World

American ambassador to Syria: Bashar al-Assad is evil

Jamie Weinstein Senior Writer
Font Size:

The American Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford called Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad evil in an extensive interview with The Daily Caller Wednesday from his mission in the Middle Eastern country.

“Yes, actually I do because what’s happening under his authority in terms of people being tortured to death, people being shot who are unarmed and no one being held accountable for it,” Ford responded following a pause after being asked by TheDC if he thought Assad was  “evil.”

“I can understand it if it was against orders and you just were trying to remake a police force or you were trying to remake a prison system and so there are a lot of orders being disobeyed, but you would want people held accountable. But because I see no accountability, I can only assume that on some level that he accepts it if not encourages it. To me that would be evil.”

Ford explained that he tells his embassy staff that despite the tremendous sacrifices they are making to represent the United States in Syria, they can take satisfaction in the fact that they stand on the side of virtue in a “huge morality play.”

“I’ve told this to my embassy team. I mean, we are here without our families — [we’ve] cut the embassy by half because of security reasons,” he said. “What I’ve told the people here is at least we are on the right side, the right side in terms of the morality of the issue.

“The people who are out marching for change and demanding it — demanding to be treated with dignity with respect to their basic human rights — they’re not violent, they’re not killing people. And so for once you are in a place where there is a huge morality play going on and you are on the right side of the issue and you can take satisfaction from that, that the sacrifices you are making are being made for the right reason.”

Since Syrians began staging protests against the Assad regime earlier this year, the regime has killed more than 2,700 protesters and injured many more, according to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

Visit The Daily Caller tomorrow for a more extensive report on our interview with Ambassador Ford.

Email Jamie Weinstein and follow him on Twitter

Watch: