Jihadis You Pay For Panorama

On Panorama tonight:

a scandal involving British aid money.

The idea that British taxpayers' money was associated with that

would of course be wholly abhorrent.

We discover how a police force in Syria is being funded

with bags of our cash.

To see British money being held in a bag, and...

I, honestly, I only saw that in movies.

It was deeply shocking.

We expose how our aid money can end up with jihadis.

GUNFIRE

It is unfortunately strengthening the extremists

and the Islamic groups.

And we reveal how police officers we paid for

work with a brutal justice system.

They were like they are putting their hands in front of their eyes,

and, like, "We are not seeing anything."

Britain is generous when it comes to helping poorer countries.

We give £13 billion a year in foreign aid.

But the way we help other countries has changed.

The Government now gives much of that cash to private companies.

They then deliver aid projects around the world.

There must be accountability for the money that's spent,

and of course, the more difficult the environment you're operating in,

perhaps the greater leeway you give, but even more importantly, then,

there needs to be as much transparency and accountability

for the taxpayers' money.

One British company has done very well under the new system.

Adam Smith International.

Their offices are just across the river from Parliament.

In the last five years, Adam Smith International, or ASI,

has won British aid contracts worth more than £537 million.

Adam Smith International say they bring expertise and deliver results.

But earlier this year,

ASI was banned from new Government contracts

after serious questions were raised

about the company's ethical integrity.

I would say at the moment, ASI have proved themselves to be

an inappropriate company to spend such large amounts of aid money.

The thing that we are worried about is that ASI is already operating

a number of contracts that haven't been terminated

because they were already in process.

ASI still has a major project running in Syria.

It's managed from across the border in Turkey.

I've come to Gaziantep,

the front line for British aid going into Syria.

It's delivered by a network of Syrians,

because it's too dangerous for foreigners to cross the border.

I'm on my way to meet someone who works trying to implement

aid programmes inside Syria, paid for by British taxpayers.

What he saw happening there

made him decide to become a whistle-blower.

Waseem Enawi helped manage a project

for Adam Smith International in Syria.

-Hello, good morning.

-Hello, good morning.

But he says they ignored warnings British aid money was being misused.

What sort of problems did you begin to see

very early on, on the ground, in very simple terms?

-This is British taxpayers' money?

-Yeah, yeah.

What do you think...?

Waseem is not alone.

We've spoken to ten people

who've worked on the Adam Smith International project in Syria.

They want British aid to rebuild their country,

but they're shocked by what they've seen.

Some don't want to be identified.

Most of these problems were related to corruption.

Is there any chance that Adam Smith could not know

what was happening on the ground?

No, of course they knew.

And is corruption at the bottom of all this?

Exactly, exactly.

We would have expected that to happen in Third World communities,

but to see this with a British company, we were shocked.

EXPLOSION

The Syrian people desperately need British aid,

but it's difficult to deliver

in such a war-torn and risky environment.

There does need to be oversight and accountability.

Just because it's a war zone doesn't mean that everybody gets a free pass

and can spend money willy-nilly

without being accountable for the decisions they take.

WHISTLE BLOWS

This promotional video shows UK aid at work.

Britain is one of the main donor countries

funding the Free Syrian Police.

This year alone, we've promised £9 million.

Adam Smith International runs the project,

paying the police wages, providing uniforms, equipment and stations.

Their job is to make communities safer

in areas held by opponents of the Syrian regime.

But our whistle-blowers say

something's gone badly wrong with the police.

Panorama has obtained hundreds of internal ASI documents.

They show what happened to aid money after it was given to the company...

..and whose hands it sometimes ended up in.

You know, when you read all these internal documents from the company,

it's extraordinary -

the language is bland, but what they are describing is awful -

it's human rights abuses, it's executions,

it's police that are obviously weak,

and have been co-opted by the military groups.

Maybe there was underestimation

of how bad things could get in certain aspects. Erm...

And the more disturbing bit

is the repetition of those incidents over time.

The documents say that dead and fictitious people

were on the police payroll, and I want to find out more.

I'm going to talk to someone who's working for ASI in Turkey

alongside senior management,

and he's been across many of the details of their project in Syria.

What he's about to tell me could lose him his job.

He says there's fraud at many of the police stations

the British Government's been funding.

It was found that stations didn't exist at all.

And still, the aid continued.

Even now, we hear reports about stations that don't exist.

And this is still being overlooked.

One ghost police station is here in Koknaya in northern Syria.

This is the actual building.

It's pretty small, but it's supposed to be the base

for 57 police officers, partly paid for by us.

But our leaked documents show

that when one of ASI's staff visited the station last September,

there were no police present, and that was causing concern.

The police station in Koknaya is an illusion. It's just words on paper.

Some salaries were sent for the officers,

but in reality, there were no policemen on the ground.

We need to know that that money was going to support

actual policemen on the ground

doing a job that met our policy objectives,

and certainly from your investigations

and the briefings you've had from the people on the ground,

plainly that wasn't happening.

ASI's lawyers told us, on a later visit to Koknaya,

all officers were accounted for and presented valid ID.

But they've now suspended the payment of all salaries

at the police station.

And across Syria,

they've only been able to identify a very few examples

where deceased officers

have remained on a stipend or salary list.

There is an increased risk of this type of fraud

because the project is funded in cash.

Our leaked documents show hundreds of thousands of dollars

being regularly delivered to ASI's office in Turkey.

Syrian police chiefs then collect bags of cash,

which they transfer across the border.

I have always thought that...

..there are standards when it comes to handling money.

And then, to see...

again, British money, being held in a bag, and...

I... Honestly, I only saw that in movies.

It was... It was deeply shocking.

ASI says donors like the British Government

have full knowledge of the payments,

and cash is used because there's no practical alternative.

But it's what happens to that cash

when it gets over the border into Syria that really matters.

We've discovered some of it ends up in the hands of extremists.

Our aid money is funding jihadis.

MAN SPEAKS ARABIC

This part of northern Syria is controlled by fighters

from a group called Nour al-Din al-Zinki.

GUNFIRE

The Americans originally supported Zinki

in the war against the Assad regime,

but cut them off in 2015 following accusations of atrocities.

Last year, the group beheaded a young prisoner.

It was very clear by 2016

that Nour al-Din al-Zinki had committed violations

of international humanitarian law and human rights abuses.

For them, violations of, you know, summary killings or executions,

is something very normal.

MEN SPEAK INDISTINCTLY AND SHOUT

But we've discovered British aid money was routinely given

to the extremists by the Free Syrian Police or FSP.

Hi, Youssef, I'm Jane.

Youssef Houran is a lawyer who worked for the civil administration

in an area dominated by Zinki.

Thank you for coming to talk to us.

-TRANSLATION:

-Zinki used to get a percentage from the salaries

of the Free Syrian Police.

It was taking a percentage in return for their services,

and to create a sort of equilibrium between the police and the fighters.

Was this practice of sharing the FSP salary between the FSP and Zinki...

Was it systematic in the area? How widespread was it?

Exactly - it was systematic.

Not random, and it was run by the civil administration of Zinki.

The documents show that ASI and the British Government

knew about money going to Zinki at the end of 2015.

And another report, seven months later,

warns of the transferring of 20% of police salaries.

The cash is to pay for the military and security support

that Zinki provides to the five stations in areas under its control.

That's our money, extorted by extremists.

And the company's internal documents make it clear

that Zinki's misuse of the funds, essentially British funds, went on,

because they say,

"The persistent refusal of the group to relax the level

"of financial control it's exerting over the FSP

"sets a dangerous precedent."

A dangerous precedent, but they didn't stop. They went on.

ASI say they recommended stopping funding, but the donors,

including the British Government, initially disagreed.

Funding to the station wasn't stopped

until ten months after the payments were first discovered.

Our taxpayer-funded police weren't just paying protection money

to Zinki -

they've been helping the extremists run their justice system, too.

-So, the lawyers give you information from inside the country.

-Yes, yeah.

Human rights lawyer Samer Al Deyaei

documents the abuses in Zinki's courts.

-TRANSLATION:

-People aren't getting their basic rights,

which can lead to miscarriages of justice.

They could be imprisoned, tortured, or sentenced to death.

Zinki runs its own court at al-Qassimiyyeh,

and this makeshift prison.

Mahmoud Bitar was held in that prison in 2014.

Britain was funding the Free Syrian Police,

but it was just before ASI took over the contract.

You can feel that yourself walking downtown, you know, back here...

Mahmoud says the police officers we pay for were his prison guards.

They would put a bag over his head

before taking him to Zinki interrogators.

The Free Police man, he said,

"I'm sorry, I have to blindfold your eyes,

"and put that small bag on your head.

"So, I'm sorry, I have to do it."

They were there 24/7.

They are there all the time.

And of course, the free police, they knew about what's going on.

They knew, of course.

Mahmoud says he was tortured, and so were other prisoners.

I cannot forget that time,

the bad time that I've been inside that detention facility, in there.

I keep on hearing the same voices, you know,

inside your ears and all the time.

The torture... screaming of guys in pain.

It will remain with you till the end of your life.

You cannot forget what happened in there.

The police officers we fund

are still working in Zinki's barbaric system,

and the British Government knows it's happening.

A report this year said the police cooperate with the Zinki court

by writing up warrants, delivering notices,

and turning criminals over to the court.

-TRANSLATION:

-The criminal would get transferred

to the al-Qassimiyyeh court because that is the nearest relevant court.

Some people are still getting tortured.

Some people are still disappearing.

ASI told us they didn't want to leave a security vacuum

by stopping funding for the police,

and they have strict guidelines in place

to ensure anyone detained is treated fairly and humanely.

Plainly, some of the operation of what passed for a justice system

can look utterly appalling to our standards.

But we've had to make ugly compromises,

and the result has been probably that the money spent

on the Free Syrian Police has largely been wasted

as far as achieving British policy objectives is concerned.

We've discovered more disturbing evidence

about the Free Syrian Police.

This time in the province of Idlib.

GUNFIRE

This area is run by the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra.

Al-Nusra has been labelled a terrorist group

by the British Government.

But that hasn't stopped the UK helping set up

more than 30 police stations here.

There is high concern, especially in Idlib.

We're aware completely of the level of influence

that Jabhat al-Nusra has in every community,

But do we... Do we have enough tools to safeguard ourselves?

That was not necessarily the case,

and there is a high risk working with people who are not vetted.

The risks were especially high in this town, Kafr Daryn.

ASI staff first warned of al-Nusra's malign influence here

in the spring of 2015.

A report almost a year later identified six police officers

who had been imposed on the station by al-Nusra.

It says police bosses agreed to pay the men

to avoid any problems with them.

When ASI investigated further, they found the new station commander

had also been hand-picked by the extremists.

-They were paying their salaries, or...?

-Salaries.

ASI told us the issue was detected within two months,

and funding to the station halted.

Only 1,800 was paid to the al-Nusra appointed officers.

They say that cash was provided by a different donor government,

not the UK.

But ASI didn't explain how they could be sure

it wasn't British money when the whole project is funded by cash.

Now, more police stations are being opened

in areas controlled by al-Nusra, despite the dangers.

-TRANSLATION:

-You cannot operate

without being involved with al-Nusra.

Sometimes you can't even work if you don't pay them

a part of the money you receive.

We call that itawa - "protection racket" in Arabic -

but unfortunately, they're turning a blind eye to it

to ensure the continuity of the project.

Al-Nusra also runs a so-called justice system.

They carry out executions, including stonings,

in parts of northern Syria.

This is the kind of justice that the police force we pay for

is collaborating with.

ASI says donors were aware police were working with an al-Nusra court,

and approved further funding after assurances this had stopped.

But ASI's own documents show

the police carried on co-operating with al-Nusra.

It says the FSP station has been known to transfer criminals

to the Dar al-Qadaa - that's the court - for sentencing,

and then it goes on to say that they knew that they implemented

court decisions in violation of international human rights law.

And it gets worse.

Officers from the British-funded police were present

when two women were stoned to death in another part of northern Syria.

The police chief claimed they were "accidentally passing by."

That's not what we've been told.

I've just heard that someone inside Syria

is prepared to talk to me tonight - someone who used to work for ASI.

So I'm going to try and call him now.

-MAN ON PHONE:

-Hello?

-Oh, hi, it's Jane.

-Hi, Jane.

Our source says the police weren't just there by accident.

So they were actually involved in cordoning off the area

where the stoning was to take place?

If that is true, then Amnesty would be very concerned

that the Free Syrian Police would actually, you know, take part

in such a horrific violation.

ASI's lawyers say:

And the police involved were:

..but they've since been removed permanently.

So how did a British aid project

ever get involved with extremist courts?

You've got people being sentenced to death for homosexuality.

Clearly that is completely and utterly unacceptable

by any standard,

and the idea that British taxpayers' money was associated with that

would of course be wholly abhorrent.

The British Government declined to be interviewed,

but it has now suspended funding for the Syrian police project

while it investigates our allegations.

It told us, "The work in Syria is important

"to protect our national interest,

"and all our programmes are designed carefully,

"and subject to robust monitoring."

ASI says it strongly refutes Panorama's allegations,

and has managed taxpayers' money effectively to confront terrorism,

and bring security to Syria.

CALL TO PRAYER

GUNFIRE

MEN SHOUT

We've revealed how British aid has supported extremists,

and their brutal form of justice.

I think the Government's been incredibly slow

to act on all of this.

What I'd really like to see

is the Government taking proper responsibility

for the way that this money is spent.

You simply can't operate aid projects like that

with so little scrutiny or accountability.

It took the bravery of our Syrian whistle-blowers to get real action.

They were like they are putting their hands in front of their eyes,

and, like, "We are not seeing anything."

-TRANSLATION:

-Unfortunately, the money of British taxpayers

is being spent very poorly.

It is unfortunately strengthening the extremists

and the Islamic groups

who are currently in control of the majority of opposition areas.

Britain may be a generous country,

but our investigation raises serious questions

about how we hand out our cash,

and whether we're always helping the people who need it most.