NBC News team kidnapping in Syria
The NBC News Team kidnapping in Syria took place in late 2012 in the midst of the
Taken hostage on 13 December 2012 near the Bab al-Hawa Border Crossing when crossing into Syria, Richard Engel and his crew members – Aziz Akyavaş, Ghazi Balkiz, John Kooistra, Ian Rivers and Ammar Cheikh Omar – were detained in the vicinity of
The case was controversial, as upon their release, Engel and his crew blamed a Shiite Shabiha group of Assad loyalists for the abduction. The narrative was, however, challenged, and it later turned out that they were most likely abducted by Free Syrian Army (FSA)-aligned Syrian rebel group North Idlib Falcons Brigade. It also became known that NBC News' investigation team had suspected the Sunni group from the outset, but withheld their intelligence.
Early coverage
The kidnapping was first revealed to the public when Turkish journalist
News blackout
Following the disclosure, NBC News asked every reporter inquiring about the Hürriyet report to participate in a
Human Rights Watch emergencies director Peter Bouckaert criticized the outlets which ran reports ahead of the captives' release. He defended the news blackout, arguing that though they go “against the journalistic instinct to report the news", they often do save lives.[3] In contrast, fellow war correspondent Robert Young Pelton criticized the news blackout as a "clumsy attempt to cover collective corporate ass and mitigate bad publicity," maintaining that no one could show blackouts help protect captives.[4]
Release and early eyewitness accounts
Following their release on late Monday, 17 December, Engel and his crew returned to Turkey. NBC immediately published a statement announcing they were "safely out of the country".[5] Associated Press spread an amateur video that had apparently been posted earlier that week by the hostage-takers on YouTube.[3]
While Aziz Akyavaş spoke at a news conference in Turkey,
The kidnappers had talked "openly about their loyalty to the government" of Syrian president Assad, and said they wanted to exchange them for four Iranian agents and two Lebanese members of the Amal Movement. Engel said he therefore had "a very good idea" about who his captors were: members of the Shabiha militia, who are loyal to Assad, trained by Iran's Revolutionary Guard and allied with the Lebanon-based group Hezbollah.[5]
NBC wrote in a statement that Engel and his crew freed themselves when, during a relocation, their vehicle ran into a checkpoint of the fundamentalist rebel group Ahrar al-Sham, and that during a firefight, "two of the captors were killed, while an unknown number of others escaped." The rebels then helped escort the crew to the border with Turkey.[5]
Reactions
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations,
Later interviews
In one of the several interviews of team members with NBC News, producer Ghazi Balkiz recounted that the firefight that eventually led to their liberation was for him the most "nerve-wracking" moment, despite being personally subjected to mock executions before. It became clear that the NBC team was initially captured near the Bab al-Hawa Border Crossing, and that five days later, they used the "chaotic minutes" of the firefight to break out of the van and take cover.[4]
In the April 2013 edition of Vanity Fair, Engel recounted his experience in an editorial, "The Hostage".[6]
Early doubts
While the network and Engel were thought to have followed "a consistent clear-cut narrative on the kidnapping," Jamie Dettmer of The Daily Beast challenged NBC's version only days later. The NBC version, he wrote, "omits much and is at odds with what security sources involved in the freeing of the group say happened," referring to unnamed sources who also claimed the network was trying to present the incident in the best possible light, masking a series of basic security lapses.[4]
Furthermore, according to Dettmer's unnamed sources, NBC's security advisers had been convinced that there was at least some involvement of "rogue members of the rebel FSA." NBC's security contractor
2015 revision of the course of events
More than two years later, in April 2015, NBC News revised its narrative of the 2012 kidnapping, stating that it was highly likely that Engel and his team were abducted by a Sunni rebel group rather than by pro-regime Shabiha. Engel explained that their abductors had "put on an elaborate ruse to convince us they were Shiite shabiha militiamen". He upheld that they were rescued by Ahrar al-Sham, stating that a "bearded gunman" he referred to as the Islamist group's local commander Abu Ayman had approached and told them they were safe now.[7]
Before this, the
References
- ^ "Aziz Akyavaş 4 gündür Suriye'de kayıp". Hürriyet (in Turkish). 16 December 2012. Retrieved 8 December 2015.
- ^ John Cook (17 December 2012). "Richard Engel is Missing in Syria; NBC News Enforces News Blackout". Gawker. Retrieved 8 December 2015.
- ^ New York Times, retrieved 8 December 2015
- ^ a b c d Jamie Dettmer (22 December 2012). "Richard Engel's Kidnapping: A Behind the Scenes Look". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 8 December 2015.
- ^ a b c d Mike Brunker (18 December 2012). "Richard Engel and NBC News team freed from captors in Syria". NBC News. Retrieved 8 December 2015.
- ^ Richard Engel (April 2013). "The Hostage". Vanity Fair. No. 4.
- ^ Richard Engel; NBC News (15 April 2015). "New Details on 2012 Kidnapping of NBC News Team in Syria". NBC News. Retrieved 8 December 2015.
- ^ Ravi Somaiya; C. J. Chivers; Karam Shoumali (15 April 2015). "NBC News Alters Account of Correspondent's Kidnapping in Syria". Retrieved 8 December 2015.
- ^ Greenwald, Glenn (16 Apr 2015). "NBC'S Conduct in Engel Kidnapping Story Is More Troubling than the Brian Williams Scandal". The Intercept. Retrieved 27 June 2023.