Is there some indication that he’s been kidnapped or killed? He may be intentionally incommunicado.
Says it all, doesn’t it.
Journalists look after their own.
By the way, I see you have wooshed one person already. There will be more.
Someone else already posted an example of a news blackout regarding a captive aid-worker.
Richard Engel and Abducted NBC News Crew Freed in Syria
So whoever had him over in the celebrity death pool thread might be disappointed but the rest of us can be glad.
Held by an unknown group. Which is the only thing that makes sense. Neither of the major players in this conflict would have wanted to be holding a prominent journalist. Whoever had them probably figured out they wouldn’t live long enough to collect any ransom.
Their abductors didn’t let them go willingly. They ran into a rebel checkpoint while moving their hostages from place to place, and some of the hostage takers were killed. I’m glad Engel and the others are safe.
I’ve heard of similar harassment of other reporters. Abduct them for a few days. Scare them really badly and then release. Often that’s enough to get the message across and the reporters leave.
The rebels need the foreign news coverage to get their cause out. It seems more likely that the Syrian government wants to suppress foreign coverage. They were allegedly behind the killing of the French journalist a few months ago. Also the Japanese journalist that got killed. Then there was the eyepatch lady journalist. Can’t recall her name but it was a big story.
update Marie Colvin was the eyepatch lady
We’ll probably get more details soon (i haven’t time to check the news on this today). This has the hallmarks of a small group acting on their own. I’d assume Engel and crew thought they had established contact with one of the main rebel forces. The rebels certainly wouldn’t want to create any bad will with the outside world right now. The Assad forces would also be cautious, but they may be splintering internally. They may be seeing their cause as lost already and looking for bargaining chips. Anyway, I’m just guessing now. This could turn out to be very interesting, or another case of journalists acting rashly in pursuit of a scoop.
I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re right. Just some bandits looking for money or something, perhaps.
Engel and two others were on Today show this morning. I caught it as I was leaving for work. They all looked very relieved.
He said they were with the rebels driving somewhere last week, when a group of Assad supporters appeared out of nowhere, stopped their car, shots were fired, and they were dragged out and into another vehicle. They were blindfolded and threatened with their lives (Engel said the captors would ask each of them which one should be killed first, but they each refused to answer). He said they were not beaten (but they did look a little roughed-up).
As stated above, when their captors were moving them somewhere, they encountered an unexpected rebel check-point, gunfire broke out and they were able to escape their vehicle and rejoin the rebels, and then escape to Turkey.
I understand why the networks try to suppress this news. It does not seem that they value reporters more than anyone else, it is just that they want to deny the captors any spotlight. OTOH, if Engel was killed then it would be wall-to-wall coverage.
Considering one of their rebel escorts was executed in front of them upon their capture, not likely they would have been released alive.