A man in his sixties dressed in military fatigues is sitting in a comfortable armchair somewhere in Syria. “I want to thank SOS Chrétiens d'Orient,” he says, “we will never forget [its] support.” Interviewed in 2019 by a member of the right-wing French association, the man, referred to as “Monsieur Simon”, presents himself as “a son of Mahardeh [editor's note, a Christian village north of Hama, in western Syria], “a civilian who took up arms to defend his city”. He then pays “great tribute to the leader Bashar al-Assad” and the Russian army.
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