Khodor Awarki is a remarkable fellow. By his own admission he is not a journalist, yet he writes stories under his name on Aksalser, a Syrian news portal with unknown owners, and in Champress, which is run by Syrian journalist Ali Jamalo, a gentleman understood to have close ties to Syrian intelligence.  But it is when he is not using his name that Awarki really comes into his own. Blogging as Filkka Israel – an entity set up by the shadowy owners of Aksalser and Champress – he publishes slanderous posts targeting opponents of the Syrian regime.

I have felt the sting of this anonymous cyber persona. Filkka Israel and Awarki have accused me of working for the US military in Iraq, even though, as an adult, I never stayed longer than two weeks in Baghdad. Both attribute me and other journalists with pieces we never wrote and of doing things we never did.  Awarki has accused me of strong political links to Lebanese-American businessman and activist Ziad Abdul-Nour, because he found him listed as my Facebook friends. He also claimed that I visited Lebanon in November to compile a hit list targeting Aounists. The fact is, Abdul-Nour and I have never talked or met. We are Facebook friends because we are part of the Diaspora. I was in Washington, not Beirut, in November, and have no hit list. But then again, Awarki obviously doesn’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.

I recently published an investigative piece on Awarki, his superiors and their scandalous blog. This was enough to send both Awarki and Filkka Israel into a crazed insult frenzy that involved publishing photos of myself and my family that I had posted on a public website a decade ago. Awarki no doubt hoped that private pictures would prove his “collaboration” accusations and show that Filkka Israel has access to juicy private information.

A few days later, someone pretending to be Al-Hayat columnist Dawood Al-Shiryan sent me an invite on Facebook. Seeing Al-Hayat colleagues as common friends, I accepted the invite. The man purporting to be Shiryan then sent me a message asking about my contacts, my upcoming trip to Lebanon and if I had any inside information from the Saban Center’s annual conference. When I found out it was not the real Shiryan, I removed him and alerted other Al-Hayat colleagues to do the same.

Unfortunately, legally proving Awarki’s involvement with Filkka Israel is not easy; he is a slippery character, and the law suits that have piled up against him in Lebanon and other countries have all come to naught. But to those of us in the know, or who have felt his poison, are certain that Awarki is the common denominator between Filkka Israel, Aksalser and Champress. Electronic evidence – IP addresses, routes, sockets, motherboards serial numbers – aside, it doesn’t take much to collect a sizeable chunk of circumstantial evidence to show that Awarki is the author of most of the Filkka Israel entries.

He leaves very big fingerprints: On Filkka, Affaq, a rarely-used Arab word meaning a crook, is widely used. However, the Filkka author spells it Affak, as does Awarki in his signed articles. Awarki has written accounts matching the description of Filkka Israel’s fictitious owner. His insults are almost identical to those of the blogger: Awarki prefixes my name with the word “Zionist,” as does Filkka Israel.

Awarki invents picture captions. Whenever he gets hold of images of journalists talking to or standing near members of the US military, he accuses the journalist in question of befriending CIA agents (so the CIA now wear uniforms?). When he does not find what he wants, he improvises. He will even post images of lookalikes to achieve his ends.

In fact, Awarki has a creative imagination that borders on lunacy. On March 7, 2007, appearing on Al-Jazeera TV he said, “The Emirates Center for Strategic Studies specified in a study, published and still available on its website, that two ways govern the buying of arms in Gulf countries: Personal interests for rulers, their sons and relatives; and weapon diplomacy [to befriend Western powers].” Needless to say, no such study could be found on the center’s website. Al-Jazeera TV, forced to abide by the law, later broadcast the center’s denial of authoring such a work.

But we as journalists are not in the business of playing police. We report on stories, substantiate our evidence and publish under our bylines. Journalism is meant to be an honorable profession, but some have taken it and transformed it into a lowlife occupation creating and then unleashing intelligence-run pseudo journalists who are nothing more than bullies and cyber thugs.

Mr. Awarki and his associates might want to throw their shoes all they want during press conferences, threaten to, or actually, assault journalists, such as our friend Omar Harqous, the Future TV reporter who was brutally assaulted in Hamra by pro-Syrian thugs in November. We, for our part, will continue to do our job openly and proudly.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a correspondent for Al Rai and a visiting fellow at Chatham House in London