Hand in Hand for Syria hospital staff member poses with cornucopia of armaments – complaint to Charity Commission

Update, 18 May 2016: the majority of the images referenced below have been removed from Iessa Obied’s Facebook account.

See also:

Ex-Reuters freelancer, published in Mail and Telegraph, pictured with “Hell cannon”.
Charity Commission: images of Hand in Hand for Syria worker brandishing weapons “do not raise sufficient regulatory concern” (response by Charity Commission to the below complaint).
Regulator rejects complaint about ‘charity worker’ who allegedly posed with weapons: report by leading UK voluntary sector journal Third Sector.
Hand in Hand for Syria attempts to distance itself from worker who posed with weapons.

Your ref: C-422596-R6Y5

Dear Mrs Edwards

Thank you for your response of 5 February 2016 to my complaint about the registered charity Hand in Hand for Syria.

You state that the Commission is not satisfied that there is “sufficient verifiable evidence” to substantiate my concerns that Hand in Hand for Syria is “celebrating or supporting violence”.

I wish to draw your attention to photographs published on the Facebook account of Iessa Obied. Mr Obied works at Atareb Hospital, Aleppo, described by Hand in Hand for Syria as its “flagship medical facility”. Mr Obied is the brother of Abdulrahman Obied, who has described himself as Atareb Hospital’s Medical Director. [1]

Images 1 – 10 below show Iessa Obied posing with a cornucopia of armaments. Images 11 – 17 show him wearing a Hand in Hand for Syria tunic. Images 10 and 18 – 19 celebrate “martyrs” from the armed opposition in Syria. All the images below are viewable on Mr Obied’s Facebook account at the time of writing. I have provided links both to the original Facebook posts and to screengrabs of each post.