New Video: As Syrian government accused of assassinating correspondent Marie Colvin, Syrian journalists speak out

For more information or to arrange interviews with Rami please contact: Henrietta McMicking

New Video: As Syrian government accused of assassinating correspondent Marie Colvin, Syrian journalists speak out

11th July, 2016

Link to film on YouTube: https://youtu.be/N91Fo6onQgs
Dropbox for downloads: https://www.dropbox.com/s/g67rh9la4w543io/Rami%20Jarrah%20Interview.mov?dl=0

In an exclusive interview with The Syria Campaign, Rami Jarrah, one of Syria’s leading journalists, explains what Marie Colvin meant to Syrians, how her assassination is part of a deliberate campaign by the Syrian Government to target anyone that speaks out about their crimes against civilians.

Rami Jarrah is a Syrian British journalist and activist. He has broadcast for CNN, al Jazeera and NPR while footage from ANA, the news agency he co-founded in 2012 is also used by the Huffington Post and the New York Times. He has been covering the conflict in Syria since 2011 when he first used the pseudonym Alexander Page.

Rami Jarrah:

“Marie Colvin’s death was part of a systematic targeting of journalists carried by out by the Syrian regime on Syrian journalists and foreign journalists”

“She exposed the crimes that were being committed by the Assad regime…. She was eliminated because of her voice.”

“There are many other journalists who have paid that price because they tried to expose those crimes. “

The lawsuit accuses Syrian government officials of operating at the instruction of the Assad regime, which devised a criminal plan to surveil and kill civilian journalists as part of a broader strategy to create a media blackout in which they could kill innocent civilians with impunity. Jarrah believes that the murder of Marie Colvin has had a profound effect on how the international media has covered events in Syria after her death. He believes that she would be shocked about how subsequent events in Syria have been reported.

The lawsuit is being brought under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act and is the first of such cases to be taken against the Syrian regime. Jarrah concludes that a government that orders the killing of two foreign journalist cannot be viewed as legitimate.

NOTES TO EDITORS

– Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik were killed in Baba Amr in the Syrian city of Homs on 22 February 2012 while reporting on the Syrian conflict

– The family of American journalist Marie Colvin filed a wrongful death lawsuit in a U.S. court on 9 July 2016 accusing the Syrian government of deliberately killing her in a targeted rocket attack http://cja.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Colvin-v-Syria-Complaint.pdf

– The lawsuit provides evidence to explain the deaths of Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik and claims: “As part of the siege of Baba Amr, the Assad regime hunted down journalists and media activists who sought to expose these atrocities to the world.”

– Over 500 journalists and media activists have been killed in Syria between March 2011 and March 2016. 89% of those killed have been killed by the Syrian Goverment [source: Syrian Network for Human Rights] http://whoiskillingciviliansinsyria.org/

– The Syria Campaign was established in 2014 as an independent advocacy group to focus on the protection of civilians in Syria. To maintain its impartiality, The Syria Campaign accepts no funding from governments or any of the groups involved in the conflict https://thesyriacampaign.org