Last week Alex Thomson, an award-winning British journalist who has covered some twenty wars, accused Syrian rebels of deliberately sending him for propaganda purposes into a death trap where he was exposed to gunfire from Syrian forces, the London Telegraph reported.[1] -- “In a war where they slit the throats of toddlers back to the spine, what’s the big deal in sending a van full of journalists into the killing zone?" Thomson said, according the another report posted on the website The 4th Media.[2] -- "It was nothing personal.” -- A Channel 4 spokesperson called Thomson "an incredibly experienced journalist who has covered conflicts around the world for more than two decades and has used social media to share the full detail of these assignments.” -- In a longer piece on the subject, Richard Tyler of WSWS commented: "Thomson is well experienced working in conflict areas and answers the question of why the rebels would want to kill him. 'Dead journos [journalists] are bad for Damascus,' he writes. Why they are 'bad for Damascus,' Thomson does not spell out. But his explanation is certainly the most plausible, following the maxim cui bono -- who benefits. In this instance, the FSA deliberately set up the news crew so they could use their deaths to provide a further pretext for Western-backed military intervention into Syria."[3] -- "Thomson is also clear that this was not an isolated incident. He concludes his blog by reporting a tweet he received: 'I read your piece "set up to be shot in no man’s land," I can relate as I had that same experience in Al Zabadani during our tour.' The message was from Nawaf al Thani, a human rights lawyer and a member of the Arab League Observer mission to Syria earlier this year." -- "Thomson’s account received barely any coverage in the British media, let alone internationally. Except for the blog, Channel 4 appears not to have run an item on the near-death experience of its own news crew. This same media has no problem running largely unsubstantiated accounts and photographs of the latest atrocities in Syria, all of which are attributed without evidence to the Assad regime. And there is no doubt that, had the FSA achieved its aim, the assault on the news crew would have been given prime coverage." ...
1.
CHANNEL 4 JOURNALIST ALEX THOMSON SAYS SYRIA REBELS LED ME INTO DEATH TRAP
Telegraph (London)
June 9, 2012
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9321068/Channel-4-journalist-Alex-Thomson-says-Syria-rebels-led-me-into-death-trap.html
A senior British journalist has claimed Syrian rebels tried to lead him and his team into a death trap so they would be killed by gunfire from government forces in a bid to discredit the Assad regime.
Alex Thomson, chief correspondent for Channel 4 News said the incident happened on Monday in the Syrian town of Qusair, about half an hour's drive from the battered city of Homs.
Thomson said he, his driver, a translator, and two other journalists were trying to return to government lines when their rebel escort led them down what he described as a dead-end in the middle of a "free-fire zone."
"Suddenly four men in a black car beckon us to follow. We move out behind," he recalls.
"We are led another route. Led in fact, straight into a free-fire zone. Told by the Free Syrian Army to follow a road that was blocked off in the middle of no-man's-land.
"At that point there was the crack of a bullet and one of the slower three-point turns I've experienced. We screamed off into the nearest side-street for cover.
"Another dead-end.
"There was no option but to drive back out onto the sniping ground and floor it back to the road we'd been led in on."
Thomson claimed that they were not led into no-man's-land by mistake.
"I'm quite clear the rebels deliberately set us up to be shot by the Syrian army," he wrote in a blog post on Channel 4's website
He said that their deaths at the hands of President Bashar al-Assad's forces would have drawn sympathy to the rebel cause. "Dead journos are bad for Damascus," he said.
Thomson said he and his colleagues eventually managed to get back to the government side. He has since left Syria.
His account was not possible to verify amid the chaos gripping Syria, but he insisted that there was no other explanation for what happened.
"They said: 'Go left.' Road was totally blocked 50 yards ahead. They had to have known."
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists calls Syria "the most dangerous place for journalists in the world," saying that it has recorded the deaths of nine local and international reporters there since November.
2.
"SYRIAN REBELS TRIED TO GET ME KILLED," SAYS A U.K.'s CHANNEL 4 CORRESPONDENT
4th Media
June 10, 2012
http://www.4thmedia.org/2012/06/10/the-guardian-uk-syrian-rebels-tried-to-get-me-killed-says-uks-channel-4-chief-correspondent/
The chief correspondent of Channel 4 News has claimed that Syrian rebels deliberately tried to get him and his crew killed by gunfire from government forces in a bid to discredit the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
Alex Thomson alleged a small group from the Free Syrian Army deliberately guided the vehicle in which he and his Channel 4 News colleagues were travelling into what he described as a “free-fire zone” on a blocked road near the city of al-Qusayr, because “dead journos are bad for Damascus.”
Thomson said that after being led into a “no man’s land” between Syrian army and rebel forces by four men in a black car, his team were fired upon and forced to take evasive action, eventually managing to “floor it back to the road we’d been led in on.”
He also claimed that later on the same car of rebels blocked the road between their vehicle and the U.N. vehicles accompanying them, which he said prompted the U.N. escort to drive off and abandon them after seeing the Channel 4 team surrounded by “shouting militia.” The incident took place last weekend and Thomson is now back in the U.K..
“Suddenly four men in a black car beckon us to follow. We move out behind,” Thomson wrote in a Channel 4 News website blog published on Friday/ morning.
“We are led another route. Led in fact, straight into a free-fire zone. Told by the Free Syrian Army to follow a road that was blocked off in the middle of no-man’s land,” he added.
“At that point there was the crack of a bullet and one of the slower three-point turns I’ve experienced. We screamed off into the nearest side-street for cover. Another dead end.
“There was no option but to drive back out on to the sniping ground and floor it back to the road we’d been led in on. Predictably the black car was there which had led us to the trap. They roared off as soon as we reappeared.
“I’m quite clear the rebels deliberately set us up to be shot by the Syrian army. Dead journos are bad for Damascus.”
Thomson said this conviction was only strengthened half an hour later when “our four friends in the same beaten-up black car suddenly pulled out of a side street, blocking us from the U.N. vehicles ahead”.
“The U.N. duly drove back past us, witnessed us surrounded by shouting militia, and left town. Eventually we got out too and on the right route, back to Damascus,” he added.
“In a war where they slit the throats of toddlers back to the spine, what’s the big deal in sending a van full of journalists into the killing zone? It was nothing personal.”
A spokeswoman for ITN-produced Channel 4 News said: “The safety of our journalists is of paramount importance and we only ever send experienced teams into these hostile environments.
“Alex is an incredibly experienced journalist who has covered conflicts around the world for more than two decades and has used social media to share the full detail of these assignments. We will be reviewing this trip, as we do with every other foreign send and sharing the review across ITN as we continue to cover this complex and important story.”
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3.
BRITISH JOURNALIST "SET UP TO BE SHOT" BY SYRIAN REBELS
By Richard Tyler
WSWS
June 12, 2012
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/jun2012/thom-j12.shtml
The mass media rarely questions the official version of events in Syria. It functions as a propaganda tool for the major imperialist powers to justify their policy of regime change in Syria and the region more broadly.
The role of the United States and the U.K. in deliberately stoking up sectarian conflict in Syria to this end, with the aid of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, is airbrushed entirely from media accounts.
An account filed last week by Alex Thomson, chief correspondent for Britain’s Channel 4 News, marked a rare and revealing breach in official propaganda. It gave an indication of what is really taking place on the ground and the filthy role being played by the Western-backed opposition.
On his blog, Thomson explained that during a trip to Syria he and his news team were deliberately set up by opposition forces to be killed by the Syrian Army.
The blog, dated Friday, June 3, begins by describing Thomson and his news team getting ready to depart the Safir Hotel in Homs, the scene of fierce fighting earlier in the year where the Free Syrian Army took over half the city.
The team is accompanying a United Nations observer team travelling to Al-Qusayr, about three miles southwest. The United Nations representatives are there to conduct a meeting with the local civilian and military leaders.
Thomson recounts being told by Mark Reynolds, the officer responsible, “Usual rules Alex O.K.? We’re not responsible for you guys. If you get into trouble we’ll leave you, yes? You’re on your own.”
After leaving the area around Homs controlled by Syrian state forces, the convoy of two U.N. vehicles, plus a local police patrol car marked “Protocol” as escort, move into territory controlled by the FSA.
In Al-Qusayr Thomson tells how, when he begins filming nearby, “Shell fragments are produced to be filmed. They explain how the shelling will begin again as soon as we leave -- a claim which, by its nature, must remain untested, though there is certainly extensive shell damage in some parts of town here.”
His news crew waits for the U.N. team to finish their talks, so they can travel with them back to Homs as “they’re the only way across the lines with any degree of safety.”
As they wait, and with his deadline approaching, Thomson and his team become the focus of attention from a man claiming to be from “rebel intelligence”:
“He and his mates are making things difficult for our driver and translator too -- their Damascus IDs and our Damascus van reg[istration] are not helping. This is new. Different. Hostile. This is not like Homs or Houla and still the U.N. meeting drags on in the hot afternoon.”
Thomson eventually decides to ask for an escort back to Homs the way they came in, “Both sides, both checkpoints will remember our vehicle.”
“Suddenly four men in a black car beckon us to follow. We move out behind. We are led another route. Led in fact, straight into a free-fire zone. Told by the Free Syrian Army to follow a road that was blocked off in the middle of no-man’s-land.”
Their vehicle comes under fire and they take evasive action, seeking cover in the nearest side street, but it turns out to be a dead end. Thomson writes that there was “no option but to drive back out onto the sniping ground and floor it back to the road we’d been led in on.”
As they turn back onto the main road, they see the black car again that had led them into the trap, but it roars off as soon as they re-appear.
Thirty minutes later, the same black car appears out of a side street. Thomson’s vehicle is surrounded by shouting militia and blocked from joining the U.N. convoy as it leaves Al-Qusayr.
“Eventually we got out too and on the right route, back to Damascus.”
Thomson is emphatic about who is responsible for the lethal predicament he and his news crew faced: “I’m quite clear the rebels deliberately set us up to be shot by the Syrian Army”.
A veteran of reporting on 20 wars, Thomson is well experienced working in conflict areas and answers the question of why the rebels would want to kill him. “Dead journos [journalists] are bad for Damascus”, he writes.
Why they are “bad for Damascus,” Thomson does not spell out. But his explanation is certainly the most plausible, following the maxim *cui bono* -- who benefits. In this instance, the FSA deliberately set up the news crew so they could use their deaths to provide a further pretext for Western-backed military intervention into Syria.
Thomson is also clear that this was not an isolated incident. He concludes his blog by reporting a tweet he received: “I read your piece ‘set up to be shot in no man’s land,’ I can relate as I had that same experience in Al Zabadani during our tour.”
The message was from Nawaf al Thani, a human rights lawyer and a member of the Arab League Observer mission to Syria earlier this year.
The attempted killing of Thompson came the same week the U.S. administration indicated that it is prepared to invoke Chapter VII of the U.N. charter, justifying military intervention, in relation to Syria. A spokesperson for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “The secretary made clear Chapter VII remains on the table at the appropriate time.”
Thomson’s account received barely any coverage in the British media, let alone internationally. Except for the blog, Channel 4 appears not to have run an item on the near-death experience of its own news crew.
This same media has no problem running largely unsubstantiated accounts and photographs of the latest atrocities in Syria, all of which are attributed without evidence to the Assad regime. And there is no doubt that, had the FSA achieved its aim, the assault on the news crew would have been given prime coverage.
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