You have to watch this interview in Arabic with Richard Engel. First, I am most impressed with Engel's Arabic. He is really fluent in Arabic and speaks it with a semi-Egyptian accent. I must state that I did not expect this and I don't recall knowing or meeting one US correspondent in the Middle East with such fluency. He did not get stuck on words in the entire video and uses the language with such facility. If all correspondents in the region know Arabic like Engel, US media coverage of the region would be much better. Not let us go to the substance:
So the interview was set up by the thugs of the Free Syrian Army as soon as Mr. Engel was released. I still maintain that this entire captivity was set up by FSA to paint themselves in good light and to stigmatize their sectarian enemies. Of course, Engel is a mere victim here, or he can be said to be a useful naive victim. But his political biases are clear in this interview. He refers to Free Syrian Army gangs as "our friends" and then talks glowingly about the gang that freed him: Ahrar Ash-Sham. Who are those folks? Well, read the latest report of the ICG to learn that they are basically Bin Ladenites. So the heroes of this fake release of the hostages are Bin Ladenites. How little US media notice what they are doing sometimes: sometimes they are just guilty and nefarious and sometimes they are just dumb and ignorant. And notice that Engel talks about how his captors moved them like twice a day: so those "Shi`ite" captors (there are no `Alawites in the area) are moving freely in a predominantly Sunni area in Idlib and have no fear about it. And then we are told: that the gang of Ahrar Ash-Sham had an ambush for the two guards and the hostages and was able to shoot them dead with two shots without even shooting the car. The two guards just slumped dead, according to Engel although he was blindfolded. This is one of many manufactured and fake operations produced by the fabricators of the Free Syrian Army and the US media is more than happy to parrot.
