Agnes Mariam de la Croix

Mother Superior Agnes Mariam of the Cross (born 1952), also known as Mother Agnes,

Early life Born Marie Fadia Laham in Beirut, Lebanon, her Palestinian father had fled Nazareth at the time Israel was created in 1948 while her mother was Lebanese. After her education by French nuns, she became a hippie for 2 and a half years while travelling in Europe, India and Nepal. (“Lebanese marijuana is the best in the world,” she said.

De la Croix gained the consent of the religious authorities to work with the Melkite Greek Catholic Church in 1992, and moved to Syria about two years later with the objective of establishing a monastic foundation and restoring a monastery. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, she "was clearly pushing the official line that the 'terrorists' were Islamic extremists bent on overthrowing a regime that she described as a protector of Christian minorities in Syria".

During the civil war, she used her close relations to the Assad government and connections to Christian circles in Western Europe to host visitors to Syria under the protection of the regime. After French journalist Gilles Jacquier was killed in Homs during 2012 (one of the first journalist casualties in the Civil War ), his widow and two colleagues wrote a book in which they alleged de la Croix had been involved in a Syrian government plot to kill Jacquier. De la Croix had been serving as Jacquier's fixer, and put him on the bus to Homs the day he was killed, while she remained in Damascus with pro-regime journalists. De la Croix sued for defamation but lost the case, the court finding that "the words and acts which are the object of legal proceedings are not sufficiently specific" ('trop imprécis').

De la Croix also alleged that the May 2012 Houla massacre, in which the government killed over 100 people, was staged by the opposition and its victims in fact Alawites and Shia converts, a conspiracy theory that was promoted by left-wing activist Thierry Meyssan and subsequently reached some mainstream media outlets.

The same year de la Croix stated that, in Homs, 80,000 Christians were displaced by opposition groups, and that the majority of fighters were from outside Syria. The latter claim was disputed by, among others, an anti-Assad group named Syrian Christians for Democracy, reported The Independent. Interviewed by The Australian in October 2012, she said the rebellion "steadily became a violent Islamist expression against a liberal secular society." She said the attacks were staged by rebels and the victims kidnapped pro-government Alawites, a claim rejected by family members of abducted people from that community.

She said that in 2013, rebels based near her monastery warned her extremist fighters wanted to abduct her. The rebels helped her to flee. According to rebel spokesman Quasi Zakarya, up to 1,800 women, children and others were freed, but about 300 men were arrested by the government and forced to join the Syrian army. ) and the United States, and visited Europe, presenting her version of events in Syria. she spoke at venues, mainly churches, on the US west and east coasts. after two participants, Jeremy Scahill and Owen Jones, decided not to speak at the meeting if it meant sharing a platform with de la Croix.

In 2018, she continued to host pro-government visits to Syria, telling participants that the government of Saudi Arabia, and not that of Syria, was responsible for refugees in Europe, because it wants the West to be Islamized.