“The Syria that I spent last week in does not resemble the sensationalist images that are endlessly played and replayed by the international media,’’ he wrote on March 25, two days after Syrian police reportedly killed 15 protesters in a predawn raid. “What is important now is for committed friends to be vocal in their support of President Assad’s leadership.’’
“I will take my first-hand understanding into the world and argue loudly and convincingly that President Assad, far from being the problem, is actually the most critical part of the solution,’’ Sager added.
Sager’s e-mail came to light after a hacker collective called LulzFinancial published the logins and passwords to personal accounts of senior Syrian officials. Followers of the collective were able to gain access to the accounts, and the gossip website Gawker published the correspondence with Shaaban under a headline accusing Sager of being “a Shill For Syria’s Brutal Dictator.’’
Yesterday, Sager said that the purpose of his trip had been “to see whether I could stimulate positive, constructive change by encouraging Syrian leadership to be open-minded about change.’’
“I am very disappointed to see that such a change has not come, and I am greatly saddened to see the escalation in violence in the 11 months since my visit,’’ he wrote, adding that he had not been back to Syria or contacted Syrian officials since March 2011.
“I have not advocated on behalf of the Syrian government to anyone at anytime,’’ Sager wrote in an e-mail response to questions from the Globe.
Sager made his fortune by turning a small Boston jewelry liquidator into a global financial advisory firm, but he has spent much of the last decade roaming the world for the charity he calls the Sager Family Traveling Foundation and Roadshow. He has created foundations with the Dalai Lama and the musician Sting, set up programs that train female doctors in Afghanistan, and arranged microloans for women who survived the genocide in Rwanda to start small businesses.
