A former Arab League observer in Syria is criticizing the League’s monitoring mission during the Assad regime’s crackdown, calling it a farce. Anwar Malek, an Algerian national who recently stepped down from the mission, spoke out in an interview with Al Jazeera.

Anwar Malek: “The mission was a farce, and the observers have been fooled. The regime orchestrated it and fabricated most of what we saw to stop the Arab League taking action against the regime. What I saw was a humanitarian disaster. The regime is not just committing one war crime, but a series of crimes against its people. The regime didn’t meet any of our requests. In fact, they were trying to deceive us and steer us away from what was really happening, towards insignificant things. They didn’t withdraw their tanks from the streets. They just hid them and then redeployed them after we left.”