President of Assembly of Council of Europe resigns

The President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Spanish Senator Pedro Agramunt Font de Mora (on the right in the photo), has presented his apologies for meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. On 6 October 2017, he handed in his resignation.

On 28 April 2017, Russian media published photographs showing Pedro Agramunt in Damascus accompanied by about ten members of the Assembly of the Council of Europe and the Russian Duma. This provoked fury in the auditorium.

In June, the Assembly’s regulation had been modified to allow the impeachment of its president. The latter finally resigned three days before a vote was taken.

In actual fact, Pedro Agramunt is being subject to a two-pronged attack. First by the United States which interprets his meeting with President al-Assad as evidence that he is pro-Russia. The second line of attack gains momentum from investigators with the Berlingske. These investigators, who shed light on Azerbaïdjan’s system of public relations [1]), probably have in their possession documents that evidenced that Bakou had corrupted him to reduce political repression in this country. But this is more difficult to have acknowledged because Azerbaïdjan is an ally of Washington.