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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNYTimes Newsfeed: Freed Captives (of Syrian Rebel Forces) Differ on Claim Rebels Framed Assad
Freed Captives Differ on Claim Rebels Framed AssadThe Italian war correspondent Domenico Quirico, who reported sympathetically on the uprising in Syria before being taken hostage in April by rebel fighters, told reporters on Monday after his release that two years of bloody, armed conflict had changed the nature of the rebellion. I was a hostage in Syria, betrayed by the revolution that no longer exists and has become fanaticism and the work of bandits, he said.
Mr. Quirico, a veteran reporter, added, It is not the revolution that I encountered two years ago in Aleppo secular, tolerant. It has become something else, in remarks published by his newspaper, the Turin daily La Stampa.
La Stampa also published video of Mr. Quiricos emotional return to his newsroom and an English translation of his statement taking issue with part of an account given by a fellow captive, the Belgian academic Pierre Piccinin. As the Belgian newspaper Le Soir reported, Mr. Piccinin said in a television interview on Monday, after he too returned home, that it was not the government of Bashar al-Assad that used sarin or some other gas during combat in the Damascus suburbs last month.
According to Mr. Piccinin who described himself as a previously fierce supporter of the Free Syrian Army in their just struggle for democracy at one stage during their captivity, he and Mr. Quirico overheard rebels saying that the deadly gas attacks last month had been carried out by anti-Assad forces to frame the government and provoke intervention.
Mr. Quirico confirmed the incident but disagreed sharply with Mr. Piccinin on what it meant. We heard some people we didnt know talking through a half-closed door, he said. Its impossible to know whether what was said was based on real fact or just hearsay.
According to La Stampa, Mr. Quirico called it madness to say that the overheard conversation was definitive proof of a rebel plot.
During our kidnapping, we were kept completely in the dark about what was going on in Syria, including the gas attacks in Damascus, Quirico said. But one day, we heard a Skype conversation in English between three people whose names I do not know. We heard the conversation from the room in which we were being held captive, through a half-closed door. One of them had previously presented himself to us as a general of the Syrian Liberation Army. The other two we had never seen and knew nothing about.
During the Skype conversation, they said that the gas attack on the two neighborhoods in Damascus had been carried out by rebels as a provocation, to push the West towards a military intervention. They also said they believed the death toll had been exaggerated, Quirico said in his statement.
I dont know if any of this is true and I cannot say for sure that it is true because I have no means of confirming the truth of what was said. I dont know how reliable this information is and cannot confirm the identity of these people. I am in no position to say for sure whether this conversation is based on real fact or just hearsay and I dont usually call conversations I have heard through a door, true, Quirico said.
You must bear in mind the conditions in which we were; we were prisoners and heard things through doors. I have nothing to judge whether the things that were said are true or not. I am used to checking my facts before I speak and confirm something as true. In this case I was unable to check anything. It is madness to say I knew it wasnt Assad who used gas.
THIS ARTICLE IS AT 9:15AM TIME-MARK AT NYTimes Syria Updates LINK:
http://projects.nytimes.com/live-dashboard/syria#sha=a87302193
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NYTimes Newsfeed: Freed Captives (of Syrian Rebel Forces) Differ on Claim Rebels Framed Assad (Original Post)
99th_Monkey
Sep 2013
OP
Catherina
(35,568 posts)1. Related thread: "Syria: Assad not Responsible for Ghouta Gas Attack, Says Freed Hostage..."