The weekly Paris Match went to meet Bashar al-Assad for a rare interview. Régis le Sommier, deputy director of the editorial staff of Paris Match returns from Damascus, Syria, where he was able to talk with the Syrian dictator. The latter claims to the weekly, against all evidence, that torture is absolutely not the rule in his prisons and that al-Baghdadi, the head of the Islamic State, may not have been killed by United States.
For the journalist Régis Le Sommier, guest of Bernard Poirette's morning, on Europe 1, this interview poses no ethical problem. "I think that if in the past I had lived during the Second World War, and if I had the opportunity to interview Hitler or Stalin, during the Battle of Stalingrad, I would have gone," says the journalist .
"Our job is to go and see"
"I would like to ask the question to my colleagues: I do not think there is a journalist who will tell you 'no'," he adds. "Of course, there is a context to explain, there are questions to ask, we do our job, and it is to go and see, to ask, to go and ask questions.
In this interview, Bashar al-Assad asserts that French jihadists held in Kurdish prisons would be tried in Syria. Faced with the Turkish invasion, YPG Kurds have militarily allied themselves with the Syrian regime. In the event of a political agreement, the Syrian head of state could thus regain control of the north-east of Syria, and its prisons, in which there are French fighters of the Islamic State. "This is vital information and a question of national security," says Régis Le Sommier. "We are waiting for the reply from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs!"