Syria's Dirty Tricks

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Jay Solomon and Nour Malas report on the Syrian regime’s dirty work in the United States, spying on and intimidating dissidents. (Indeed, Syria has been engaged in subterfuge for the last few months.) Sometimes Bahar al-Assad’s henchmen made good on their threats.

One Syrian-American scientist in Philadelphia, Hazem Hallak, said his physician brother, Sakher, was tortured and killed in May by Syria's intelligence agencies, the mukhabarat, after he returned from a medical conference in the U.S. Syrian agents in Aleppo were obsessed with obtaining a list of Syrian activists and U.S. officials the brother had allegedly met during his stay, Hazem Hallak said. 

"They want to intimidate us wherever we are," said Mr. Hallak, who said he believes Syrian agents or regime sympathizers tracked his brother inside the U.S. Mr. Hallak said his brother wasn't involved in anti-Assad activities.

The story reports that the FBI is investigating the Syrian ambassador to Washington, Imad Moustapha. The White House should throw Damascus’s envoy out of the United States. There is no possible justification for permitting a foreign diplomat to plot against U.S. citizens, residents, and allies on American soil.