Retired senior American diplomat Robert Ford has given a lecture in which he recounted working with MI6 to whitewash and rehabilitate terrorist Muhammad Al Jolani. At the time, Al Jolani — later rebranded to Ahmed al-Sharaa and installed as Syrian president — was leading al-Qaeda and ISIS fighters. And he expressed no regret at all for his group’s terrorist atrocities:

“Western values”

Here we have retired US diplomat Robert Ford openly acknowledged that he and Britain’s MI6 were involved in helping rebrand former Al-Qaeda head-chopper Ahmed al-Sharaa into Syria’s new leader.

Not diplomacy.
Not accountability.

Just a full-blown… pic.twitter.com/1k6qEyMSzH

— Richard (@ricwe123) September 23, 2026

Jolani ‘NGO’

Ford’s mention of a UK ‘non-government organisation’ (NGO) is a reference to ‘Inter-Mediate‘, an NGO strongly linked to the Secret Intelligence Service, often called MI6. As commentator @ricwe123 observed, this was a “full-blown image-washing operation”.

The UK government removed Sharaa’s terrorist group HTS from the list of banned organisations in October 2025. Before that, while HTS was still a ‘proscribed’ terror group, then-UK PM Keir Starmer invited Sharaa to the UK. Non-violent anti-genocide group Palestine Action was already — and remains — on the list of proscribed organisations. The Crown Prosecution Service and many UK judges continue to use subterfuge to sentence its activists as terrorists even for actions carried out before the group was banned.

Featured image via NewArab

By Skwawkbox

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