According to the purported e-mails from Assad, the president also was briefed in detail about the presence of Western journalists in the rebel-held Baba Amr district of Homs, and he was urged to "tighten the security grip" there in November, the report said.

Several foreign journalists were among the hundreds of people killed in Homs over the past year.

The Guardian published a lengthy explanation of why it believes the e-mails are genuine, saying the cache includes private information, such as family photographs and videos, a scan of the president's identity card and other details that, it said, "would be difficult for even the best-resourced hoaxer or intelligence agency to gather or fabricate".

The accounts that activists say were used by Bashar Assad and his wife "communicate regularly and in affectionate terms with the wider family and advisers, some of whose e-mail addresses are easily verified", the newspaper said. Still, the Guardian acknowledged that the verification process does not rule out the possibility that there are fake e-mails in the cache.

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