NBC News revises account of Engel’s kidnapping – USA TODAY

ADDS NAME OF NBC TURKEY REPORTER AZIZ AKYAVAS – This image taken from undated amateur video posted on the Internet shows NBC chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel, center, with NBC Turkey reporter Aziz Akyavas, left, and NBC photographer John Kooistra, right, after they were taken hostage in Syria. More than a dozen heavily armed gunmen kidnapped and held Engel and several colleagues for five days inside Syria, keeping them blindfolded and tied up before they finally escaped unharmed during a firefight between their captors and anti-regime rebels, Engel said Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2012. The Arabic writing on the wall reads, “or we will burn.”(AP Photo/Amateur Video) ORG XMIT: CAI116(Photo: Uncredited, AP)

NBC News changed on Wednesday its account of the 2012 kidnapping of its chief foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, after it was questioned by The New York Times about the kidnappers, the newspaper reported.

NBC News had said that Engel and his colleagues were abducted by a Shiite group loyal to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. But they were likely kidnapped by a group of Sunni criminals who are affiliated with rebels opposed to Assad, the Free Syrian Army, the Times reported after interviewing several dozen people.

The newspaper said it interviewed “many of those involved in the search for NBC’s team, rebel fighters and activists in Syria and current and former NBC News employees.”

Engel and his colleagues were freed when they were rescued by a rebel group, Ahrar al-Sham, that had a relationship with the men who led the kidnappers, Azzo Qassab and Shukri Ajouj. The kidnappers “staged” the release of Engel and his colleagues after consulting with other rebel leaders in the area, the Times said.

NBC executives knew about Ajouj and Qassab’s “possible involvement” during Engels’s captivity, the Times said, but NBC News failed to mention it while airing a story blaming Shiite captors.

The Times “had uncovered information that suggested the kidnappers were not who they said they were and that the Syrian rebels who rescued us had a relationship with the kidnappers,” Engel wrote on NBCNews.com. “The kidnappers told us they were Shiite militiaman, members of the notorious Shabiha militia loyal to the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. They spoke in a particular accent, playing Shiite chants on their cellphones, smoking cigarettes, even serving us coffee in cups decorated with Shiite symbols. I, along with two other Arabic speaking members of our six-member team, believed they were from the Shabiha.”

“The group that kidnapped us was Sunni, not Shia,” Engel wrote. “The group that kidnapped us put on an elaborate ruse to convince us they were Shiite Shabiha militiamen.”

Engel disputed that the rescue was staged. “We managed to reach a man, who according to both Syrian and US intelligence sources, was one of Abu Ayman’s main fund-raisers,” Engel wrote, referring to the leader of the group that rescued him and his colleagues. “He insists that Abu Ayman’s men shot and killed two of our kidnappers.”

Engel claimed earlier that one of the kidnappers had been killed during the rescue but walked back on the claim Wednesday. “We heard gunshots and what sounded like the thud of a falling body. The kidnappers told us they had killed one of the rebels who had been with us, and I believed them,” he wrote.

The episode follows a six-month suspension of NBC News’ chief anchor Brian Williams, announced in February, after the newsman fibbed about his reporting tour in Iraq in 2003. Williams said the helicopter he was riding in came under enemy fire, but retracted the story after some veterans who were at the scene challenged his account.

NBCUniversal, owned by Comcast, brought back former NBC News president, Andy Lack, as the news division’s chairman, assigned to shake up management and supervise the ongoing internal investigation of Williams.

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