On July 5, the online leak group known as WikiLeaks, stated that it would begin releasing a cache of more than 2.4 million emails between Syrian politicians, government officials and companies dating from 2006 until March 2012.
According to a statement announced in London, WikiLeaks said that it aimed to "shine a light on the inner workings of the Syrian government and economy" and that the disclosures within the emails would embarrass not only President Bashar al-Assad of Syria but also adversaries of Assad and his ruling Ba'ath Party.
The "violent internal conflict" (which has divided that country and led to widespread criticism of Asaad for ordering a harsh repression of the uprising against him) was also cited in the statement.
"The range of information extends from the intimate correspondence of the most senior Baath Party figures to records of financial transfers sent from Syrian ministries to other nations," WikiLeaks said.
A WikiLeaks statement said that the emails, totaling 2,434,899 are written in Arabic, Russian and English.
"In such a large collection of information, it is not possible to verify every single e-mail at once," it said, but it is "statistically confident that the vast majority of the data are what they purport to be."
So far, only 25 of the emails published on the WikiLeaks site.
According to the New York Times, the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, remains confined to the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he is seeking refuge amid efforts to extradite him to Sweden to face allegations of molestation, sexual abuse and rape brought by two women in Stockholm. Assange says that he fears that he will be sent onward to the United States and prosecuted for WikiLeak's release of thousands of classified American military and diplomatic documents back in 2010.
