Assad hands IS fighters 'kill list' to British MPs

According to The Sunday Telegraph, a dossier of the British fighters was handed to Conservative MPs David Davis and Adam Holloway, who had been invited to visit Assad in Damascus in the spring.

The list targets 25 Britons, accused by Assad of joining IS, for assassination. Fourteen on the list have already been killed, including two of a trio of named brothers from Brighton who travelled to Syria two years ago.

Eleven more British fighters are thought to be alive, including Khadijah Dare, who is accused by Assad of being the first Western female foreign fighter to join IS.

Also on the list is Sally Jones, a Muslim convert and mother-of-two who is thought to have taken one of her children to Syria, and two teenage twin school girls from Manchester.

Two brothers from Cardiff and a group of young men from Portsmouth are also thought to be on the list - along with "Jihadi John", the IS executioner of a number of Western hostages.

The "kill list" is written in Arabic but the accompanying propaganda DVDs are narrated in English.

"This film showcases samples of those criminals who perpetrated the most atrocious crimes against the Syrian people," according to introduction to the videos.

"They are random samples possessed by the Syrian state amongst tens of thousands in the private archive of those international murderers."

In addition, the Syrian state accused notorious hate preacher Omar Bakri Mohammed of radicalising young Britons and encouraging them to fight in Syria.

Assad provided the list as a cheap investment in the idea that he heads a great regime that is fighting terrorism amid an international conspiracy. - Michel Kilo

The Syria-born preacher established a large network of Islamists in the UK before being forced into exile a decade ago in Lebanon, where he is currently in jail over terrorism offences, analysts have said.

According to the Telegraph, the UK has its own list of targets - and the disclosure of an Assad "kill list" will raise speculation that the two countries may even be sharing intelligence.

A number of British IS fighters have already been killed in drone attacks sanctioned by the UK and US governments.

They include Mohammed Emwazi, the real identity of "Jihadi John", who was killed by a US military strike in November, and 21-year-old Reyaad Khan from Cardiff, who was killed in an "act of self-defence" in an RAF "precision airstrike" in September last year.

Junaid Hussain, a 21-year-old computer hacker from Birmingham, was also killed in a US military drone strike.

'Cheap investment'

Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that British intelligence agencies would have no need for such a list.

"Assad's move came to promote the idea that his regime is fighting terrorism, while his crimes were the main drive behind the emergence of these extremist groups," he told The New Arab.

Rahman added that IS and other extremist groups used video of Assad's crimes to incite and recruit child fighters.

Assad's move came to promote the idea that his regime is fighting terrorism, while his crimes were the main drive behind the emergence of these extremist groups. - Rami Abdel Rahman

Michel Kilo, a writer and prominent Syrian opposition figure, agreed with Abdel Rahman.

"Assad provided the list as a cheap investment in the idea that he heads a great regime that is fighting terrorism amid an international conspiracy," he said.

"He is also attempting to prove that he has the country under control and that he is able to monitor all extremist groups in the country."

'Propaganda and self-delusion'

Commenting on his visit to Damascus in April, Davis described what he received from the government as a "mixture of propaganda and self-delusion", adding that whenever he and his delegation mentioned civil war, the government officials would respond with denial, insisting that they were being "attacked by foreign fighters and enemy states".

"The only jihadist group that is led and dominated by foreign fighters is Islamic State. The others may in part be acting as proxies for Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, but they are predominantly Syrian people led by Syrian commanders, at least in the country itself," Davis told The Telegraph.

"But to recognise that is to recognise that those Syrians had a grievance against the state, which the Syrian state refuses to do."

The Conservative MP added that when faced with allegations of murder, torture and mistreatment by security services and soldiers, government officials "insisted that they had mechanisms in place to deal with this".

"But they could not tell me why there had not been a single prosecution for such crimes."

Isa Abdul Rahman

Among the names mentioned on Assad's "kill list" was Isa Abdul Rahman, a British doctor who was killed in May 2013 after regime forces shelled the hospital where he worked in the northwestern province of Idlib.

Dr Abdul Rahman left his position with the Royal Free Hospital in north London to volunteer with a British charity working in Syria. At the time, IS had still to get a grip on rebel-held areas.

He flew to Syria in 2012 to help civilians in areas caught up in the bitter civil war between forces loyal to Assad and opposition fighters.

His inclusion in the list was expected to provoke outrage, as there appears little justification for him to be named alongside the likes of "Jihadi John" and other British members of armed groups.