In dramatic testimony published Thursday and translated below, two Swiss reporters who accompanied Gilles Jacquier, the French journalist who died on Jan. 11 in Syria, gave an account of the mysterious circumstances of his death in Thursday's Le Courrier (Geneva), translated below.[1,2,3,4,5,6] ...
1.
[Translated from Le Courrier (Geneva)]
The death of Gilles Jacquier in Syria
NARRATIVE OF A FATAL TRAP: A REPORT WITH A DOUBLE BYLINE
By Sid Ahmed Hammouche and Patrick Vallélian (L'Hebdo)
** The circumstances of the death of France 2 journalist Gilles Jacquier on Wed., Jan. 11, in Homs, Syria, remain mysterious. The two Swiss colleagues who traveled with him recount the tragic trap that closed around them. **
--Two Swiss journalists were part of the group that was the victim of disturbing mortar attacks in Homs on January 11: La Liberté correspondent, Sid Ahmed Hammouche, and Patrick Vallélian of L'Hebdo. They were members of a team that included Gilles Jacquier, the well-known France 2 reporter, who lost his life while carrying out his job. Following the powerful testimony of our correspondent in our Saturday edition, we publish today the narrative of this journalistic trip with a tragic epilogue that they cosigned. Extraordinarily, their report is appearing simultaneously in the two newspapers. --Editor's note.
* * *
AT THE HEART OF THE DEADLY TRAP
By Sid Ahmed Hammouche and Patrick Vallélian (L'Hebdo)
Le Courrier (Geneva)
January 19, 2012
Pages 1 & 10
http://abomail.lecourrier.ch/pdfs/28706c7afe10e7e/LeCourrier_2012-01-19.pdf
Boom. A powerful explosion shakes the Alawite district of New Akrama, right next door to the University of Homs. It's 3:20 p.m. on a Wednesday in January. The black minivan we're in with Christophe Kenck, France 2's cameraman, who's in front, Gilles Jacquier, the well-known reporter for "Envoyé spécial," his wife Caroline Poiron, an independent photographer, as well as Mireille, their handler, is blocked by a demonstration of President Bachar al-Assad's supporters. In front of us are about forty youths, mostly men, agitated, chanting their love for the regime and waving signs in English and Arabic hailing the Syrian army.
They surrounded our vehicle only a few minutes ago. Coming from nowhere, while we were parked near a garden and a little amusement park full of children, waiting for the team from Flemish TV's VRT. They'd failed to show up a few minutes earlier when we waited for them at a traffic circle. Embedded with Bachar supporters and security personnel in civilian garb, they meet us on foot coming up Al Hadara street, French civilization in person. Oddly enough, a team from Syrian state TV is filming them when we meet them.
In the car we're sharing with the French team, we pass along information. We don't know what the Belgians are up to. Mireille then gets out to tell them to go back to their vehicle in the direction of the city hospital, which, we're surprised to learn, is just across from where we are, on the north side of this city of a million inhabitants. It's a city where the regime in Damascus lost control of certain districts several months ago and where the Free Syrian Army (FSA) has taken over.
SCENE FROM A HORROR FILM
We'll never be able to set foot in the hospital. The nightmare is beginning. As if it's a scene from a horror film that will take the life of Gilles Jacquier, one of the most highly regarded journalists in France and a very experienced war reporter. Just as we're absorbing the noise of the explosion, civilians open the door of our vehicle, telling us to go see the point of impact. Christophe Kenck hesitates, but Gilles and Mireille are already following Belgian TV, which is ahead of us. We remain behind. There's no reason to hurry. We'd rather watch, keeping our distance from the vehcle, which is a potential target.
Around us, the security personnel who were all about before have vanished. The only people who stay with us are an armed soldier, a chabiha, a pro-Bachar militiaman with his Kalashnikov, and a hyper young man in a white sweater who is encouraging us to go the garden leading up to a school about two hundred feet away on our right. He makes several efforts to get us to go there. We refuse, but carefully move up the street. It's almost empty. Twenty, thirty, or forty seconds later, another explosion goes off at a distance of twenty or thirty yards, taking our breath away. We hit the ground. No one's hurt, but we're stunned. Is it a mortar shell? A grenade? An RPG? Or a remote-controlled bomb that was placed in the garden to kill us?
SURPRISING NONCHALANCE
We have no idea, but we do understand that the organized visit for our group of about fifteen foreign journalists has turned into a trap. We lose no time in turning around while letting our videocameras run. On the rooftops, we see men moving. Snipers? Unsure, we stick close to the soldier who keeps telling us to go to the first impact site, where Gilles Jacquot is with his wife Caroline and the other journalists.
"It's nothing. They're sound bombs," he says, smiling at us. The few security personnel who remain nearby surprise us by their nonchalance. One of them is laughing. Another makes jokes. They're oddly calm when the foreigners are in danger. They even take the time to discuss things with the young man in the white sweater, who keeps encouraging us to head toward danger. When the third and the fourth explosion go off, we're in a more protected position, at the intersection. Our driver, who has taken fright, has been told by the soldiers to leave the area without us, and to return to the hotel. We tell him to stay and help us get our French friends, about whom we know nothing and whom we can't reach on our cellphones.
Suddenly, an ambulance and taxis carrying victims drive by, making a lot of noise. A soldier shows us the road to the hospital. And as if by magic, after four explosions, the traffic, which had stopped, returns to normal. There are no more explosions that evening. As for us, we meet up again with Christophe at the Al Nahda dispensary, a charitable establishment that cares for the poor. "Gilles is dead," he tells us, weeping, before he collapses in our arms.
"IN YOUR ROLE AS SWISS CITIZENS..."
We maneuver around the traps one after the other. From the fake doctor to the fake nurse... Again and again armed men are at us, proposing to take the body to Damascus or to do an autopsy in our presence with the authorization of his wife. Several times we're asked to confirm that we were really attacked by terrorists. Last but not least, two Arab League observers appear to "note the death," they tell us. So we ask them to stay at the door to protect us and wait for the arrival of the ambassador, who is on the way despite the curfew covering Homs, to get us out of this 215 sq. foot room.
Their answer: "We can't. We have to go eat at the hospital." The atmosphere is tense as Eric Chevallier arrives, around 9:30 p.m., with a security team, in order to evacuate us. Shooting can be heard near the hospital, where a crowd has gathered to chant anti-French slogans.
"Expect the negotiations to repatriate the body to last a while," the ambassador warns us, but finds a compromise solution. Gilles's body will be examined, X-rayed, and photographed before being turned over to his wife, who still has to answer the prosecutor's questions. "No comment," she tells him each time, while others try to question us and as media organizations hover around.
The departure from the hospital is tense. Dozens of armed persons throng the corridors and the entryway. Under protection by French security personnel, we rush down three stories of staircases. Outside, pro-Bachar demonstrators, some of them holding candles, continue to chant anti-French slogans and denounce terrorism. They repeat in chorus their president's message the day before on TV that his country is not facing a revolution, but rather terrorist attacks.
We get into armored vehicles headed for Damascus. An ambulance carries Gilles's body, but there's one more surprise. The Syrian security men who head up the convoy steer us toward the Bab Amro bridge, which insurgents and regular forces are fighting over. Without the vigilance of the ambassador's driver, the worst might have been yet to come... The next evening, we leave Damascus on a flight sent by France Télévisions. We land in Paris at night with Gilles's remains. Rémy Pflimlin, the head of public television, and Frédéric Mitterrand, the minster of culture, meet us and thank us. "You were in your role as Swiss citizens. You have always come to the aid of humanity," smiles the minister, as if to leave behind the tense atmosphere of the VIP lounge at the Bourget airport. Moved, we cannot say a word.
--You can find the complete text, which is published together with La Liberté and L'Hebdo on our internet site http:///www.laliberte.ch.
2.
[Translated from Le Courrier (Geneva)]
QUESTIONS WITHOUT ANSWERS
By Sid Ahmed Hammouche and Patrick Vallélian (L'Hebdo)
Le Courrier (Geneva)
January 19, 2012
Page 10
http://abomail.lecourrier.ch/pdfs/28706c7afe10e7e/LeCourrier_2012-01-19.pdf
Questions abound in our minds. Questions that French justicial officials are also asking after opening an investigation for voluntary homicide. Where did the men who were supposed to provide security for our convoy of foreign journalists to Homs go? Why did these men not give us shelter and evacuate us to a safe zone? Why didn't we follow the plan, which was to go from our hotel to the hospital? Why did the explosions suddenly target the district where we had just arrived? Who could know, except the authorities, that a delegation of reporters was there?
Why wasn't the Ministry of Information's bus, which was carrying a big "Press" sign on its front windshield, also targeted, since it was only accompanied by one police car, according to a statement from a journalist who was there? Why did the authorities forbid journalists from the bus to stay in Homs after 3:00 p.m. but let us walk around at that time? Why was our vehicle blocked by security vehicles and by the pro-Bachar demonstration a few minutes before Gilles's death?
How can the presence of people in civilian dress inciting us to go toward the explosions be explained? In the images recorded by Belgian television, one of these youths even announces the deflagration of a house before it takes place. Why does another one encourage us to go toward the school before the explosion? How can the return to normal traffic after the fourth explosion be explained? What is the role of Mother Agnès, who now says she's in danger?
One thing is certain, though: we trusted Syrian authorities to protect us and let us do our work as witnesses, even if we know the limits of embedded journalism. We bitterly regret it. And we weep for a brilliant colleague, a friend, too, who leaves behind him a brave wife and children.
But we think it is necessary to go to this locked-down, paranoid Syria, ruled over by a dictatorial regime. To bear witness. Also to give voice to the brave opposition figures who take the risk to meet with us. And to read the fear on the faces and read the messages of those millions of Syrians who speak with their eyes. Yes, in that country, eyes speak, as Gilles noticed during our last evening in Damascus in an enormous café. He had fun noticing that the day that their president promised them democracy, amnesty, and a better future, the *chica* smokers, the card and backgammon players, remained walled up in their forty-year-long silence. They know well this vicious regime. Which is out of breath.
--In tonight's broadcast, "Envoyé spécial" pays homage to the well-known reporter Gilles Jacquier and revisits at length the circumstances of his death in Homs. France 2. 8:35 p.m.
3.
[Translated from Le Courrier (Geneva)]
IN THE CITY OF HOMS
By Sid Ahmed Hammouche and Patrick Vallélian (L'Hebdo)
** Gilles Jacquier? Testimony. **
Le Courrier (Geneva)
January 19, 2012
Page 11
http://abomail.lecourrier.ch/pdfs/28706c7afe10e7e/LeCourrier_2012-01-19.pdf
It's chaos in this country hospital. There are armed men from the intelligence services, policemen, soldiers, civilians. Blood everywhere. Cries. And a lot of people come up to us, saying: "Look at the results of freedom's mortar shells." The ones the West would give to the insurgents, who are immediately blamed in the drama in which we have become players. We hurry up a flight of stairs to find Caroline, alone, clinging to Gilles's body, lying on a bed. There's only a blanket covering him. No trace of blood. He almost seems asleep. Still warm.
GRIEVING
Bizarrely, the France 2 reporter is sharing the same little room with another victim, whose brother is crying. Close about him are about twenty people. They wail. Two teams from Syrian television (Al Sourya and Al Dounia) are already there and are filming the young martyr. They point their cameras at Gilles. Caroline tells them not to, threatening them with lawsuits if a single image is released, while Sid Ahmed Hammouche, who speaks Arabic, begs the doctor to make the journalists leave and give us a room where our friend can grieve in peace.
Our fear: that the Syrian media are politically instrumentalizing pictures of Gilles dead on his bed by explaining him as the first Frenchman to fall vicitim to terrorism in Syria. After long minutes of negotiation, the body of our friend is transported unceremoniously to a room where we shut ourselves in for more than ten hours.
At that point we have only one goal, to keep the Syrian authorities from taking his body for an autopsy and thus making all the evidence disappear. Caroline, in tears, then goes to keep watch over her husband. Things calm down. Christophe Kenck alerts France Télévisions, Patrick Vallélian alerts French and Swiss authorities, even as he leans with all his weight against the door to keep out media assaults and local authorities. Sid Ahmed Hammouche, for his part, haggles and plays for time until the arrival of Eric Chevallier, the French ambassador posted in Damascus.
PLAYING FOR TIME
We tell the Syrian officials who come by, in particular the medical examiner, Homs's chief prosecutor, the vice governor, and a general from the police, that the "incident" is now in the hands of Paris and Damascus. We fight to prevent an autopsy, to keep Caroline from having to speak in Damascus to Syrian judicial officials without a representative from France present, and to stop the media from filming the body.
To play for time, we tell Soulaiman Fayez, the vice governor of Homs, that he's speaking directly to France Télévisions, when it's really Guilaine Chenu, head of "Envoyé spécial" and Gilles's boss, on the other end of the line. We'll use the same ploy with the chief prosecutor when we put him on the line with the French ambassador. The message is clear: no one touches Gilles's body so long as the French authorities are not there.
4.
[Translated from Le Courrier (Geneva)]
WHAT GAME IS THE NUN AGNÈS-MARIAM PLAYING?
By Sid Ahmed Hammouche and Patrick Vallélian (L'Hebdo)
Le Courrier (Geneva)
January 19, 2012
Page 11
http://abomail.lecourrier.ch/pdfs/28706c7afe10e7e/LeCourrier_2012-01-19.pdf
PARIS -- Back to where we started from. Where we boarded with the France 2 team on Sat., Jan. 7, on an Air France flight. We arrive together around 9:00 p.m in Damascus, but we have to wait for more than two hours in customs, where entry formalities drag on. Several times we contact Mother Agnès-Mariam of the Cross. It's this Christian "Franco-Lebanese" nun who invited us and who organized the press trip.
A first surprise: we'll only get a visa in four days. Mother Agnès, completely at ease amidst the security services, makes light of this and promises that our stay will not face obstacles and that we will be free "to expose the propaganda of the Western media." The "Goebbels-Atlanticist" propaganda. We take a room at the Fardoss Hotel, in the center of Damascus, on the same floor as the French team whose destiny we now share.
Swept by glacial cold, the Syrian capital is rather peaceful, but the country has been sinking into a murderous civil war since March. Security is nevertheless omnipresent, and the slightest revolutionary demonstration is bloodily repressed. Distrust reigns. We redouble our care in meeting with sources. Even important regime officials are now being watched and keep mum. A demonstration of the fact that the Bashar system is teetering. Tensions soon appear between Gilles and Mother Agnès, then between the latter and Patrick, then with the rest of the group, which continue to grow as the days go by.
The team from "Envoyé spécial" wanted to stay in Damascus, while the others wanted to leave the capital. Another problem: Mother Agnès has imposed a spy on Gilles in the person of Mireille. Officially, this young Lebanese woman is playing translator. But sometimes she behaves like a little soldier working for the Syrians. Also, the nun's promises collapse one after the other. We were supposed to be free. We discover that we have to stay in a group and that we have to get the green light from the Ministry of Information to move about without ever going to see those in charge. Only the Lebanese in the group -- Mireille, Mother Agnès, and Joseph Eid, an AFP photographer accompanying us -- can go. They do not hide their sympathy for the regime.
We were supposed to meet the minister of foreign affairs. It'll only be his spokesman. We also meet another group of journalists, more activists than journalists to tell the truth, insructed by Polish political scientists and by a special envoy of British nationality from Russia Today, who are now falsely claiming that the Iranian channel Press TV accompanied us to Homs and who are testifying to the circumstances of Gilles's death -- when they were simply not part of the trip --, and Boris V. Dolgov, a Russian Middle East expert who tells media in Moscow that the French reporter was an agent of his country's intelligence services. And we'll be surprised again by the nun, who seems to get upset at the truth. Although she pressured us to go to Homs "as a group" and threatened Gilles with expulsion if he didn't follow the plan, she is saying today that she was not responsible for us and that she only played the role of facilitator for our reporting from Syria. For our security, she claims she advised us to take bullet-proof vests to go to Homs and not to stay in town after 3:00 p.m. Words that we never heard spoken...
Another intriguing piece of news: The nun didn't tell us about a bus prepared in Damascus by the Syrian Ministry of Information that arrived in Homs at 9:30 a.m. with, among others, teams from CNN and the BBC on board. At that time, Joseph and Mireille are in the offices of the same ministry to get permission for our trip. We will finally leave around noon, delayed by a huge traffic jam in front of our hotel and a team from Belgian television once again in tow.
5.
[Translated from Le Courrier (Geneva)]
MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES
By Sid Ahmed Hammouche and Patrick Vallélian (L'Hebdo)
Le Courrier (Geneva)
January 19, 2012
Page 11
http://abomail.lecourrier.ch/pdfs/28706c7afe10e7e/LeCourrier_2012-01-19.pdf
The circumstances of the death of the French reporter remain mysterious. Nothing, in fact, says that he was the victim of a direct mortar hit, since his body remained intact with a few round impact wounds visible near his heart. Impact wounds incompatible with a death by hand grenade or mortar. Were other arms used against Gilles? Was he the unique target of the attack? Should his death be seen as a state murder? A crime by FSA, which usually spends its time defending its positions in districts surrounded by the army? Or then was it an assassination organized by some small uncontrollable Salafist group? Damascus has in any case not awaited the result of the investigation that it has opened to blame a terrorist attack. A thesis that enables it to justify closing the country once more to foreign media. A foreign reporter who was on the Ministry of Information bus that suddenly left New Akrama ten minutes before our arrival -- on the pretext that the streets were unsafe -- confirms that he was informed almost instantaneously of what had happened at a time when we knew nothing but were 150 meters from the scene. As though the script of Gilles's death was already written.
And who is it who gives him this information on the phone? Mother Agnès, who didn't accompany us to Homs that day on the pretext that her life was in danger there and who telephones Patrick Vallélian around 5:30 p.m. to ask him what happened. He doesn't answer her. She finally arrives a few minutes before the arrival of the ambassador at the hospital. Weeping. In order to avoid an incident, we let her into Gilles's room. But we don't let her speak to Caroline, for fear that Caroline will explode. For us, at that moment, it's obvious that we have fallen into a trap. And that the nun is part of the script of this Machiavellian operation.
6.
[Translated from Le Courrier (Geneva)]
SWISS PRUDENCE
By Sid Ahmed Hammouche and Patrick Vallélian (L'Hebdo)
Le Courrier (Geneva)
January 19, 2012
Page 11
http://abomail.lecourrier.ch/pdfs/28706c7afe10e7e/LeCourrier_2012-01-19.pdf
What will save us is our Swiss prudence and our distrust when we arrive an hour and a half later [i.e. after leaving Damascus] at the As Safir hotel in Homs, and especially the nervousness of Sid Ahmet, who is re-envisioning scenes from the recent civil war in Algeria. A war he covered. We are met there by about forty armed men. "Which is the French television team," one of them asks. We will see these faces again at the scene of the crime. It's then we decide to film to the max. As though in order to protect ourselves. And in watching these films, we realize that the people who are going to lead Gilles to the place where he will die are the same ones who will carry him to the Al Nahda dispensary. It is they, too, who steal his backpack.
--
Translated by Mark K. Jensen
Associate Professor of French
Pacific Lutheran University
Department of Languages and Literatures
Tacoma, WA 98447-0003
Phone: 253-535-7219
Webpage: http://www.plu.edu/~jensenmk/
Email:
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