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(Reuters) - An NBC news team was freed in Syria during a firefight at an Islamic rebel checkpoint five days after being ambushed and kidnapped by 15 heavily armed gunmen, correspondent Richard Engel said on Tuesday.
Engel, 39, who along with production crew members Ghazi Balkiz and John Kooistra disappeared after crossing into northwestern Syria from Turkey on Thursday, said their kidnappers were members of a militia loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.
Their ordeal ended when their captors, who frequently moved them bound and blindfolded between safe houses, on Monday night unexpectedly drove into checkpoint set up by an Islamist rebel group. Two of their kidnappers were killed in the ensuing firefight, and the three spent the night with the Islamist rebels, Engel told the network.
The three were kidnapped when they were driving with anti-Assad rebels in a rebel-controlled area, Engel, an American, told NBC's "Today" program from Antakya, Turkey.
A group of about 15 heavily armed men wearing ski masks "jumped out of the trees and bushes on the side of the road," seized the three and put them in a container truck, Engel said.
The gunmen "executed" one of the rebels escorting the news team, Engel said. "Then they took us to a series of safe houses and interrogation places, and they kept us blindfolded, bound," he said.
"We weren't physically beaten or tortured. It was a lot of psychological torture, threats of being killed," and mock shootings, he said. "It was a very traumatic experience."
"We tried to joke around a little and keep our spirits up," Engel said, adding that they could peek under blindfolds but were not allowed to talk.
Engel's colleagues spoke of moments of despair as they worried about their families. "During the ordeal ... I made good with my maker, I made good with myself. I was prepared to die many times," Kooistra said.
NBC identified the rebels at the checkpoint as members of the Ahrar al-Sham brigade, a Syrian rebel group.
The network said it had not been able to contact them until they were freed. NBC had attempted to keep the crew's disappearance secret but several media outlets ignored the requested blackout.
GOVERNMENT MILITIA
There was no claim of responsibility and no request for ransom, NBC said, but Engel said of the captors: "This was a group known as the Shabiha. This is a government militia. These are people who are loyal to President Bashar Assad."
The kidnappers spoke openly about their loyalty to the government and their faith, he said, and were planning to exchange him and his team for four Iranian agents and two Shabiha members held by Syrian rebels.
Ahrar al-Sham, an extremist Salafist group that includes a large contingent of foreign fighters, has been at the forefront of rebel offensives in northern Syria.
Members of the group have told Reuters the unit wants to establish an Islamic caliphate in Syria, not a pluralistic democracy, when Assad is overthrown. But they have not shown hostility to Western journalists covering the conflict.
Engel has reported on the popular uprisings that swept the Arab world since 2011.
At least 40,000 people have been killed in Syria's uprising, which started in March 2011 with street protests that were met with gunfire by Assad's security forces, and which spiraled into the most enduring and destructive of the Arab revolts.
(Reporting by Oliver Holmes in Beirut and Susan Heavey in Washington; Editing by Mohammad Zargham and Doina Chiacu)
'They made us choose which one of us would be shot first ': TV reporter kidnapped in Syria escapes after firefight
Date December 19, 2012 - 6:31AM
NBC's chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel said on Tuesday he and members of his network crew escaped unharmed after five days of captivity in Syria, where more than a dozen pro-regime gunmen dragged them from their car, killed one of their rebel escorts and subjected them to mock executions.
Appearing on NBC's Today show, an unshaven Engel said he and his team escaped during a firefight on Monday night between their captors and rebels at a checkpoint. They crossed into Turkey on Tuesday.
They made us choose which one of us would be shot first and when we refused, there were mock shootings.
NBC did not say how many people were kidnapped with Engel, although two other men, producer Ghazi Balkiz and photographer John Kooistra, appeared with him on the Today show. It was not immediately clear whether everyone was accounted for.
Blindfolded and bound ... NBC chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel, centre. Photo: AP
Engel said he believes the kidnappers were a Shiite militia group loyal to the Syrian government, which has lost control over swaths of the country's north and is increasingly on the defensive in a civil war that has killed 40,000 people since March 2011.
"They kept us blindfolded, bound," said the 39-year-old Engel, who speaks and reads Arabic. "We weren't physically beaten or tortured. A lot of psychological torture, threats of being killed. They made us choose which one of us would be shot first and when we refused, there were mock shootings," he added.
"They were talking openly about their loyalty to the government," Engel said. He said the captors were trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and allied with Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militant group, but he did not elaborate.
An image grab taken from a video uploaded on YouTube allegedly shows Richard Engel, centre, during his detention. Photo: AFP
There was no mention of the kidnapping by Syria's state-run news agency.
Both Iran and Hezbollah are close allies of the embattled Syrian government of President Bashar Assad, who used military force to crush mostly peaceful protests against his regime. The crackdown on protests led many in Syria to take up arms against the government, and the conflict has become a civil war.
Engel said he was told the kidnappers wanted to exchange him and his crew for four Iranian and two Lebanese prisoners being held by the rebels.
Free ... Richard Engel, centre. Photo: ABC News
"They captured us in order to carry out this exchange," he said.
Engel and his crew entered Syria on Thursday and were driving through what they thought was rebel-controlled territory when "a group of gunmen just literally jumped out of the trees and bushes on the side of the road."
"There were probably 15 gunmen. They were wearing ski masks. They were heavily armed. They dragged us out of the car," he said.
He said the gunmen shot and killed at least one of their rebel escorts on the spot and took the hostages into a waiting truck nearby.
Around 11 pm on Monday, Engel said he and the others were being moved to another location in northern Idlib province.
"And as we were moving along the road, the kidnappers came across a rebel checkpoint, something they hadn't expected. We were in the back of what you would think of as a minivan," he said. "The kidnappers saw this checkpoint and started a gunfight with it. Two of the kidnappers were killed. We climbed out of the vehicle and the rebels took us. We spent the night with them."
Engel and his crew crossed back into neighbouring Turkey on Tuesday.
The network said there was no claim of responsibility, no contact with the captors and no request for ransom during the time the crew was missing.
NBC sought to keep the disappearance of Engel and the crew secret for several days while it investigated what happened to them. Major media organisations, including The Associated Press, adhered to a request from the network to refrain from reporting on the issue out of concern it could make the dangers to the captives worse. News of the disappearance did begin to leak out in Turkish media and on some websites on Monday.
Syria has become a danger zone for reporters since the conflict began.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Syria is by far the deadliest country for the press in 2012, with 28 journalists killed in combat or targeted for murder by government or opposition forces.
Among the journalists killed while covering Syria are award-winning French TV reporter Gilles Jacquier, photographer Remi Ochlik and Britain's Sunday Times correspondent Marie Colvin. Also, Anthony Shadid, a correspondent for The New York Times, died after an apparent asthma attack while on assignment in Syria.
The Syrian government has barred most foreign media coverage of the civil war in Syria. Those journalists whom the regime has allowed in are tightly controlled in their movements by Information Ministry minders. Many foreign journalists sneak into Syria illegally with the help of smugglers and travel with rebel escorts or drivers.
Engel joined NBC in 2003 and was named chief foreign correspondent in 2008. He previously worked as a freelance journalist for ABC News, including during the US invasion of Iraq. He has lived in the Middle East since graduating from Stanford University in 1996.
