A joint plot by Qatar and Turkey to explode the plane carrying Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was thwarted by the timely information given by the Jordanian intelligence agency to the Syrian security officials.
Jordan’s intelligence agency disclosed the assassination plot on Assad’s life, informing their Syrian counterparts that terrorists intended to cause a blast in Assad’s private plane at Latakia airport, the Lebanese al-Diyar newspaper reported on Sunday, quoting the ambassador of one of the Arab countries who asked to remain anonymous.
Based on the plot, the terrorist al-Nusra Front fighting against Syria were ordered to ambush the plane carrying the Syrian president with missile attacks.
The terrorists wanted to target the plane with Sam-7 missiles, which were supplied to the terrorists by Qatar via Turkey, near Latakia airport, the newspaper reported.
In a relevant report, the British newspaper Financial Times published an investigation in May which revealed that Qatar spent billions of dollars in the past two years to fund the Syrian terrorist and rebel groups.
“Qatar has spent about three billion dollars in the past two years to support the opposition in Syria, which far exceeds what provided by any other government. However, the Saudi Arabia competes now in leading the bodies providing Syrian opposition with weapons,” the paper said.
“The cost of the Qatari intervention in Syria only represents a very small part of the international investment of Qatar,” it added.
FT claimed that Qatari support for the Syrian opposition overwhelms the western support.
The UK daily also noted that during scores of interviews it made with militant opposition leaders at home and abroad, along with senior western and regional officials, everyone stressed the growing role of Qatar in the Syrian crisis, and this has become a controversial issue.
The paper pointed out that “the small state with huge appetite” is the largest donor of aid to the Syrian opposition, offering generous grants for dissidents, amounting fifty thousand dollars per year for the dissident and his family, according to some estimates.
Sources close to the Qatari government said that the total spending on the Syrian crisis reached $3bln, while the armed opposition and diplomatic sources said the amount of Qatari assistance reached one billion dollars at most.
“According to the Institute for Peace Research in Stockholm which tracks the arms supply to the Syrian opposition,” the paper added, “Qatar is the largest arms exporter to Syria, where it funded more than 70 cargo flights of weapons to neighboring Turkey between April 2012 and March 2013.”
Syria has been experiencing unrest since March 2011 with organized attacks by well-armed gangs against Syrian police forces and border guards being reported across the country.
Hundreds of people, including members of the security forces, have been killed, when some protest rallies turned into armed clashes.
The government blames outlaws, saboteurs, and armed terrorist groups for the deaths, stressing that the unrest is being orchestrated from abroad.
In October 2011, calm was almost restored in the Arab state after President Assad started a reform initiative in the country, but Israel, the US, its Arab allies and Turkey sought hard to bring the country into chaos through any possible means. Tel Aviv, Washington and some Arab capitals have been staging various plots to topple President Bashar al-Assad, who is well known in the world for his anti-Israeli stances.
