Agnes Mariam de la Croix

[2] Born Marie Fadia Laham in Beirut, Lebanon, her Palestinian father had fled Nazareth at the time Israel was created in 1948[3][dead link‍] while her mother was Lebanese.

[6] 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.

[2][7][8][9][10][11] 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".

[12] In 2012, Father Paolo Dall’Oglio, a priest who had lived in Syria for 30 years but was expelled during the war, described de la Croix as "an instrument" of Assad’s government: "She has been consistent in assuming and spreading the lies of the regime, and promoting it through the power of her religious persona... She knows how to cover up the brutality of the regime.”[13] 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.

De la Croix had been appointed as Jacquier's fixer by the regime, and put him on the bus to Homs the day he was killed,[14][15] while she remained in Damascus with pro-regime journalists.

[6][17] 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 far right activist Thierry Meyssan and subsequently reached some mainstream media outlets.

[22] Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, cited her analysis when he claimed there were "serious grounds to believe" the Ghouta attack "was a provocation", staged by Syrian rebels.

'"[20] In late 2013, De la Croix toured Israel (a country she told Ha'aretz that she "loved"[25]) and the United States, and visited Europe, presenting her version of events in Syria.