Thursday, February 23, 2012
Syrian forces murdered journalist Marie Colvin after pledging to kill "any journalist who set foot on Syrian soil", it emerged last night.
The Sunday Times foreign correspondent was killed in the besieged Syrian city of Homs.
The veteran foreign correspondent died alongside French photographer Remi Ochlik and Syrian broadcaster Rami al-Sayed, when the house where they were staying was shelled by Syrian government forces.
Jean-Pierre Perrin, a journalist with Paris-based Liberation newspaper who was with Colvin in Homs last week, claimed they had been told that the Syrian Army was "deliberately" going to shell their centre, after pledging to kill "any journalist who set foot on Syrian soil".
It emerged communication between Syrian Army officers was intercepted by Lebanese intelligence staff which revealed direct orders were issued to target the makeshift press centre in which Colvin had been broadcasting.
The Syrian army was then told to pretend the journalists died accidentally in firefights with terrorist groups.
They wanted to directly target the journalists who were reporting attrocities being committed by Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad’s forces.
Perrin said: "A few days ago we were advised to leave the city urgently and we were told: ‘If they [the Syrian Army] find you they will kill you’.
"I then left the city with the journalist from the Sunday Times, but then she wanted to go back when she saw that the major offensive had not yet taken place."
He claimed the Syrians were "fully aware" journalists were broadcasting direct evidence of crimes against humanity and if the press centre was destroyed there would be "no more information coming out of Homs", said Perrin.
The editor of the Sunday Times paid tribute to Colvin, calling her an "extraordinary" woman.
Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Sunday Times, described Colvin as "one of the most outstanding foreign correspondents of her generation".
Paul Conroy, a freelance photographer working for the Sunday Times, was also injured in the attack but initial reports suggest he was not seriously hurt.
US-born Colvin was the only British newspaper reporter in the opposition stronghold of Homs.
Sunday Times editor John Witherow said: "Marie was an extraordinary figure in the life of the Sunday Times, driven by a passion to cover wars in the belief that what she did mattered.
"She believed profoundly that reporting could curtail the excesses of brutal regimes and make the international community take notice. Above all, as we saw in her powerful reports, her thoughts were with the victims of violence.
In her final dispatches, Colvin sought to alert the world to the human tragedy unfolding in Homs, which has been subjected to repeated heavy bombardments by Assad’s forces.
She told the BBC on Tuesday: "I watched a little baby die today — absolutely horrific, just a two-year-old been hit, they stripped it and found the shrapnel had gone into the left chest."
Over her distinguished career, Ms Colvin, from Oyster Bay, New York, reported on conflicts around the world, including in Kosovo, Chechnya and Sierra Leone.
She wore a black eye patch after losing an eye when she was wounded by shrapnel while covering Sri Lanka’s civil war in 2001.
British prime minister David Cameron said: "This is a desperately sad reminder of the risks that journalists take to inform the world of what is happening and the dreadful events in Syria."
French president Nicolas Sarkozy said: "That’s enough now, the regime must go."
Gilmore meeting
Tánaiste and Foreign Affairs Minister Eamon Gilmore is to join US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the International Conference of the Friends of the Syrian People which will takes place in Tunis tomorrow.
The Department of Foreign Affairs said the Tánaiste’s attendance at the meeting "sends a strong message about Ireland’s commitment to helping to resolve this grave international crisis".
"The Tánaiste has called for the international community to compel the Syrian regime to cease its appalling and unacceptable attacks on its own people through a series of robust economic, political and diplomatic measures", it said, adding that he condemned the targeting of civilian populations in Homs and other cities, and the killing of three journalists.
© Examiner Publications (Cork) Limited, City Quarter, Lapps Quay, Cork. Registered in Ireland: 73385.
