Pat Dollard

Tweet

AP:

A Syrian-born, naturalized U.S. citizen has been indicted on charges of spying on U.S. activists opposed to the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad and providing audio and video recordings to that country’s intelligence agents.

According to an indictment unsealed Wednesday, Mohamad Soueid of Leesburg, Va., was arrested Tuesday and charged with conspiring to act in the U.S. as an agent of a foreign government. Soueid (pronounced SWAYD) was scheduled to make an initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Alexandria on Wednesday afternoon.

According to the indictment, Soueid sent 20 recordings between April and June to Syrian’s intelligence agency. They depict protests in this country against the Syrian regime, which has cracked down ruthlessly on anti-government protesters there. The indictment also states that he traveled to Syria in June to meet with Assad personally.

Soueid, 47, also tried to recruit others to monitor anti-Assad rallies and protests in the U.S., according to the indictment.

Soueid is also charged with making false statements about his activities for the Mukhabarat, Syria’s intelligence agency, when interviewed in August by the FBI.

“The ability to assemble and protest is a cherished right in the United States, and it’s troubling that a U.S. citizen from Leesburg is accused of working with the Syrian government to identify and intimidate those who exercise that right,” said U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Neil MacBride, whose office is prosecuting the case. “Spying for another country is a serious threat to our national security, especially when it threatens the ability of U.S. citizens to engage in political speech within our own borders.”

Soueid, who also goes by the names “Alex Soueid” and Anas Alswaid, was sued, along with Assad and others in the Syrian government, earlier this year in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia by a group of Syrian-Americans who say they were victimized by the regime.

The lawsuit alleges that through Soueid’s efforts, “the (Assad) regime learns the identities of Syrians based in the United States, who are trying to assist in the efforts to counteract the tactics of the (Assad) regime. He transmits such information to Damascus to initiate criminal conduct against the families of the identified Syrians.”