‘Irrational & unlawful’: UK govt dealt landmark defeat over arms sales to Saudi Arabia

RT

In a legal challenge brought by anti-arms trade campaigners, three of the UK’s top judges concluded that it was “irrational and unlawful” of the government to allow arms sales to Saudi Arabia without making proper checks. 

The UK Court of Appeal has ruled that the British government has “made no attempt” to assess whether Riyadh had breached international humanitarian law in the Yemen war.

… the process of decision-making by the Government was wrong in law in one significant respect.

However, the judges said that their ruling does not mean that UK arms export licences to Saudi Arabia have to be suspended immediately.

See also: UK report on ‘human rights’ forgets to mention Saudi Arabia in section on Yemen war

Facial recognition: Britain faces a dystopian future

George Harrison
spiked.com

Automated facial recognition (AFR) is the state’s latest, and most invasive, surveillance technology.

Since 2015, three police forces – South Wales, Metropolitan and Leicestershire – have made use of AFR in controversial live trials. Now, South Wales Police have been taken to court by office worker Ed Bridges, who started a crowdfunding campaign when he felt his privacy had been violated by AFR.

Bridges’ legal challenge has been backed by civil-rights organisation Liberty, which argues that the indiscriminate deployment of AFR is equivalent to taking DNA samples or fingerprints without consent. According to Liberty, there are no legal grounds for scanning thousands of innocent people in this way. It also claims the technology discriminates against black people, whose faces are disproportionately flagged by mistake, meaning they are more likely to be stopped by police unfairly.

In London, AFR has been put on hold while the Metropolitan Police carries out a review. The Met is also facing a legal challenge of its own from Big Brother Watch, another civil-liberties group. Director Silkie Carlo, a vocal critic of AFR since its inception, told spiked: ‘People are right to be concerned when they can see us moving towards a police state. The result of this technology is that the normal relationship between innocence and suspicion has been inverted.’

One camera, placed in a busy, inner-city location, can scan the faces of up to 18,000 pedestrians per minute, automatically logging the features of anyone unlucky enough to walk past. A computer immediately checks these faces against a database of wanted mugs and lets nearby officers know if there’s a match.

I have previously warned on spiked against the illiberal use of this technology, and the flaws inherent in AFR policing have since become even clearer. Around 50 deployments have taken place so far in Wales alone, including during the Champions League final in Cardiff in June 2017. On that occasion, the cameras scanned 2,470 people – 92 per cent of whom were wrongly identified as criminals.

The trials do not exactly inspire confidence in the accuracy of this technology. But even if AFR worked perfectly, its use would still violate our right to privacy and turn us all into suspects. In previous live AFR trials, it was unclear what would happen to members of the public who refuse to be scanned. Well, now we know: anyone who doesn’t consent to being turned into a walking ID-card will be treated like a criminal.

Read more

38 arrested in Rotherham, UK, as police probe child sex abuse and exploitation on claims of 13 victims

 

© PA
(Top row, left to right/) Tayab Dad, Nasar Dad, Basharat Dad. (Bottom row left to right/) Matloob Hussain, Mohammed Sadiq and Amjad Ali groomed two girls and sexually abused in Rotherham.

Richard Spillett
Daily Mail

Detectives investigating child sexual exploitation in Rotherham have arrested 40 people over the past two months. The 38 men and two women were questioned following allegations made by 13 victims about sexual abuse against them between 1997 and 2015. The National Crime Agency said the people arrested are aged between 29 and 53 and are from Sheffield, Rotherham, Leeds, Dewsbury, and Maidstone in Kent. All have been bailed or released under investigation pending further inquiries. The spokeswoman said the victims in the latest cases were aged between 11 and 26 at the time of the alleged offences. The National Crime Agency, often called 'Britain's FBI', is conducting a huge investigation after a 2014 report found more than 1,000 young girls had been abused in the South Yorkshire town. Scandals have since engulfed other towns and cities, including Newcastle, Telford and most recently Huddersfield, with a series of similar gangs jailed.

Vulnerable young victims were typically given drugs and alcohol before being passed around between men of Pakistani heritage to be raped and sexually assaulted at will. Authorities did little to tackle the abusers or save their young victims from their terrible ordeals, often due to fears over being labelled racist.

The latest arrests are part of the ongoing Operation Stovewood investigation. Towards the end of 2018, the NCA said it had 151 designated suspects, 275 other people under investigation and 296 female survivors of exploitation actively engaging with officers.

The NCA has full control of allegations between 1997 and 2013, with 250 staff and an annual budget that will soon reach £15 million a year.

Carl Vessey-Baitson from the National Crime Agency said: 'Arresting such a large number of individuals as part of one Stovewood sub-operation shows our desire to listen to victims and bring offenders to justice is not wavering.

Read more

Money laundering - Why the UK does not prosecute it

"Despite the UK’s rhetoric about wanting a “world-leading reputation for integrity” as a financial centre, it has never prosecuted a single company or bank for money laundering."

True Publica

A study by the CCP Research Foundation – which analyses banks’ so-called ‘conduct costs’ – revealed that the biggest 20 banks worldwide, including the biggest four in Britain, had paid or set aside £264 billion for fines in the five years to 2017. Britain’s biggest banks have paid out £71 billion for misconduct in the decade since the financial crisis. Much of these fines have related to money laundering but they were not prosecuted in the UK.

Lloyds is the bank that has suffered the heaviest penalties with at least £23.4 billion in conduct-related costs and write-offs since 2008.  RBS is second on the list. Its conduct and litigation costs since 2008, including amounts it has earmarked but not yet used, add up to £20.6 billion. The bailed-out bank also agreed to pay £3.6 billion to settle an investigation by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) for misselling mortgage-backed securities – the bonds at the heart of the 2008 crisis in America.

RBS and Lloyds were bailed out when the financial crisis broke out to the tune of £45.5 billion and £20.3 billion respectively.

Barclays avoided a UK state bailout – but only by taking £12 billion what looks like illegal emergency funding from the state of Qatar. The Serious Fraud Office is involved.

HSBC has forked out nearly £10 billion in fines and other costs for its conduct since 2008.
In the last few weeks – Standard Chartered, the British bank has been ordered to pay $1.1bn (£842m) by US and UK authorities to settle allegations for breaching sanctions against countries including Iran.

But it doesn’t end there does it – it just keeps on going.

In 2019 alone, leaving aside Standard Chartered, the Financial Conduct Authority has dished out fines to the financial services sector at the rate of more than one a month. In total, to the 9th April, they have fined the industry or people in it collectively to the tune of £272,487,887.

What is interesting here is the missing link. British banks are world leaders in shovelling trillions into tax havens, most of it to evade taxation but a very good chunk of it is pure money laundering. 

Tyrants, despots, mass murderers, terrorists, traffickers – they are just as good a customer as any as far as the banks are concerned. Here, the British government and its toothless Financial Conduct Authority fail in every sense of the word. Money laundering through British tax haven islands and crown dependencies is something the state approves of – hence the lack of fines or punishment dished out for it.

Donald Toon, director at the National Crime Agency, admitted that money laundering in the UK was “a very big problem” and estimated that the amount of money laundered here each year has now risen to a staggering £150 billion. I would think that is on the light side.

Susan Hawley is Policy Director of Corruption Watch. She worked for six years at the Corner House on corruption issues, having previously worked in the policy team at Christian Aid on ethics and corruption issues. Here is her take, (originally published a year ago), on money laundering by British banks.

Read more

UK Israel Lobby Adds Muscle as US Lobby Weakens

JonathanCook 
Jonathan-Cook.net 

For decades it was all but taboo to suggest that pro-Israel lobbies in the United States such as AIPAC used their money and influence to keep lawmakers firmly in check on Israel-related issues — even if one had to be blind not to notice that that was exactly what they were up to.

 

When back in February U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar pointed out the obvious – that U.S. lawmakers were routinely expected to submit to the lobby’s dictates on Israel, a foreign country – her colleagues clamored to distance themselves from her, just as one might have expected were the pro-Israel lobby to wield the very power Omar claimed.

But surprisingly Omar did not – at least immediately – suffer the crushing fate of those who previously tried to raise this issue. Although she was pressured into apologizing, she was not battered into complete submission for her honesty.

She received support on social media, as well as a wavering, muted defense from Democratic grandee Nancy Pelosi, and even a relatively sympathetic hearing from a few prominent figures in the U.S. Jewish community. 

The Benjamins Do Matter 

Omar’s comments have confronted – and started to expose – one of the most enduring absurdities in debates about U.S. politics. Traditionally it has been treated as anti-Semitic to argue that the pro-Israel lobby actually lobbies for its chosen cause – exactly as other major lobbies do, from the financial services industries to the health and gun lobbies – and that, as with other lobbies enjoying significant financial clout, it usually gets its way. 

Read more

Jeremy Hunt is lying about Britain’s role in Yemen

Stop The War Coalition

In a recent Politico article Jeremy Hunt, foreign secretary, has defended the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia and The UAE. Arms that are often used in perpetuating Yemen’s civil war. Hunt claims the UK-Saudi relationship ‘Helps us influence their leaders’ toward peaceful resolution. In reality, Britain’s supply of arms only feeds the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The multi Billion pound Al Yamamah (The Dove) arms deal provides Saudi Arabia with 25% of its arms imports for use fighting Houthi forces in Yemen. As the second largest arms supplier to the Saudi led coalition Britain is culpable in its infamous war crimes. Such atrocities have included bombing a wedding party killing 20 civilians; bombing a funeral killing 140 civilians and wounding 600 more; and even an air attack on a school bus leaving 40 Yemeni children dead. British firm BAE systems provides the typhoon jets used for this type of air to surface attacks. No wonder that the UK wouldn’t back a UN investigation into Saudi war crimes.

Tens of thousands of Yemenis have been killed in the conflict, and millions more displaced. Combined with mass starvation and a cholera epidemic Yemen is now the site of the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. 

Read more

The war on No Deal is a war on democracy

Comment: Brexit has always been a mistake by the Elites overshadowing the incumbent government and most MPs who are largelt eurocratic in their worldviews. Therefore, Brexit was never EVER meant to be a genuine attempt to foster a truly independent, self-regulating country - or even something akin to the kind of sovereignty Scandanavia has. Theresa May has always been tasked with obfuscating, delaying and generally scuppering any hope of a real Brexit. People don't seem to get this still. It's not incompetence - it's purposeful subversion of democracy where voters wrong-footed the elite crowd psychology. But like similar referendums of the past (think the Lisbon Treaty) the vote is simply re-introduced are sufficient propaganda saturation and they get the answer they want. 

The same will happen in this case, albeit after a particularly tortuous route. 

The British Establishment had no intention of leaving and have spent much of their waking hours making sure that it'll never happen. This includes the Eurocrats who would suffer considerable harm if Britain did exit. 

Therefore, much of the various Euro-British meetings and the hysterical overanalysis dispensed by the MSM is pure theatre.

Doubtless many of those who believe in the elitist project of the EU for allsorts of romantic reasons will be happy that Brexit won't happen. But they are probably the same people who believe that a gaggle of muslims brought down the twin towers on 9/11 and gender equality should be taught to pre-school kids. 

How can you reason with that?

---------------------

Brendan O'Neill
spiked.com


The political elite’s hysterical hatred of No Deal is a cover for their contempt for Brexit itself. 

So there goes Brexit. Voted for by 17,410,742 people, voted down by 313 MPs. Backed by the largest number of British voters ever to back anything, seen off by a gaggle of MPs who hate what we voted for. Make no mistake: this is what last night’s slim win for Yvette Cooper’s amendment means. It means the only remaining policy option that resembles Brexit – leaving the EU without a deal – has been legally obliterated. If the House of Lords now gives the nod to the Cooper legislation – and being a hotbed of Brexitphobic elitism, there’s no reason it wouldn’t – and if the EU agrees to a further extension to the Article 50 process – which it might well do – then Brexit as we knew it is finished. 

It can feel difficult sometimes to grasp the gravity of the situation we face: the largest democratic vote in the history of this nation is being betrayed before our very eyes. Ignore the crowing Brexit-blocking MPs who say that the victory of the Cooper idea simply means that a ‘catastrophic’ No Deal Brexit will no longer be an option, and that brave MPs who are so much cleverer than us pig-ignorant plebs have saved Britain from the ‘cliff edge’ of ‘crashing out’, etc etc. These Orwellian euphemisms are simply a disguise for what the political elite’s war on No Deal represents – a war on Brexit. When you hear MPs saying ‘We have to prevent No Deal’, what they really mean is: ‘We have to prevent Brexit.’ And preventing Brexit of course means preventing democracy, disenfranchising millions, overturning 100 years of a democratic contract that defined modern Britain. This is the end of an era.

Read more

Cambridge University rescinds Jordan Peterson invitation

Comment: The world is going utterly insane. 

----------------------

The Guardian

Cambridge University has rescinded its offer of a visiting fellowship to Jordan Peterson, the self-styled “professor against political correctness”, after a backlash from faculty and students.

Peterson, a psychology professor from Toronto who has courted controversy for his views on transgender rights, gender and race, announced on Monday via his YouTube channel that he was joining Cambridge for two months.

“In October I am going to Cambridge University in the UK for two months and I will be a visiting fellow there at the divinity school and should give me the opportunity to talk to religious experts of all types for a couple of months, as well as students,” he said. “It’s a thrill for someone academically minded ... to be invited there, to sit in and participate for a few months.”

The University of Cambridge said Peterson requested to be a visiting fellow and was initially granted the opportunity, but after further review it decided to take back the offer.

“[Cambridge] is an inclusive environment and we expect all our staff and visitors to uphold our principles. There is no place here for anyone who cannot,” a spokesperson for the university said.

Read more

Brexit and Bad Faith

Craig Murray 

My long article on the Chagos Islands sat unfinished yesterday, despite my passion for the subject, as I was horribly fascinated by the Gothic twists and turns of the Brexit debates in the House of Commons. I seldom write on the subject, but some observations seem now called for.

The Westminster system of handling business is designed purely to handle binary questions disputed between two major parties. Where those parties are both themselves hopelessly riven by internal conflict, and the issues not simply reduced to a manageable number of binary choices, Erskine May just cannot cope.

Parliament thus ended up yesterday with a vote in which the majority of MPs who voted against May’s Withdrawal Agreement view its Irish Backstop provision as almost the only decent thing in it – an opinion with which I tend to concur. They however were egging on the antediluvian DUP/ERG faction to join them, on the basis of an argument that the Irish Backstop is terrible and could be permanent, neither of which anyone sensible really believes.

It says something about the insanity of UK politics that the debate quite seriously hinged around discussions of what happens if the EU acts in bad faith and used the “backstop” deliberately to trap the UK permanently in the Customs Union. The notion that the EU is acting in “bad faith” is frankly ludicrous. No trading partner has ever accused the EU, which has the most transparent negotiating process on trade deals of any country or trading bloc, of acting in bad faith. In its own interest, yes. In bad faith – ie lying and tricking – no. 

Read more

UK councils invest £566m in arms firms linked to Yemen war

theguardian.com

More than half a billion pounds of council workers’ pension money has been directly invested by local authorities in arms companies implicated in Saudi Arabia’s military campaign in Yemen, in which thousands of civilians have been killed.

Council pension funds have sizeable shareholdings in BAE Systems, Airbus, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, according to nearly 100 freedom of information requests.

Between them, 43 pension funds directly hold shares worth £566m in the five companies and earned more than £18.5m in dividends in 2018, a period in which civilian deaths reportedly surged and a punishing famine took hold.

The councils also hold hundreds of millions of pounds in shares in the five companies via pooled investments, which they do not control directly.

The holdings mean thousands of local authority staff will have their retirement payouts part-funded by the companies, some of which manufacture arms linked to incidents in which civilians and children were killed.

The Guardian gathered the data through the freedom of information website 
WhatDoTheyKnow.com.

Read More

UK officials show contempt for what voters love by ditching World Cup in Russia – John Pilger

RT

Award-winning journalist and filmmaker John Pilger has blasted British politicians for refusing to attend World Cup matches in Russia, as the national team makes a historic run in the tournament. 

"Not a single UK official was in the stadium to see England's magnificent win v Sweden," Pilger, whose documentary work earned him many prestigious awards, including multiple BAFTA honors, tweeted on Saturday. "It's as if those who take the people's votes to assume power over them have utter contempt for what they care about, as well as for the truth."

Pilger criticized not only the ruling Tories but also Labour Party chief Jeremy Corbyn, who – despite being an outspoken leader of the opposition – fell into line with the government in shunning the World Cup.

Read more

Where have all our insects gone?

Robin Mckie
The Guardian UK

When Simon Leather was a student in the 1970s, he took a summer job as a postman and delivered mail to the villages of Kirk Hammerton and Green Hammerton in North Yorkshire. He recalls his early morning walks through its lanes, past the porches of houses on his round. At virtually every home, he saw the same picture: windows plastered with tiger moths that had been attracted by lights the previous night and were still clinging to the glass. “It was quite a sight,” says Leather, who is now a professor of entomology at Harper Adams University in Shropshire.

But it is not a vision that he has experienced in recent years. Those tiger moths have almost disappeared. “You hardly see any, although there used to be thousands in summer and that was just a couple of villages.”

It is an intriguing story and it is likely to be repeated over the next few weeks. The start of summer is the time of year when the nation’s insects should make their presence known by coating countryside windows with their fluttering presence, and splattering themselves on car windscreens. But they are spectacularly failing to do so. Instead they are making themselves newsworthy through their absence. Britain’s insects, it seems, are disappearing.

This point was underlined last week when tweets from the naturalist and TV presenter Chris Packham went viral after he commented on the absence of insects during a weekend at his home in the New Forest. Packham said he had not seen a single butterfly in his garden, and added that he sleeps with his windows open but rarely finds craneflies or moths in his room in the morning. By contrast, they were commonplace when he was a boy. “Our generation is presiding over an ecological apocalypse and we’ve somehow or other normalised it,” he later said. 

Read more

UK seeks no assurances from Israel over use of British arms in killing of Palestinians

RT

The UK is conducting a “business as usual” relationship with Israel, seeking no assurances from the country regarding the use of British arms in the recent ‘massacre’ of Palestinians in Gaza, according to a UK historian.

Mark Curtis, the Middle East Eye journalist and historian, has taken to social media to highlight three major issues with the support that the UK government is currently giving the Israeli state, each of which demonstrate the UK’s “complicity” with a country facing numerous accusations of human rights abuses.

New information from parliament on UK support for Israel, none of which likely to appear in UK ‘mainstream’ media due to the de facto media blackout on critical reporting of this special relationship. See next 5 tweets

— Mark Curtis (@markcurtis30) June 12, 2018

Read more

Child sex gang of eight 'predatory' men who abused girls as young as 13 - jailed for a total of almost 90 YEARS

Comment: There is no doubt that these gangs are of ethnic extraction and all immigrants. That flies in the face of politically correct ideology, but facts are facts. What is worse, part of the reason such gangs were allowed to exist for so long is because police and some members of the communities were afraid of being branded "racist"  if they were to speak up about these crimes.

The vast majority of immigrants and ethnic minorities are law-abiding and go about their business like anyone else.  But questions have to be asked why these grooming gangs were so systematic and widespread and almost exclusively drawn from ethnic immigrants. Is this the result of unfettered immigration policies which encourage a far too rapid migration of people atop and increasingly fragile economic system? Or is it that such psychopathy rises to the surface because it is symptomatic of a culture that is in decline regardless of immigration policies? Obviously, this is a complex subject.

Nonetheless, the experiment that is "multiculturalism" hasn't worked, quite apart from these aberrations.  You mix very different cultures together in a short space of time it is only logical that "cultural diversity" becomes a myth, replaced by misunderstanding, tension and resentment. It has nothing to do with racism but simple cultural logistics and the clash of basic values.

----------------------------------

Mail on Sunday

A group of men who abused teenage girls in a vehicle they called the 's**gwagon' have been jailed for a total of nearly 90 years.

The men - aged 36 to 48 - befriended vulnerable girls as young as 13 before plying them drink and drugs at 'parties' in Oxford.

The eight men - branded 'predatory and cynical' by a judge - have now been jailed for between seven and a half and fifteen years each.

Judge Peter Ross said the investigation into the gang had uncovered 'systematic and widespread grooming'.

Investigating officer DS Nicola Douglas branded the gang's crimes 'abhorrent', adding: 'None of the perpetrators have admitted their guilt or shown any remorse.'

She praised the victims for coming forward, saying: 'The impact of these offences on the victims, their families and relationships cannot be underestimated. 

'There are devastating consequences which last long after the offence is committed.

Read more

Human traffickers are using lax Irish borders to smuggle migrants into Britain

Carly Read
Express

Migrants are forking out huge sums for new EU passports that allow them to dodge Cross-channel security in Calais and Dover in a farce dubbed by one smuggler as "a guaranteed way to get into the UK".

The immigrants are flown from Paris to Dublin where they travel by car to the Northern Irish border, a BBC investigation revealed.

They then take the ferry from Belfast to Glasgow and then the final leg of the journey to England where they begin a plush new life afresh.
The brazen plot has been nicknamed the 'Irish route' because after a swift passport check in Dublin, it is the last time documents are shown before getting into Britain.

Read more

New poll shows 63% of Brits say mass migration is too high

Westmonster

 In what should serve as another reminder that the British public want to see an end to mass migration, YouGov have found that 63% of Brits think the current level of migration is too high - with only 22% saying they support levels seen at the moment.

Support for slashing levels of migration includes 84% of Conservative voters, 49% of Labour even 43% of LibDem supporters. 

 57% of those asked want less or no unskilled migration, but are much more supportive of skilled workers coming in which is seen as the top positive of migration.

The top concerns however are of migrants claiming benefits and the pressure put on housing and public services.

Meanwhile the vast majority, 71%, support a so-called 'hostile environment policy' requiring people to show documents for opening bank account, accepting jobs or renting.

It serves as a wake-up call amid rumours of a government sell-out on migration. There is big public support for proper controls and a reduction in numbers. Outside of the European Union, there are no excuses. Mass migration must be ended and replaced with a sensible policy approach based on what Britain's economy requires.

Douma Chemical Attack Was Staged: This Short Video Proves it

Sott.net
 

The US, UK and French governments claimed that an 'chemical weapon' attack occurred in Douma on April 7th. They cited "social media" as their evidence for the attack, in particular a video of a chaotic scene inside a hospital where people were being treated. Yet rather than waiting for OPCW inspectors to visit the scene of the alleged attack to determine what occurred, the US, UK and French militaries attempted to bomb 10 targets, mostly Syrian military bases, on the morning of April 13th.

In the short video presentation below, several doctors and other medical personnel who were in the hospital room in the aftermath of what they said was shelling - and who appeared in the video used by the US, UK and French governments as evidence that a chemical weapon was used - tell their story. 

syria alikhbaria

Free Speech UK

Comment: I don't usually sign petitions but this is a very important one for British people. Here's the link: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/203615

Fifth of UK population now in poverty amid worst decline for children and pensioners in decades, major report reveals

The Independent

 

Britain’s record on tackling poverty has reached a turning point and is at risk of unravelling, following the first sustained rises in child and pensioner poverty for two decades, a major report has warned.

Nearly 400,000 more children and 300,000 more pensioners are now living in poverty than five years ago, during which time there have been continued increases in poverty across both age groups – prompting experts to warn that hard-fought progress towards tackling destitution is “in peril”. 

The report, by the independent Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), shows that a total of 14 million people in the UK currently live in poverty – more than one in five of the population. While poverty levels fell in the years to 2011-12, changes to welfare policy – especially since the 2015 Budget – have seen the numbers creep up again.

UK to experience longest fall in living standards for over 60 years

The findings will fuel challenges currently facing Theresa May over failure to improve equality in the UK, after the entire board of her social mobility commission quit over the weekend at the lack of progress towards a “fairer Britain”.

Alan Milburn, the Government’s social mobility tsar, who has chaired the commission since 2012, announced on his resignation after months of “indecision, dysfunctionality and lack of leadership”, adding there was “little hope” of Ms May’s administration delivering a more equal society.

Read More

Assad says UK, France airstrikes in Syria are futile

Press TV

 Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says airstrikes launched by the UK and France against purported positions of the Daesh Takfiri terrorists in the Arab country will be futile as the two states lack the will as well as the vision on how to defeat terrorism.

Putting Paris and London among the main supporters of terrorists in Syria, Assad said their participation in the so-called US-coalition that purports to target Daesh positions is illegal.

"It is legal only when the participation is in cooperation with the legitimate government in Syria. So, I would say they don't have the will and they don't have the vision on how to defeat terrorism," President Assad emphasized.

The US-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes inside Syria without any authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate since September 2014. The mission has fallen severely short of dislodging the terrorists. Takfiri terror groups like Daesh and the al-Nusra Front have expanded freely despite the US-led coalition air raids, Assad said.

The Syrian leader hailed the Russian aerial campaign against terror groups operating in his country as legal and constructive since it has been coordinated with Damascus.

"Look at the Russians, when they wanted to make this alliance against terrorism, the first thing they did was they started discussions with the Syrian government before anyone else. Then they started discussing the same issue with other governments. Then they came. So, this is the legal way to combat any terrorist around the world," said the Syrian president.

Moscow launched its air raids against the Takfiris, including Daesh terrorists, in Syria on September 30, upon a request from the Syrian government. 

Read more