Patrick Seale responds to Michael Young

Hit and Run: "It's true that I had something of a special relationship with Asad pere. For some reason he trusted me. I could not have written his biography without access to him and his entourage. But, in his defence, I should tell you that he always said 'Write what you like!' and never asked to see the text before it was published. I would not have agreed to show it to him, in any event. Nor--and you should be very clear on this point--did money ever change hands. Quite the contrary. You may not know that Rifaat [Assad, the president's brother] sued me in the British courts because I linked him to drug smuggling in the Beqaa. I threw in the towel after about three years of legal dispute and agreed to change the text in subsequent editions, but not before it had cost me some tens of thousands of pounds (British pounds) in legal fees. So it is a bit galling to be called a propagandist for the Asad regime! As you probably know, [my biography of Assad] was banned in Syria for years, and I never got a penny for the thousands of copies of the Arabic edition which were sold ..."