Freed hostages heard Syrian rebels say Assad not responsible for chemical attack
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Syrian rebels during the Battle of Allepo
Two Europeans, a Belgian writer, Pierre Piccinin, and an Italian journalist, Domenico Quirico, released Sunday after they were held hostage by Syrian rebels for five months in Syria, have said they eavesdropped on a conversation in which their rebel captors said the chemical attack in the Ghouta outskirts of Damascus was carried out by rebel forces.
According to the men, during a Skype conversation conducted in the English language, they overheard their captors deny that President Bashar Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack.
The rebels said it was Syrian opposition forces and not Syrian government troops who fired chemical weapons-armed rockets that killed civilians on Aug. 21.
Piccinin and Quirico were kidnapped in April last year by a group of Free Syrian Army gunmen. Piccinin identified their captors as members of the Farouq Brigade.
The men were freed Sunday after the Italian authorities negotiated their release.
Quirico, 62, told the Italian La Stampa newspaper that he and his companion Piccinnin, listened to the conversation between three individuals through a closed door. He said that although the men denied that Assad forces were responsible for the attack, they gave no evidence during the conversation to back up the assertion.
According to Quirico, they could not tell whether the men were only repeating a rumor or a fact that they had firsthand knowledge of.
He said, "I have no evidence to confirm this theory and I do not know who these people were or if they are reliable."
He said, however, that one of the men involved in the conversation identified himself as a Free Syrian Army general. He also said that from what they heard it was likely that the rebels exaggerated the death toll from the attack.
Piccinin, however, appeared convinced that the rebels had carried out the attack. During an interview with the Belgian radio station RTL, he said, “It is a moral duty to say this. The government of Bashar Assad did not use sarin gas or other types of gas in the outskirts of Damascus."
According to Piccinin, he and Quirico were held in isolation from the outside world and had no information about the chemical weapons incident in Damascus. Therefore, at the time they listened to the conversation between the rebels they were not aware of the full significance of what they overheard. But they could understand from the conversation that opposition forces had deployed chemical weapons as a strategy to get the West to intervene.
Quirico told La Stampa, "In this conversation, they said that the gas attack on two neighborhoods of Damascus was launched by the rebels as a provocation to lead the West to intervene militarily. We were unaware of everything that was going on during our detention in Syria, and therefore also with the gas attack in Damascus."
Piccinin told RTL that based on what they heard and learned during captivity it would be “insane and suicidal for the West to support these people.”
He said, “It pains me to say it because I've been a fierce supporter of the Free Syrian Army in its rightful fight for democracy since 2012."
Echoing Piccinin's feelings, Quirico told the Italian newspaper Quotidiano Nazionale, "I am extremely surprised that the United States could think about intervening, knowing very well how the Syrian revolution has become international jihadism – in other words al-Qaida."
He said it appears that the jihadists in Syria have a plan to "create a caliphate and extend it to the entire Middle East and North Africa.”
The men told harrowing stories of their experience in captivity. They were beaten regularly, starved and subjected to mock executions.
Piccinin said, "We were moved around a lot...it was not always the same group that held us, there were very violent groups, very anti-West and some anti-Christian."
He said they learned a lot during captivity, but he would not give details until Quirico and his newspaper La Stampa have made a decision in consultation with the Italian government whether to publish the information.
The information given by the men contradicts the claim by US Secretary of State John Kerry that the US government has conclusive evidence that Syrian government troops carried out the chemical weapons attack.
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