Metro

Aide helped Assad ‘spin’ atrocities

BLOOD ON HER HANDS: Sheherazad Jaafari, here with Syrian-ambassador dad Bashar al-Jaafari, helped Barbara Walters get an interview with brutal dictator Bashar al-Assad.

BLOOD ON HER HANDS: Sheherazad Jaafari, here with Syrian-ambassador dad Bashar al-Jaafari, helped Barbara Walters get an interview with brutal dictator Bashar al-Assad. (Syria Freedom)

The young media adviser to brutal Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad must believe Americans are as easy to manipulate as Barbara Walters.

Sheherazad “Sherry” Jaafari — who so charmed Walters that the legendary newswoman pulled strings to get her into Columbia University — claimed to be amazed by the furor over her relationship with Assad.

“I am nothing but a victim for some personal agendas,” she told The Post.

“As any ambitious young graduate student in America, all I was trying to do in this very brief time was to build up my knowledge and to explore ways to successful academic options,” the 22-year-old said.

That résumé building came in the form of arranging an exclusive interview between Walters and Assad, while Jaafari was advising the dictator on how to bamboozle the media.

“The American psyche can be easily manipulated,” she had e-mailed Assad prior to the December 2011 Walters interview.

Jaafari suggested how he could parry questions about the bloody Syrian government crackdown against protesters, including referring to them as “armed gangs.”

Weeks after the interview aired, Walters sent a glowing recommendation to a Columbia professor on Jaafari’s behalf, writing: “She helped arrange my interview with Assad. She is only 21 but has his ear and his confidence.”

Walters, 82, has since expressed “regret” for intervening.

But Jaafari said she got into the school on her own merits, despite Walters’s apology.

And Jaafari, the daughter of the Syrian ambassador to the United Nations, intends to stay in New York.

She said she retained immigration attorney Michael Wilde, who represented a Saudi diplomatic defector in the 1990s.

“I applied to Columbia like any ambitious student and I got accepted based on my résumé that I worked hard for,” Jaafari told The Post. “As for Barbara Walters, I have no idea what these allegations are.”

Syrian activists have called for Columbia to rescind Jaafari’s admission, citing the brutal suppression of Syrian opposition groups at the hands of Assad loyalists.

Throughout 2011 and into this year, Jaafari prepped Assad on how best to respond to media reports of atrocities by loyalist forces against Syrian protesters.

For instance, she suggested that Assad admit to “mistakes” and that “the American audience doesn’t really care about reforms. They won’t understand it and they are not interested to do so.”

But Jaafari recalled her advice differently.

“My duties were limited to fulfill instructions related to communicating with some English-speaking media reporters under the supervision of the media advisers,” she claimed — apparently forgetting that she also arranged interviews with German and French media.

In earlier e-mails released by hackers, she described her time shuttling between New York and Damascus as “a challenging experience but its good for my cv and thats all i care about now.”

Now, however, she says she cares about the ongoing violence that has claimed 15,000 lives and counting.

“What’s going on in Syria and to my people saddens me and breaks my heart. It is in my prayers that peace and stability will prevail,” she said.