Richard Engel of NBC Is Freed in Syria

Richard Engel, the chief foreign correspondent for NBC News, and his crew had sneaked into Syria before. They knew where to go, where not to go; what to say, what not to say. But last Thursday, in a demonstration of the perils of reporting from the war-torn country, Mr. Engel’s crew was taken hostage by an unknown group and told they would be used to secure the release of hostages being held by Syrian rebels.

Enlarge This Image

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.

Amateur Video, via Associated Press

Richard Engel, center, NBC News’s chief foreign correspondent, with two crew members in a video taken off the Internet.

On Monday night, the men were freed when the hostage-takers were stopped at a rebel checkpoint. The crew’s return to Turkey on Tuesday highlighted once more the unpredictable nature of covering the conflict in Syria, which is said by the Committee to Protect Journalists to be the world’s most dangerous place for the news media.

The journalists were physically unharmed. NBC, which sought to kept the crew’s disappearance a secret until they were freed, released a statement that said, “We are pleased to report they are safely out of the country.”

Mr. Engel said Tuesday on NBC’s “Today” show that the captors talked “openly about their loyalty to the government” of President Bashar al-Assad.

“We were told that they wanted to exchange us for four Iranian agents and two Lebanese people who are from the Amal movement,” Mr. Engel said, referring to the Hezbollah ally.

NBC declined to specify the number of crew members who were with Mr. Engel. Two of the crew members, John Kooistra and Ghazi Balkiz, appeared with Mr. Engel on “Today.” A third crew member, Aziz Akyavas, spoke at a news conference in Turkey.

Two others were seen in a YouTube video apparently posted by the hostage-takers last week. Mr. Akyavas said in an interview on the Turkish television channel NTV that one of the other two, a technician who traveled with the crew, was still missing as of Tuesday. NBC did not respond to a request for comment about that report.

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 crossed into southern Turkey. They were captured trying to cross back into Syria on Thursday.

About 15 men, Mr. Engel said on “Today,” “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.”

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 the Cilvegozu border gate in southern Turkey. He added, “The last five days are the days that we want to forget.”

NBC’s television competitors and many other major news organizations, including The New York Times, refrained from reporting on the situation, in part out of concern about endangering the crew even more.

In 2008, news outlets similarly refrained from publishing reports about the kidnapping in Afghanistan of David Rohde of The New York Times and a local reporter, Tahir Ludin. The two escaped in June 2009 after seven months in captivity.

In the case of Mr. Engel, Gawker and a number of other Web sites reported speculation about his disappearance on Monday. After he and his crew members returned safely to Turkey, Peter N. Bouckaert, the emergencies director of Human Rights Watch who has been involved in efforts to free captives, criticized the decisions made by those sites. News blackouts, he said, go “against the journalistic instinct to report the news, but in many of these cases it does save lives.”

While none of the crew members suffered any physical injuries during their five days in captivity, 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,” he said.

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.”

Mr. Engel, who declined an interview request Tuesday via NBC, pointed out on “Today” that others in Syria have not been as lucky. His detention was a reminder that Austin Tice, a freelance reporter for the McClatchy News Service and The Washington Post, has been missing since August.

Susan E. Rice, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, wrote on Twitter that she was relieved for Mr. Engel and his colleagues, but added: “The situation for Syria’s people remains dire. They, too, deserve to be free.”

Mr. Engel is perhaps the best-known foreign-based correspondent on television in the United States. He has worked for NBC since May 2003, two months into the Iraq war. He was promoted to chief foreign correspondent in 2008.

The anchor of “NBC Nightly News,” Brian Williams, has been among Mr. Engel’s most ardent fans. Without referring 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. The mention of Mr. Engel’s name spurred spontaneous applause from the crowd. 

Source: http://www.nytimes.com