The Mill of Blackmail!

ME Transparent site is emerging as a source of some hardcore intelligence information with regard to the current situation in Syria. I am not sure who the sources are, but they seem pretty informed and pretty close to the regime. Transparent’s latest reports on Syria inform us that: one, the empty building near the national TV station that reportedly “came under attack” by a terrorist Islamist cell a few weeks ago, was actually a secret prison, known among the Syrian intelligence officers as the Tahouneh or the Mill, but it quite possible that the people who got killed were no attackers, but inmates, and that the attack was staged.

Second, sources inform us that the Syrian authorities are holding over 1,600 Saudi nationals and using them as a pressure card against the Saudi government with regard to the situation in Lebanon and to the growing pressures on the regime. The Saudis are reportedly affiliated with al-Qaeda, and they seem to have been arrested while on their way to Iraq. This might explain indeed Saudi recalcitrance with regard to applying pressures on Syria and to shutting their media outlets in the face of Syrian opposition figures. The sheer number of detainees here means that there are simply too many families involved that the Saudi monarchs don’t want to anger at this stage. This is a pretty effective technique indeed, if the report is true.