Syria: Syria said yesterday that reports linking it to a US airman charged with spying at the US Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay were "baseless and illogical".
US television network show NBC News and the New York Times newspaper reported that senior US airman Mr Ahmad al-Halabi, who is in jail in California on espionage charges, stands accused of attempting to pass information to Syria.
Syrian Information Minister Mr Ahmad al-Hassan called the reports "baseless and illogical". He said he found it incredible anyone could believe that intelligence screening for such a top-level post would not have filtered out possible spies.
"Would the CIA fail to find a translator that it trusts and had previously trained for a job of such a level of secrecy?" he said when asked by journalists about the news reports.
The Pentagon said on Tuesday that the Air Force-enlisted man was charged with spying and aiding the enemy while working as an Arabic translator at the US Naval Base in Cuba, where hundreds of suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners are jailed.
Mr al-Halabi, a 24-year-old Muslim, was charged after he was found to have classified information on a computer in violation of strict security rules at the base.
In addition to Mr al-Halabi, a native of Syria who moved to the United States as a teenager, the military is holding US Army Islamic chaplain James Yee, who also worked at Guantanamo, at a military brig in Charleston, South Carolina, on suspicion of espionage.
No charges have been filed against him yet.
Syrian-US relations traditionally have been tense over US policy in the Middle East. Washington accuses Damascus of developing chemical weapons and supporting terrorism by backing anti-Israel militant groups that Syria calls freedom fighters.
Lebanon's top Shia Muslim cleric, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, yesterday hit out at Washington's Syrian policy.
"America speaks to Syria like a dictator speaks to its subjects," he said at his weekly roundtable.
Washington ratcheted up pressure on Syria, the main power broker in Lebanon, earlier this month, accusing it of allowing militants to cross its border into Iraq to kill US soldiers.
"Where are the slogans of freedom and democracy that America brandishes in the region's face when it addresses an independent country like Syria in this way?" Sheikh Fadlallah said. - (Reuters)