminals to be arrested, it is only because the largest monsters are protected. The obstacle that prevents the trial of Assad and his deputies is the political will of the United Nations Security Council. According to the former Halabi chief in Damascus, Ali Mamlouk, to Italy on a private plane in 2018. Mamluk is one of the worst war criminals - his command, which was issued by Halabi, was shooting at gatherings of more than four people in Raqqa. . But Mamlouk - who was punished since 2011, and was prevented from traveling to the European Union - met with the director of Italian intelligence, and he came and went. A Austrian young woman answered. You have never heard of Halabi, and she was not interested in his identity. A Halabi image was shown in each store and a restaurant in a three -diameter circuit of three blocks from the address. "We know a lot of people in this neighborhood," said a man of the Balkan with a gray beard. Stress in the picture again and shake his head. "I haven't seen this man before."
On my way out of the twelfth neighborhood, I walked across the western side of the residential building, where the balconies overlook a garden.Directly over the Austrian woman’s apartment, a man resembling Khaled Al -Halabi sat on his balcony, protected from the sun’s rays late in the morning.But I could not confirm that he is.A paper on the door has not been answered.According to one of the neighbors, the apartment is empty.A lie was echoed by the Syrian Foreign Minister, thirty years ago, and it has been going on in my head: "Brunner is this ghost."♦*Ben Top, a major writer, was awarded the Politzer Award for the year 2020 for novel writing.His reports on Iraq for the year 2018 won the National Journal Award and the George Palk Award.