WikiLeaks publishes millions of Syrian internal emails

WikiLeaks began publishing 2.4 million internal emails from Syria on Thursday afternoon, including emails from the Syrian government, high-ranking politicians and government-affiliated companies.

WikiLeaks announced this on Thursday afternoon. The 2.4 million emails were sent between August 2006 and March this year, and were sent from and received by 680 different domain names. These include domain names of Syrian government organizations, such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Finance.

As with many previous publications, the entire file is not released at once, but a certain number is published each day. WikiLeaks frontman Julian Assange promises the material is “shameful” for both Syria itself and its opponents. It is unknown how the documents were obtained.

The Syria Files shed “a light on how the Syrian government and economy works,” according to WikiLeaks, but also reveal how “the West and Western companies say one thing and do another.”

According to a WikiLeaks spokeswoman, the number of documents is eight times that of Cablegate, with WikiLeaks publishing internal, American diplomatic traffic. WikiLeaks is partnering with a number of media outlets for the release, including Germany’s ARD, Associated Press and two Arab media.

The database contains 680,000 different senders and over a million different recipients of e-mails. Of the 2.4 million emails, 400,000 are written in Arabic and 68,000 in Russian. How many emails were written in English and other Western languages ​​is still unknown.

Syria is governed autocratically by President Bashar al-Assad, who has recently cracked down on protests against the regime. In recent times, Western leaders have turned away from Al-Assad, but not too long ago, many Western countries still had good relations with the autocratic leader.