NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel was freed ... respected journalist, Engel was the recipient of the Peabody Award for his ...
Richard Engel of NBC Is Freed in Syria
Published: December 18, 2012
Richard Engel, the chief foreign correspondent for
NBC News, and three of his crew members were freed on Monday after five days in captivity in
Syria, the news organization said on Tuesday.
Anadolu via AP TV, via Associated Press
NBC chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel, right,
crossed back into Turkey Tuesday after he and his crew were freed
unharmed following five days of captivity inside Syria.
The journalists were unharmed. The news organization released a short
statement that said, “We are pleased to report they are safely out of
the country.”
The identities of the kidnappers and their motives were unknown. But an article on the NBC News Web site
quotes Mr. Engel as saying their captors “were talking openly about their loyalty to the government” of Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad.
Their kidnapping once again highlights the perils of reporting from Syria, which is said by the
Committee to Protect Journalists to be “the world’s most dangerous place for the press.”
NBC declined to specify the number of crew members that were with Mr.
Engel. Two of the crew members, John Kooistra and Ghazi Balkiz, appeared
with Mr. Engel on NBC’s “Today” show on Tuesday morning. A third, Aziz
Akyavas, spoke at a news conference in Turkey. Mr. Akyavas said in an
interview on the Turkish television channel NTV that a technician who
traveled with the crew was still missing. NBC did not respond to a
request for comment about that report.
Mr. Engel and the crew members covertly entered Syria several times this
year to report on the insurgency that is fighting Mr. Assad there. Mr.
Engel was last seen on television last Thursday in a taped report from
Aleppo, Syria’s commercial capital, where he reported that “the Syrian
regime appears to be cracking, but the rebels remain outgunned.”
In order to transmit their report in safety, Mr. Engel and his crew
apparently crossed the border into Turkey. Their effort to cross back
into the country on Thursday led to their capture.
About 15 men, Mr. Engel said on the “Today” show, “just literally jumped
out of the trees and bushes” and “dragged us out of the car.” The
kidnappers killed one of the rebels whom the crew had been traveling
with, he said.
NBC’s Web site said there was “no claim of responsibility, no contact
with the captors and no request for ransom during the time the crew was
missing.”
Mr. Engel said on “Today” that the kidnappers had a plan to exchange the
crew for several people being held by Syrian rebels. “We were told that
they wanted to exchange us for four Iranian agents and two Lebanese
people who are from the Amal movement,” he said.
But the crew members were freed when the captors “ran into a checkpoint
manned by members of the Ahrar al-Sham brigade, a Syrian rebel group,”
NBC’s Web site reported. “There was a confrontation and a firefight
ensued. 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.
“We are very happy to be back in Turkey,” Mr. Engel said, speaking in
front of cameras at Cilvegozu border gate in southern Turkey. He added,
“The last five days are the days that we want to forget.”
NBC tried to keep the crew’s disappearance a secret for several days
while it sought to ascertain their whereabouts. Its television
competitors and many other major news organizations, including The New
York Times, refrained from reporting on the situation, in part out of
concern that any reporting could worsen the danger for the crew. News
outlets similarly refrained from publishing reports about a 2008
kidnapping in Afghanistan of David Rohde of The New York Times and a
local reporter, Tahir Ludin. The two reporters
escaped in June 2009 after seven months in captivity.
In the case of Mr. Engel, some Web sites reported speculation about his
disappearance on Monday. NBC declined to comment until the crew members
were safely out of Syria on Tuesday.
While none of the crew members suffered any physical injuries, there was
“psychological pressure,” Mr. Akyavas told NTV. He said they were
blindfolded, handcuffed, and “every now and then had guns pointed on our
heads. It was not pleasant.”
In his comments on “Today” Mr. Engel said: “They made us choose which
one of us would be shot first, and when we refused there were mock
shootings. They pretended to shoot Ghazi several times.”
The crew members were also filmed for a video that showed them being held in a small, nondescript room.
Mr. Engel is perhaps the best-known foreign-based correspondent on
television in the United States. Hop-scotching from Iraq to Afghanistan
to Egypt and other countries in recent years, he has had more airtime
than any other such correspondent at NBC, ABC or CBS. Thus the news of
his kidnapping and safe release is likely to generate widespread
interest from viewers.
Mr. Engel has worked for NBC since May 2003, two months into the Iraq
war. He was promoted to chief foreign correspondent in 2008. At the
time, the NBC News president Steve Capus said, “There aren’t enough
superlatives to describe the work that Richard has done in some of the
most dangerous places on earth for NBC News. His reporting, his
expertise on the situation in the Middle East, his professionalism and
his commitment to telling the story of what is happening there is
unparalleled.”
The “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams has been among Mr. Engel’s
most ardent fans. Without alluding to his disappearance, Mr. Williams
brought up Mr. Engel while being interviewed onstage at a charity
fund-raiser in New Jersey on Sunday night. “What I know about Richard
Engel is, he’s fearless, but he’s not crazy,” Mr. Williams said. When
Mr. Engel’s name came up, there was spontaneous applause from the crowd.
Brian Stelter reported from New York and Sebnem Arsu from Istanbul. Bill Carter contributed reporting from New York.
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