LONDON (AP) — As violence began racing through Syria last year, two European contractors were putting the finishing touches on an encrypted radio system that Syrian officials intended for their security forces, according to leaked company emails and three senior employees involved in the project.
The documents — made available to The Associated Press and other media organizations by the WikiLeaks organization — show that Greece's Intracom S.A. and Italy's Selex Elsag spent years building a Syria-wide communications network and equipped the government with thousands of walkie-talkies, motorcycle-mounted radio units and avionic transceivers used in helicopters.
The leaked documents give an unusually detailed look at the communications help Western companies have been providing Syria's regime — something activists find disturbing.
Both statements seemed hard to square with evidence that elements of the communication system were designed with the military in mind, or emails showing that Selex and Intracom had been providing technical support to Syrian officials as recently as February — a time when government forces were using artillery to pound rebel-held areas of the Syrian city of Homs.
Intracom spokesman Alexandros Tarnaris refused to answer a series of detailed questions about the apparent discrepancies between his company's statement and the evidence seen by the AP; Selex spokesman Carlo Maria Fenu also declined to answer questions.
The type of system they were building is called a terrestrial trunked radio, or TETRA, a technology employed the world over to provide resilient, long-range communication for emergency workers, transport services and private industry.
[...] the technology — considered more secure than conventional cell phone networks — has law enforcement and military applications as well.
The leaked documents provide a partial picture of how the companies saw TETRA being used in Syria, but they make clear that a large chunk of their equipment was earmarked for the country's police force — much of it shipped even as revolt against Damascus was gathering steam.
Another itemized list — this one attached to an Intracom email sent Feb. 2, 2012 — notes €300,000 worth of costs associated with a Police Administration Center in the Syrian city of Aleppo, as well as references to work carried out at a police academy in Damascus, two further traffic police sites in the capital and a fourth police site in the Damascus suburb of Barzeh.
Intracom manager Mohammad Shoorbajee's profile on the professional-networking site LinkedIn — which he has since modified to remove all reference to his work — said the project included the construction of 130 base stations, four command-and-control centers, dispatch stations, core switches, and the delivery of some 17,000 Selex radios across Syria.
A billing document dated Oct. 19, 2011, broke the equipment down, listing more than 11,000 walkie-talkies, 3,500 mobile radio units for use in vehicles, 1,600 radio dispatch consoles, 1,400 motorcycle-mounted units, 60 marine units for use on sea, and 30 avionic transceivers for use in helicopters.
Borderline cases have received an increasing amount of attention as pro-democracy uprisings in the Arab world have torn the lid off the machinery of state surveillance.
Last year The Wall Street Journal revealed that Syrian officials were using Internet filtering devices made by California's Blue Coat Systems Inc. In November Bloomberg reported that Italian company Area S.p.A. had been using U.S. technology to equip Damascus with a powerful mass surveillance network.
Nakoul denied that he or his company had taken sides in the conflict gripping Syria, saying that he'd already received death threats from rebel sympathizers after WikiLeaks published his email address.
The documents — made available to The Associated Press and other media organizations by the WikiLeaks organization — show that Greece's Intracom S.A. and Italy's Selex Elsag spent years building a Syria-wide communications network and equipped the government with thousands of walkie-talkies, motorcycle-mounted radio units and avionic transceivers used in helicopters.
The leaked documents give an unusually detailed look at the communications help Western companies have been providing Syria's regime — something activists find disturbing.
Both statements seemed hard to square with evidence that elements of the communication system were designed with the military in mind, or emails showing that Selex and Intracom had been providing technical support to Syrian officials as recently as February — a time when government forces were using artillery to pound rebel-held areas of the Syrian city of Homs.
Intracom spokesman Alexandros Tarnaris refused to answer a series of detailed questions about the apparent discrepancies between his company's statement and the evidence seen by the AP; Selex spokesman Carlo Maria Fenu also declined to answer questions.
The type of system they were building is called a terrestrial trunked radio, or TETRA, a technology employed the world over to provide resilient, long-range communication for emergency workers, transport services and private industry.
[...] the technology — considered more secure than conventional cell phone networks — has law enforcement and military applications as well.
The leaked documents provide a partial picture of how the companies saw TETRA being used in Syria, but they make clear that a large chunk of their equipment was earmarked for the country's police force — much of it shipped even as revolt against Damascus was gathering steam.
Another itemized list — this one attached to an Intracom email sent Feb. 2, 2012 — notes €300,000 worth of costs associated with a Police Administration Center in the Syrian city of Aleppo, as well as references to work carried out at a police academy in Damascus, two further traffic police sites in the capital and a fourth police site in the Damascus suburb of Barzeh.
Intracom manager Mohammad Shoorbajee's profile on the professional-networking site LinkedIn — which he has since modified to remove all reference to his work — said the project included the construction of 130 base stations, four command-and-control centers, dispatch stations, core switches, and the delivery of some 17,000 Selex radios across Syria.
A billing document dated Oct. 19, 2011, broke the equipment down, listing more than 11,000 walkie-talkies, 3,500 mobile radio units for use in vehicles, 1,600 radio dispatch consoles, 1,400 motorcycle-mounted units, 60 marine units for use on sea, and 30 avionic transceivers for use in helicopters.
Borderline cases have received an increasing amount of attention as pro-democracy uprisings in the Arab world have torn the lid off the machinery of state surveillance.
Last year The Wall Street Journal revealed that Syrian officials were using Internet filtering devices made by California's Blue Coat Systems Inc. In November Bloomberg reported that Italian company Area S.p.A. had been using U.S. technology to equip Damascus with a powerful mass surveillance network.
Nakoul denied that he or his company had taken sides in the conflict gripping Syria, saying that he'd already received death threats from rebel sympathizers after WikiLeaks published his email address.
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