Boris: I’m sickened. Now end this barbaric regime
FOREIGN Secretary Boris Johnson has expressed his horror over the pictures obtained by The Mail on Sunday – and said that they had redoubled his determination to work for the removal of the Assad regime. Mr Johnson said last night: ‘The sickening images show the utter barbarism of Assad and his regime. He has blood on his hands and is responsible for the majority of the 400,000 people killed in Syria over the past five years.
‘He cannot command the loyalty of the people on whom he has inflicted so much suffering and there
must be a transition away from this barbaric regime.’
The recent evidence of human rights abuses in Syria has hardened the Foreign Secretary’s resolve after he had appeared to soften his stance last month, when he floated the idea of Assad being permitted to run for election as part of a ‘democratic resolution’ of the civil war.
Mr Johnson made the remarks after new US President Donald Trump had thrown the Anglo-Washington position into doubt by using one of his first interviews after winning the election to say that his focus would be on defeating Islamic State in Syria rather then toppling Assad. ‘I’ve had an opposite view of many people regarding Syria. My attitude was you’re fighting Syria, Syria is fighting IS, and you have to get rid of IS,’ Mr Trump had said.
But at a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Mr Johnson declared that after the torture revelations, he no longer thought that Assad was fit to ‘take control of its democratically elected government’.