The Syrian sway has hired a well-known British law firm to alert it due to the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.
Matrix Chambers, which has a strong reputation for combating for human rights and whose lawyers include Cherie Booth, Philippe Sands and Clare Montgomery, was taken on in advance this year after a UN investigation linked members of the Syrian capacity services to the killing. The UN has threatened Syria tuck away sanctions if it does not cooperate with the investigation.
The firm has represented other dictatorships in the past, notably the former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet in the House of Lords case all the way through 1998-9.
Ms bernard law montgomery QC, who is leading the team advising Damascus with Mr Sands QC, declined to comment yesterday.
The firm is cute about the relationship with Syria, direction part because of the possible damage to its reputation from association cloak a government whose inner circle has been accused of involvement repercussion murder, which has a poor overall human rights record, and which adds support to valorous groups domination the middle easterly such for the Lebanese-based militia Hizbullah. The small band of dissidents and human rights activists in Damascus criticised Matrix.
The law firm’s involvement emerged moment the week during which a senior british diplomat fictional a secrecy trip to Damascus to explore whether the president, Bashar Assad, is interested in ending his country’s isolation from the west. Mr Sands, who is academic of law at University College london and author of a e book challenging the credo of the Iraq war, also visited Mr Assad in advance this year.
The united kingdom government believes Mr Assad is keen to establish good relations stash the west but is caught maturity in faction fighting between the ones who, like him, favour negotiation, and others who have been emboldened by way of Hizbullah’s success against Israel this summer.
Relations between the west and Syria have been bad seeing a long time but deteriorated sharply after Mr Hariri was killed by a bomb in Beirut in February last year.
Matrix is pressing the Syrian government to stand together with UN demands to co-operate with the investigation. The firm is involved primarily keep from Syria’s foreign responsibilities reasonably than the details of who was behind the amusing. another group of British lawyers is preparing the safeguard case for five Syrian security officials identified by the UN as suspects.
Matrix was chosen by the Syrian embassy in London. Sami Khiyami, the ambassador, in an interview shelter the Guardian earlier this year, described the UK legal system being „extremely advanced and the beside to international law”.
