Wikileaks ‘Syria Files’ page on their website
The data comes from 680 Syria-related entities and domain names including data from the Ministries of Presidential Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Finance, Information, Transport and Culture.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who is currently staying in Ecuador’s embassy in London, said the files reveal dealings between the Syrian government and Western companies that could prove embarrassing for both sides.
"The material is embarrassing to Syria, but it is also embarrassing to Syria’s opponents," said Assange in a written statement. "It helps us not merely to criticise one group or another, but to understand their interests, actions and thoughts. It is only through understanding this conflict that we can hope to resolve it."
Syria currently faces violent internal conflict that has claimed thousands of lives in the past 18 months.
The files are said to show information ranging from intimate correspondence of the most senior Baath party leaders to recording of financial transactions sent from Syria to other nations.
The database contains 2,434,899 emails from the 680 domains. There are over 678,000 different email addresses that have sent emails and over 1,000,000 different recipients.
Over 400,000 emails are in Arabic with 68,000 in Russian. The data, dating from August 2006 to March 2012, is more than eight times the size of ‘Cablegate’ in the number of documents.
Only a small portion of documents were released today but the rest of the emails are expected to be released in the near future.
Wikileaks says that over the next two months controversial stories from the files will appear in Wikileaks, Al Akhbar (Lebanon) Al Masry, Al Youm (Egypt) ARD (Germany) Associated Press (United States) L’Espresso (Italy) Owni (France) and Publico.es (Spain).
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