Amid widespread concern yesterday, and calls for silence on the topic by NBC, Richard Engel, NBC's Chief Foreign Correspondent has been freed from his Syrian captors.
Engel and his team were captured last Wednesday and liberated after a firefight that went down at a roadside checkpoint yesterday.
From NBC:
“After being kidnapped and held for five days inside Syria by an unknown group, NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel and his production crew members have been freed unharmed. We are pleased to report they are safely out of the country,” the network said in a statement.
The captors were unidentified and were not believed to be loyal to the Assad regime.
Engel, 39, along with other employees the network did not identify, disappeared shortly after crossing into northwest Syria from Turkey on Thursday. The network had not been able to contact them until learning that they had been freed on Monday.
With no claim of responsibility or of a coordinated kidnapping, and no ransom demands, many questions remain about the incident that came to an unexpected, but fortunate conclusion at a standard checkpoint. Engel credits the Ahrar al-Sham brigade, a Syrian rebel group, with his release.
It was al-Sham that engaged Engels captors, killing two of them, before an unknown number of others got away. It's interesting that the Ahrar al-Sham, meaning "Free Men of Greater Syria," considered fundamentalist in their Islamic views are allies of the al-Nusra Front.
The latter group was recently labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. government, but remains the "most aggressive and successful arm of the rebel force." Both groups themselves are said to be responsible for abductions of their own, performed largely against opposing Sh'ite forces and civilians.
A highly respected foreign correspondent, Engel is one of the only Western journalists to cover the entire Iraq War. He published the experience in a widely praised book titled, "War Journal: My Five Years In Iraq." Fluent in Arabic, Engel accessed parts of Iraq unlike anyone else. Even George W. Bush called him to the White House for a private briefing and the resulting book is one of the definitive works from that conflict.
From yesterday:
Turkish media is reporting that veteran journalist Richard Engel, NBC's chief foreign correspondent and Middle East bureau chief, and his Turkish colleague Aziz Akyavaş are currently missing in Syria. Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reports that Engel and Akyavaş haven't been in contact with NBC News since Thursday morning.
John Cook of Gawker reports that NBC has been "asking every reporter who inquires about the pair to participate in a news blackout," but the Turkish reports have already been referenced by journalists and others thousands of times on Twitter.
Prominent investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill argues that NBC's news blackout should be respected, although the news has been picked up by outlets including The Daily Mail, The Houston Chronicle, and The Atlantic Wire:
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/nbc-chief-foreign-correspondent-richard-engel-is-missing-in-syria-2012-12#ixzz2FT406dYa
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