Salon.com > Peter Gelling

American journalist likely being held by Syrian government

Fri, 03 May 2013 18:48:00 +0000

BOSTON, Mass. — After a five-month investigation inside Syria and the wider Middle East, GlobalPost and the family of missing American journalist James Foley now believe the Syrian government is holding him in a detention center near Damascus.

“With a very high degree of confidence, we now believe that Jim was most likely abducted by a pro-regime militia group and subsequently turned over to Syrian government forces,” GlobalPost CEO and President Philip Balboni said during a speech marking World Press Freedom Day.

“We have obtained multiple independent reports from very credible confidential sources who have both indirect and direct access that confirm our assessment that Jim is now being held by the Syrian government in a prison or detention facility in the Damascus area. We further believe that this facility is under the control of the Syrian Air Force Intelligence service. Based on what we have learned, it is likely Jim is being held with one or more Western journalists, including most likely at least one other American.”

U.S. journalist missing in Syria

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 14:57:00 +0000

BOSTON, Mass. — Unidentified gunmen kidnapped a US journalist on Thanksgiving Day. More than a month later, he remains missing.

American James Foley, 39, was last seen on Nov. 22 in Idlib Province. Idlib has been the scene of heavy fighting in recent months between Syrian rebels and government forces.

Richard Engel, the chief foreign affairs correspondent for NBC News, and three members of his team, went missing in the same region in December. They were freed after their captors ran into a checkpoint manned by Ahrar Al Sham, a Syrian rebel group. Engel said a firefight erupted and two captors were killed. The rebels then escorted Engel and his team to the border with Turkey.

Little is known about the group that kidnapped Engel and his team. And it remains unclear if the same group is responsible for taking James.

Four things you haven’t heard about Libya

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 22:44:00 +0000

As the US campaigns clash over what President Barack Obama did and didn’t know about the attack on a US consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 11, there is real news happening in Libya that could have a real impact on the country, the region and the world.

Here are a few things the media should be writing about instead.

THE BENGHAZI KILLERS ‘BROUGHT TO JUSTICE’?

In a raid in Cairo on Wednesday, Egyptian security forces killed a Libyan man they say was involved in September’s attack on the US consulate.

Egyptian officials said the raid targeted a group of militants suspected of having connections to Al Qaeda, but did not offer any explanation as to why they thought the man, identified as Karim Ahmed Essam el-Azizi, might have been involved in the Benghazi assault.

Meanwhile, US officials are questioning a Tunisian man stopped by Turkish officials last month as he tried to enter the country under a false passport. While two Tunisian men were stopped at the time, officials say only one is under investigation.

Can campaign finance reform unite OWS?

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 15:30:00 +0000

BOSTON, Mass. — As the Occupy Wall Street movement, which is often criticized for lacking a focused agenda, begins to hone its message, one issue has emerged as a possible catch-all: campaign-finance reform.

It's not sexy. The phrase conjures memories of Sens. John McCain and Russ Feingold droning on about its importance a decade ago on Capitol Hill.

But now new life is being given to a cause most reformers had abandoned as unattainable.

Central to the frustration of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators is corporate influence on politicians, which, they say, has led to most of the other concerns on their list, such as deregulation of the financial sector, unequal distribution of wealth and environmental destruction. Campaign-finance reform, some Occupiers believe, would address the root of the problem.

“There are so many people here with so many different ideas and so many different goals,” said Andrew Green, a volunteer at Occupy Boston who works full time at a pharmacy. “So there hasn't yet been any unifying decisions made as to what to do. But taking money out of politics would be a very good start.”

Could Gadhafi’s death spark a civil war?

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 17:05:00 +0000

As Libyans, and much of the Arab world, celebrate the capture and killing of toppled Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, the rebels that turned the protest movement into an armed uprising are coalescing around the capital and beginning to make the first moves toward a new government.

But while the revolution is at its end, deep divisions remain in the country, and fears of civil war are ever present. The Libyan rebels themselves are far from unified and have been jockeying for power amongst themselves for months. And, now that the focus of the rebels' firepower — Gaddafi — is gone, many Libyans worry that the real divisions within the rebel faction will begin to emerge in more serious, and possibly violent, ways.

Hassan Sadaw, a Libya English teacher from the western rebel stronghold of Misrata, told GlobalPost's James Foley earlier this month that he worried that divisions among the rebels would eventually erupt and that the two sides would turn their weapons on each other.

What should we believe about al-Qaida?

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 20:01:00 +0000

Almost everything we learn about Al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden these days is coming from anonymous U.S. officials.

Wednesday, for instance, U.S. officials told us via The Washington Post that Al-Qaida was on the verge of being totally wiped out. The comments echoed earlier ones from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the former C.I.A. director, who earlier said that only a couple dozen more Al-Qaida militants needed to be killed before the war was over.

Last week the officials were talking to the Wall Street Journal. They told the paper that Al-Qaida would likely be shifting the focus of its attacks to Western targets outside of the United States. They said this was because it had become too difficult for them to strike inside the United States.