Whistle blower website Wikileaks announced Thursday that it would publish nearly 2.5 million e-mails from 680 agencies in Syria over the next two months. In a press release on the organization’s site, Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange claimed “the material is embarrassing to Syria,” and “Syria’s opponents.”
Dubbed ‘Syria Files’ by Wikileaks, the collection of emails span from August 2006 to March 2012 includes communications from the nation’s Ministries of Presidential Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Finance, Information, Transport and Culture, according to a post on its website early Thursday.
Assange, who’s currently awaiting political asylum in the Ecudoran Embassy in London, added the Syrian leak “helps us not merely to criticise one group or another, but to understand their interests, actions and thoughts.”
The Middle Eastern nation remains embroiled in a bloody rebellion that has seen more than 15,000 people killed. The conflict, mired in its 16th month, has suppressed the voices of the country’s political activists, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) which has found several scams targeting dissenters online as of late.
Wikileaks hopes the e-mails, which boast insider information from the nation’s top political figureheads, will “shed a light on the inner workings of the Syrian government and economy.” According to Wikileaks, ‘Syria Files’ is allegedly eight times larger than 2010’s infamous ‘Cablegate’ leak. This fall marks the second anniversary of the publication of the Cablegate e-mails: a slew of information that included more than 250,000 sensitive U.S. government documents.
In February, the site published a wave of emails from the strategic intelligence firm Stratfor it claims it landed through an Anonymous hack late last year.
