Does kidnapped U.S. lesbian blogger in Syria actually exist... or did she steal London woman's ID?

[Magda Hassan]

Does kidnapped U.S. lesbian blogger in Syria actually exist... or did she steal London woman's identity?

By John Stevens

Last updated at 9:04 AM on 9th June 2011

• London woman says photo of U.S. lesbian blogger 'kidnapped in Syria' is actually her
  
• Jelena Lecic said: 'I don't know how this happened, I've never met her. This has put me in danger'
  
• Blogger's 'girlfriend' admits she's never met her
  
• Story of alleged kidnap was reported across the globe
  

The reported kidnap of a U.S. lesbian blogger in Syria has come into question after a woman in Britain claimed that photos being used to call for her release are actually her.
Thousands of campaigners joined protest groups after media outlets across the world reported that Amina Arraf, a blogger known for her frank posts about her sexuality and her open criticism of President Bashar Assad had been detained.
But a woman in London came forward today claiming the photos being circulated were actually her, raising questions about the existence of the blogger.
Fake? These photos had been used by the prolific gay blogger


Concerns: Jelena Lecic said that the identity theft has put her in danger

Jelena Lecic found out that pictures of her were being used by the blogger when she saw her photo used next to an article in a British newspaper.
It reported that on Monday the supposed U.S. citizen was bundled into a car by three men in their 20s in civilian clothes in Damascus, the capital of Syria, where homosexuality is illegal.


More...

• Syrians flee 'mass slaughter' as troops roll in to their town to crush rebel forces
  

'That is absolutely my picture taken in the last year in Paris,' Miss Lecic told the BBC's Newsnight.

'It was [taken] on my birthday. I don't know how this happened. I was very upset to see my picture.
'I've never met her [Amina]. I'm not part of her blog. I'm not friends with her,' said the Croatian who is working as an adminstrator at the Royal College in London.
'I'm very upset because you have privacy settings on Facebook and obviously it doesn't work because anyone can hijack your picture.

'This has put me in danger. This person is a gay activist in Syria. I really don't feel comfortable.'


Stolen identity: Jelena Lecic, who lives in London, said her photo was used alongside stories about the 'missing' Syrian blogger


Lesbian blogger? A woman in London said this photo reported to be of blogger Amina Arraf is actually her

Miss Lecic believes that her identity was stolen about a year ago, when her Facebook photographs appeared on another person's profile.
An activist with the Local Coordination Committees, a group which helps documents the protests calling for an end to the Assad regime, had confirmed to reporters on Tuesday that Arraf had been taken.
But on Wednesday, the same activist said the group had no independent confirmation' and had reported it based on an entry by Arraf's cousin on her A Gay Girl in Damascus' blog and from two people who claimed to be friends but who also got the information from the blog.
As far as we know, nobody's emerged who has actually met her,' the activist said.
On Tuesday news outlets across the globe reported the story of Amina Arraf, who it was claimed wrote a blog called A Gay Girl in Damascus', a mixture of erotic prose and updates about Syria's uprising, including her participation in anti-regime protests.
Campaign: Thousands of people have joined a Facebook group calling for the release of Amina Arraf

Gay girl in Damascus: Followers of the blog have started a campaign for her to be freed

A person claiming to be her cousin, Rania Ismail, posted on her cousin's blog, that Arraf had been taken in a car that had a sticker depicting Assad's late brother Basel, according to a friend who was nearby and saw what happened.
Amina hit one of them,' her cousin posted on Monday night. One of the men then put his hand over Amina's mouth and they hustled her into a red Dacia Logan.'
We are hoping she is simply in jail and nothing worse has happened to her,' Miss Ismail wrote.
A woman who had claimed to have been Arraf's girlfriend has admitted she had never actually met her.
Sandra Bagaria, who had said she 'crashed to the street' sobbing when she heard about the kidnapping, had conducted an online relationship with her since January entirely through Internet communications in writing, including more than 500 e-mails.
The protests go on: Hundreds took to the streets in Talbiseh, in the central province of Homs, after it came under attacks from government troops

The day before the supposed blogger was reportedly detained, Arraf wrote: I am complex, I am many things; I am an Arab, I am Syrian, I am a woman, I am queer, I am Muslim, I am binational, I am tall, I am too thin; my sect is Sunni, my clan is Omari, my tribe is Quraysh, my city is Damascus.
In the blog Arraf also said that she was born in Virginia, but no public records with her name or her parents' names have been found there.
Since the uprising against Assad began in mid-March, a government crackdown has left about 1,300 people dead and more than 10,000 detained, according to human rights groups.
Homosexuality is illegal in Syria and gays are frowned upon by the country's conservative society. It is rare for gay Arabs to speak openly about their sexuality.
Thousands of people had joined a Free Amina' Facebook page, calling for her release.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...z1OukAKeXD

[Peter Lemkin]

Psyop IMO more likely than one person stealing a photo and using it....why would someone do that?!...but some intel agency wanting to hurt Assad and Syria would have the means and the motive.,,,and wouldn't care about the blowback to a lesbian female blogger. There is enough REAL horrors to report on, why invent false ones?! They are so used to lying, it just comes natural and is preferable to the truth for them, it seems.

[Peter Lemkin]

The mystery of Amina Arraf

Posted by Emanuelle Degli Esposti - 10 June 2011 15:26

Questions have been raised about the identity of the Syrian blogger since news broke of her abduction earlier this week.


Mystery woman: a veiled protestor attends a demonstration against Bashar al-Assad's government in May 2011.
At first, it seemed like a straightforward -- if disheartening -- case of yet another internet activist paying the price for speaking out against the regime under who's watch they have the misfortune to live. On Monday evening Amina Arraf, a young gay woman living and blogging in Damascus, was reportedly kidnapped by armed men -- assumed to be members of Syria's notorious secret services -- and taken to an unknown location.

"We do not know who has taken her, so we do not know who to ask for her back," wrote her cousin, Rania Ismail on the homepage of Amina's blog, A Gay Girl in Damascus.

Major news organisations and social media sites around the world quickly picked up on this harrowing tale of a young woman punished for her outspoken beliefs and commitment to her sexual identity -- the "Free Amina" Facebook page amassed over 15,000 followers in the days since her disappearance.

But the story has quickly unravelled.

Doubts about Amina's identity surfaced after it emerged that the photographs purportedly of her were in fact taken from the Facebook page of Jelena Lecic, a Croatian woman living in London who has no connection to any lesbian woman in Damascus. Journalists and investigators have been unable to find any traces of a Damascene woman whose personal life corresponds to that of Amina, and the US embassy in Damascus also has no record of her existence, which is highly suspicious considering her claims to have dual American citizenship .

So, who is Amina Arraf? It is perfectly possible that "Amina" is merely the pen name of a Syrian activist who has been careful in concealing their identity from the authorities -- although perhaps not careful enough. Equally, there is a possibility that the blogger is entirely a work of cynical online fiction (cases of which have been reported before, as in the instance of Plain Layne, a young bisexual female blogger who transpired to exist purely in the imagination of Odin Soli, a middle-aged man who had previously blogged as Acanit, a young Muslim lesbian with a Jewish girlfriend).

Amina's story raises myriad questions about the elusiveness of online identity and the problematic nature of trying to verify information purely through the internet. But however mysterious or suspicious this particular case may be, it should not make us forget the plight of thousands of other bloggers and activists in the Middle East and across the world who have been forcibly detained for expressing their views.

And if the writer of A Gay Girl in Damascus does exist, and is currently being held by the Syrian security services, we can only hope that the media flurry surrounding this story will in some way aid his or her circustances by raising awareness of the situation in the country.

[Magda Hassan]

Is 'Gay Girl in Damascus' blogger really a student at Edinburgh University?

By Daily Mail Reporter

Last updated at 3:49 PM on 10th June 2011


A blogger who has become an internet sensation with her tales of the Syrian uprising could in fact be an Edinburgh-based hoaxer.
Amina Arraf won support for her outspoken criticism of the Syrian regime after she began posting under the name 'A Gay Girl in Damascus'.
But after a letter claiming to be from her cousin said she had gone missing in the Syrian capital Damascus, having possibly been arrested by the authorities, questions began to be asked about how genuine the blog is.

Fake? This photo, used by prolific lesbian blogger Amina Arraf was said to have been stolen from the Facebook of Londoner Jelena Lecic


Reports in the U.S. suggest that Miss Arraf, who claims to have been born in the States, has been sending emails from a computer with an Edinburgh IP address.
One commentator has suggested she may even be a student at Edinburgh University, having previously hinted at plans to study there.



During an interview she gave in April, Arraf wrote: 'I've been trying to write a slightly fictionalised autobiography for some time (fictionalised as in other people have their names changed) and when the Arab revolutions began, I realised I wanted to get my voice out there.
'The force of events has meant that my blog is more about events than anything else right now.'

Prestigious: Syrian blogger Amina Arraf is reportedly studying at Edinburgh University after her IP address was located there


However, suspicions were raised earlier this week when photographs supposedly showing Arraf were, in fact, revealed to be taken from the Facebook page of a young London woman, Jelena Lecic.
American blogger Paula Brooks said she started communicating with Arraf via email in February but became suspicious about her identity when she saw the Edinburgh IP address.
Arraf reportedly told Miss Brooks she occasionally used proxy web addresses to protect her safety in Syria.
An email that Arraf sent to Brooks in February read: 'On another subject, do you have any opinions regarding graduate schools for history/classics/archaeology in the UK?

Danger: Jelena Lecic told BBC Newsnight the Syrian blogger used her pictures and put her at risk



'I'm applying for Masters' programs (at Edinburgh, St Andrews, Oxford, Cambridge and Kings) with the intention of doing a PhD afterwards (as I can ''commute'' from here for the majority of the time) and wonder if it is a good idea.'
Since Arraf's IP address is in Edinburgh, Brooks has suggested that Arraf could have been blogging from the Scottish capital all along.
Arraf also reportedly told Brooks that she was related to Najah Al-Attar, the current vice president of Syria, who attended the university.
U.S. Embassy officials in Syria are said to be urgently trying to establish further details about Arraf.
Edinburgh University said it could neither 'confirm nor deny' whether Arraf was studying there.



Gay girl in Damascus: Followers of the blog have started a campaign for her to be freed after she was reportedly taken away by authorities in Syria

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...z1P1VOhTYr

[Magda Hassan]

Blogs » Ali Abunimah's blog
New evidence about Amina, the "Gay Girl in Damascus" hoax

Submitted by Ali Abunimah on Sun, 06/12/2011 - 04:24
Ali Abunimah and Benjamin Doherty write:
We have gathered compelling new evidence regarding the "Gay Girl in Damascus" blogger hoax.
Those responsible for this hoax have caused a great deal of concern and anguish by posting information alleging that "Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari" the supposed "Gay Girl" blogger had been kidnapped from the streets of Damascus, possibly by Syrian authorities, and was likely in grave danger.
A measure of the concern that this story has caused is the formation of a Facebook group calling to "Free Amina Arraf" with more than 15,000 members, as well as numerous action alerts and stories in international media.
We believe the story of Amina to be totally baseless and the doubts expressed by other observers, such as Liz Henry and Andy Carvin, to be entirely founded.
We also believe that whoever is responsible for the hoax is attempting to conceal their responsibility and continues to disseminate false information. They have previously engaged in such behavior as taking photographs from the Facebook page of a totally uninvolved individual and deceptively presenting them as being images of Amina and members of her family.
We believe that the person or persons responsible should end this deception which has been harmful to individuals who trusted and believed in "Amina" and more broadly has sown confusion, distraction and absorbed energy and attention at a time when real people are in danger in Syria and in other countries in the region.
We are sharing the information we have gathered here not in order to level accusations, but so that others might pursue these leads to conclusive ends. The best outcome would be if the person or persons behind the hoax would take responsibility themselves to bring the matter to a close and provide all doubters with reassurance that "Amina" is not in danger because she is a fictitious character.
While we believe that the information gathered here is compelling in its own right, we have managed to corroborate additional information from several independent sources that we are not publishing and that significantly increases our confidence in the information we have. We do not know the motives of the person or persons behind this hoax.
The information presented below connects the "Amina" blogger to two people in real life: Thomas (Tom) J MacMaster and Britta Froelicher who are married to each other.
Correspondence

The Electronic Intifada wrote to MacMaster requesting to speak to him about "Amina," to which he responded, "Thanks, but as I have stated before, it is neither my wife nor me."
A follow up email from The Electronic Intifada to MacMaster asking to speak to him so that we could present the information we have met with the following response:

Unfortunately, we're on vacation so I wouldn't be able to do so. We have already been confronted' by the Washington post with these and have denied them and will continue to do so."

We do not know what information The Washington Post may have confronted MacMaster with and whether it is the same information presented here. In a final response to The Electronic Intifada, MacMaster wrote:

I am not the blogger in question. Whomever that person really' is, I have doubtless interacted with her at some point. I do not know further than that about her. When I first read the news story, I momentarily thought I had an idea who she was. As time has progressed that seems much less likely. I understand there are a number of unusual coincidences regarding the blogger and either me or my wife. Those are, as far as I am aware, simply unusual. I am not going to make more of that.

MacMaster has acknowledged certain "coincidences" but as mentioned refused to grant us an opportunity to go through them in detail in an attempt to explain or debunk them. We present below the information we wanted to discuss with MacMaster.
"Amina's" home address is the same as MacMaster's address

On a private Yahoo discussion group named "thecrescentland" that was run and operated by "Amina" and has since been closed down, the following name and physical address information was displayed, according to a person who was a member of that group:
Amina Arraf & Ian Lazarus
c/o Mr & Mrs Abdallah Arraf-Omari
5646 Crestwood Dr, SW
Stone Mountain, GA 30087
There is, however, no evidence of an Amina Arraf, Ian Lazarus or Mr & Mrs Abdallah Arraf-Omari ever owning or occupying this address.
According to State of Georgia property records, the house at that address has been owned by Thomas MacMaster for many years. On 29 November 2007, MacMaster quit-claimed a share of ownership in the property to Britta Froelicher. MacMaster and Froelicher are the current owners of the property according to State property records.
MacMaster has not only owned the property but occupied it until September 2010 when he moved to Scotland. Evidence of his occupation of the property prior to that date includes invitations to barbecues he issued to friends via Facebook.
The possibility that MacMaster could have rented or lent his home to the "real" Amina is excluded by the fact that MacMaster claims not to know Amina.



Photograph of Assad billboard in Syria

In Amina's 11 May 2011 blog post "Irony" there appears a photograph of a billboard taken in Syria.

The same photo but with a tighter crop appears on Britta Froelicher's Picasa account.

The photo in the Picasa account also appears to have been sharpened and adjusted. It is clear, from details in the two images, including the person wearing a helmet in the foreground that the images were taken at the same time and place.
However, the fact that the image on the Amina blog has a wider field of view suggests it could not simply have been stolen from Froelicher's Picasa account. It would appear that the Amina blogger had access to the original image.
Many other images in Froelicher's account show her and MacMaster in Damascus.
Wikipedia edits from Edinburgh IP addresses

The Lez Get Real (LGR) web site published 19 articles purporting to be authored by an Amina Abdallah. On 10 June 2011, LGR issued An Apology To Our Readers About Amina Abdallah.
The apology claimed that LGR had been deceived by Amina and published her posts in good faith, believing her to be who she presented herself as. It also acknowledged that LGR had assisted Amina in establishing her "Gay Girl in Damascus" blog.
In a comment on that post, Paula Brooks, executive editor of LGR, gave two IP addresses which she said had been used by Amina to access LGR's servers. The whois records for these IP addreses both have descriptions that indicate they are allocated to UoE or The University of Edinburgh.
One of these IP addresses was the source of a number of edits to various articles on Wikipedia. These edits from 188.74.110.134 begin in October 2010. The edited pages all involve Middle East, Arab, Islamic and historical topics.
MacMaster posted Facebook updates between 4 September 2010 and 8 September 2010 documenting his move from Stone Mountain, Georgia to Edinburgh, UK, including 47 photographs added to a gallery named "First Days in Edinburgh" on 8 September.
Topics of Wikipedia articles edited from the Edinburgh IP address overlap with many topics and subject areas in which MacMaster and Froelicher have documented interests and experiences according to online records.
MacMaster has been active in the University of Edinburgh's Students for Justice in Palestine.
A note of caution about the source of the information on the IP addresses: Paula Brooks, Executive Editor of LGR claims to work at the Smithsonian Institution and to hold a Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr College and three Masters degrees from Gallaudet University, University of North Carolina, and University of Dayton.
However, Paula Brooks is the sole source of information on Paula Brooks; extensive Internet, dissertation abstract, media, and Lexis-Nexis searches reveal no evidence of the real life existence of such a person beyond the persona on LGR, Facebook and LinkedIn.
"Paula Brooks" may be an avatar for a real person who fits the same description but uses a different name in real life, or it could be a fabricated persona. The IP address information appears circumstantially to match MacMaster's movements and interests, but, given the uncertainties about its provenance, needs to be treated with extra caution unless Paula Brooks' identity can be confirmed.
Conclusion

The information we have collected here is not intended as either an accusation or final, conclusive proof of who may be behind the Amina hoax. However taken together we felt it was compelling enough that we had to publish it as soon as possible. This is primarily because we believe, and have observed, that the hoaxer(s) is both attempting to hide information that could lead to discovery and furthering the hoax with other false personas. By sharing this information we want to provide the best chance that this story can be brought to closure and people's attention directed back toward real world events.
http://electronicintifada.net/blog/ali-a...ascus-hoax

[Christer Forslund]

Who Financed Tom MacMaster?

Moon of Alabama Posted by b on June 13, 2011 at 03:11 AM

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2011/06/who...aster.html


The Gay Girl In Damaskus blog, which made the Syrian government look bad, was a hoax.

[On] Sunday, the truth spilled out: The gay girl in Damascus confessed to being a 40-year-old American man from Georgia.

The Electronic Intifada was the first to find the man and the Washington Post story builds on that report. But while the reporter at the Washington Post seem to have interviewed Tom MacMaster, the man who confessed of being the sockpuppeteer, they left out an important question. Here is how they describe him:

MacMaster, a Middle East peace activist who is working on his master's degree at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, ...
...
... he said Friday, reached in Istanbul, where he is vacationing with his wife, a graduate student working on a PhD in international relations.
...
... Stone Mountain, Ga. Local real estate records show that MacMaster has owned the house since 2000 and that he and his wife lived there until they left for Scotland in September 2010.
Sam MacMaster said his brother was offered a full scholarship from Emory University, which he chose for the school's expertise on the Austro-Goths. Once there, however, MacMaster quickly switched his specialization to Arabic studies. Later, he traveled to Syria and Jordan to perfect his language skills.
...
Tom MacMaster's interest in Syria also seems to have been deepened by his 2007 marriage to Britta Froelicher, a woman he met in Georgia through an online dating site. MacMaster said in the interview from Turkey that he and Froelicher traveled to Syria in 2008. In the same interview, Froelicher said she is working on a PhD at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, focusing on Syrian economic development.

A forty year old man who is still working on his master degree, married to a wife who is also yet to finish her academic degree. They both travel multiple times to Turkey, Syria and Jordan. He owns a house.
The question the WaPo reporter, and other media accounts on the story, do not answer is: Who is financing the MacMasters?
It is not normal for someone being forty to still work on a master degree. It is not normal for a pair who still are going to school to travel multiple times to Jordan, Syria and Turkey. It is not normal to become rich enough tio buy a house by being a Middle East peace activist. Unless of course one gets paid to be exactly that.
Someone must have financed the time it took MacMaster to write all the "exchanges" he had with that fictitious gay girl. Who was it?

[Magda Hassan]

The quickest way to poverty is to be a student and/or activist. Unless you have rich parents to support you. But most parents aren't prepared to do that when you are in you 40's.