Analysts have questioned the authenticity of video posted on YouTube last week, apparently showing the American reporter Austin Tice in the hands of Islamist fighters in Syria.
Video posted on YouTube five days ago, apparently showing a missing American journalist in the hands of jihadist captors in Syria, might have been staged to discredit the armed opposition to the Syrian government, according to several analysts who viewed the clip on Monday.
The reporter, Austin Tice, left the United States Marine Corps last year and has been contributing freelance articles to two American newspaper companies, McClatchy and The Washington Post, and other outlets since he smuggled himself into Syria from Turkey in May. He last communicated with colleagues by e-mail on Aug. 13. An update he posted on Twitter two days earlier, about enjoying an alcohol-fueled birthday party with members of the Free Syrian Army, underscored that he was on good terms with the rebels he was reporting on at the time.
A State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, told reporters on Monday, “We have seen the video. We are not in a position to verify, A, whether it is him, or B, whether it represents an actual scene that happened or something that may have been staged.†She added: “There's a lot of reason for the Syrian government to duck responsibility, but we continue to believe, to the best of our knowledge, that he's in Syrian government custody.â€
Mr Tice's parents, Marc and Debra Tice, confirmed that the man in the video was their son, in a statement that began: “Knowing Austin is alive and well is comforting to our family. Though it is difficult to see our eldest son in such a setting and situation as that depicted in the video, it is reassuring that he appears to be unharmed.â€
As the McClatchy correspondent Hannah Allam explains, the brief video clip showing the reporter alive was uploaded to a new YouTube account last Wednesday, but seen much more widely on Monday after it was posted on Facebook by supporters of President Bashar al-Assad. James Ball of The Washington Post reports that the pro-Assad blogger who drew attention to the video on Facebook wrote that the images of the reporter being held by Islamists, rather than government forces, proved that “Western media is working against Syria.â€
Analysts contacted by both McClatchy and The Post, and bloggers who have worked to authenticate video from Syria for the past 18 months, agreed that some details of the video did not ring true.
The clip shows the American captive, wearing a blindfold, clearly distressed as he tries to recite an Islamic prayer in Arabic to armed captors, before breaking off and exclaiming in English, “Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus.†Close observers of video from Syria and of jihadist clips drew attention to the unusual clothes worn by Mr. Tice's captors, and the halting way they shouted expressions of praise for Allah, as if they needed to be prompted.
Joseph Holliday, a former U.S. Army intelligence officer who tracks Syrian rebel groups for the Institute for the Study of War in Washington told The Post that it seemed strange that the armed men around Mr. Tice were wearing what appear to be salwar kameez, traditional clothing worn in Afghanistan, which looked very clean. “It's like a caricature of a jihadi group,†he said. “My gut instinct is that regime security guys dressed up like a bunch of wahoos and dragged him around and released the video to scare the U.S. and others about the danger of Al Qaeda extremists in Syria. It would fit their narrative perfectly.⠀
The video came to light the same day that Syria's foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, scolded other countries who “clearly induce and support terrorism in Syria with money, weapons and foreign fighters,†an address to the United Nations General Assembly.
In an interview with McClatchy, Murad Batal al Shishani, an analyst in London who monitors extremist groups, cast doubt on a comment on the pro-Assad Facebook page, which said that “the American journalist Austin Tice is with the Nusra Front gangs and Al Qaeda in Syria,†an apparent reference to Jabhat al-Nusra, a jihadist group. But, as Ms. Allam writes, that organization has “a sophisticated media wing that produces a Twitter feed and videos that are clearly labeled and edited.†It would be unusual for the group to have simply uploaded the clip to YouTube and waited for pro-Assad bloggers to draw attention to it, rather than using well-known, jihadist Internet forums.
Jenan Moussa, a report er for Al Aan TV in Dubai who has worked in Syria recently, wrote on Twitter that none of the fighters from that group she saw there wore Afghan-style clothing.
A Syrian activist who writes on Twitter as @THE_47th posted a link to another Web video, with a logo, titles, music and flashy editing, noting: “This is what a Jabhat Al Nusra capture video looks like, it is of 5 Yemeni Officers captured in Syria thought to be helping the regime.â€
Video said to show five Yemeni soldiers taken prisoner in Syria by a jihadist group.
After viewing the video, Mr. Tice's family in Texas and senior editors at McClatchy and The Post called for his immediate release.
As he reported fr om Syria this year, Mr. Tice used social networks to stay in touch with his family, to publish his work and even to argue about coverage of the conflict with colleagues.
In a series of Twitter updates the week before he disappeared, Mr. Tice criticized a post on The Lede drawing attention to a spate of new reports from Western journalists who made it into rebel-held territory in August. “The way has always been open. This whole spin is an excuse for laziness,†he wrote. “Clearly the risk is real,†he added, “But idea that it's prohibitive of more/better coverage is a red herring. I see it as corporate overlawyering.â€
Just weeks before he went missing, the former soldier wrote a manifesto of sorts on Facebook, explaining his decision to work in such a risky environment to family and friends, which was reproduced in its entirety by The Post in August. The message began:
It's nice and all, but please quit telling me to be safe.
Against my better judgment, I'm posting this on Facebook. Flame away.
People keep telling me to be safe (as if that's an option), keep asking me why I'm doing this crazy thing, keep asking what's wrong with me for coming here. So listen.
Our granddads stormed Normandy and Iwo Jima and defeated global fascism. Neil Armstrong flew to the Moon in a glorified trashcan, doing math on a clipboard as he went. Before there were roads, the Pioneers put one foot in front of the other until they walked across the entire continent. Then a bunch of them went down to fight and die in Texas ‘cause they thought it was the right thing to do.
Sometime between when our granddads licked the Nazis and when we started putting warnings on our coffee cups about the temperature of our beverage, America lost that pioneering spirit. We became a fat, weak, complacent, coddled, unambitious and cowardly nation. I went off to two wars with misguided notions of patriotism and found in both that the first priority was to never get killed, something we could have achieved from our living rooms in America with a lot less hassle. To protect careers and please the politicians, we weighed ourselves down with enough armor to break a man's back, gorged on RipIts and ice cream, and believed our own press that we were doing something noble.
He contrasted American life to the current struggle in Syria, where “Every person in this country fighting for their freedom wakes up every day and goes to sleep every night with the knowledge that death could visit them at any moment.â€
He concluded:
No, I don't have a death wish â€" I have a life wish. So I'm living, in a place, at a time and with a people where life means more than anywhere I've ever been â€" because every single day people here lay down their own for the sake of others. Coming here to Syria is the greatest thing I've ever done, and it's the greatest feeling of my life.
And look, if you still don't get it, go read Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. That book explains it all better than I ever could.
