Overgrown and dusty: How France found its deserted Syrian embassy after 12 years

Images of untouched ambassador's office and unkempt garden among pictures shown to politicians

Jean-Francois Guillaume, France's special envoy to Syria, outside the entrance to the French embassy headquarters in Damascus this week. AFP

French parliamentarians have been shown pictures of the first official diplomatic visit to Damascus in 12 years that took place this week, during which France's envoy met Syria's new leader Ahmad Al Shara.

While the compound housing the Ottoman-era embassy was intact, the images show that nature has gone wild in the prime Damascus property.

Displayed for the first time by French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot at a hearing of the National Assembly's foreign affairs committee, the pictures show a still fresh-looking nameplate on the office of previous French ambassador to Syria.

"You can see that the office of our ambassador at the time, Eric Chevallier, is in the state in which he left it in 2012," Mr Barrot told politicians in Paris on Wednesday. "Nature has taken back its rights," he added, as a picture appeared in a slideshow behind him of the French delegation standing in the embassy garden, surrounded by long grass and date palms on a visit on Tuesday.

The pictures appear to have been taken after a flag-raising ceremony, which had been previously publicised by the Foreign Ministry. Before leaving 12 years ago, French diplomats had destroyed computers with an axe and taken archives to Beirut.

A French diplomatic delegation stands in the garden of the French embassy in Damascus. Photo: French Foreign Ministry

France will organise a follow-up conference, for next month, to the meeting on Syria that was held on Saturday in Aqaba, Jordan, by its Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, Mr Barrot added.

The meeting, attended by Mr Barrot, took place in the presence of seven Arab ministers, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, UN Special Envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, and EU foreign chief Kaja Kallas. "This group will be sustained and we will host its second meeting in Paris in January," Mr Barrot said.

Despite being vacated 12 years ago, the office of the French ambassador to Syria in Damascus appears untouched. Photo: French Foreign Ministry

The delegation of French diplomats in Damascus, led by France special envoy to Syria, Jean-Francois Guillaume, met unnamed representatives of Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, the rebel group that led the successful surprise offensive on Damascus on December 7 that led to the fall of president Bashar Al Assad and his regime.

HTS is listed as a terror organisation by the UN, the EU and the US because of former links with Al Qaeda.

"We know that, even if their speeches are encouraging today and that they do not seem to have committed any atrocities during they victorious offensive, where the group that exercises power in Damascus today comes from," Mr Barrot said. "We will therefore not judge them on them words but on their actions and over time."

The French delegation meets members of the clergy in Damascus. Photo: French Foreign Ministry

Mr Barrot also showed a picture of Mr Guillaume speaking in the courtyard of a house in the old city of Damascus in front of a large crowd.

"We were received by all of civil society, many of whom are personalities who had been living in Paris until the last two days and who made the trip to meet us and asked that France be present," Mr Guillaume told MPs on Thursday. "It was in the Bab Touma district, the Christian quarter of Damascus."

Mr Guillaume also met representatives of various religious and ethnic communities: Christians, Kurds, Druze, Alawites and Ismailis.

France's special envoy to Syria, Jean-Francois Guillaume, speaks to Syrian civil society members in Damascus. Photo: French Foreign Ministry