A Mediterranean Battlefield - Syria

[Magda Hassan]

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[TD="bgcolor: #FFFFFF"][B]French Defense Ministry: Journalist Jacquier Killed by Syrian Opposition Gunmen's Fire[/B]

Jul 18, 2012

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PARIS, (SANA) A source at the French Defense Ministry stressed to the Le Figaro Newspaper that the French TV reporter Gilles Jacquier, who was killed on January 11th , 2011 in Homs, died in a blast of a mortar fired by the armed terrorist groups in the city.
In his article, Georges Malbrunot quoted a source in the Ministry of Defense in Paris as saying that the information collected from the site of the accident and the tests of shells affirmed that Jacquier was killed by a 18-mm mortar fired from a neighborhood where gunmen were gathering.
The source added that all investigations and analysis clearly showed the source of fire and that all authorities concerned including the Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence, the General Directorate for External Security and diplomats at the French Embassy in Damascus approved the result.
The writer said that the French journalist who worked as TV reporter for France 2 TV channel was killed by a blast of a mortar fired by mistake by what he called Syrian rebels as the journalist was in a pro-government neighborhood and he was wounded by shrapnel from a shell as he was leaving the building along with other French and Swiss journalists.
Malbrunot said that the results reached by the French Defense Ministry stressed the information published by Le Figaro newspaper a week after the accident basing on a statement for an official in a so-called human rights association in Homs as saying that "we made a big blunder".
He added that article 44 of the document indicated that the reports submitted by the UN observers revealed that the French journalist was killed by a mortar fired by the opposition, indicating to the presence of many reports and a detailed text written by the Arab observers in Homs that is at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo but it has never been published.
Malbrunot quoted an official in the Syrian opposition as saying that he asked the AL Secretary General's Assistants about not publishing the second report and was answered that France and Qatar, who were chairing the AL Ministerial Committee, asked them not to publish it as the issue was referred to the French judiciary.
The opposition official, according to Malbrunot, said that both France and Qatar support the so-called free army and it will not serve their interest if any opposition member was accused of killing Jacquier.
Malbrunot said that the Elysée, having admitted that it has no evidence on the killing of Jacquier, preferred that the government would have been the one responsible for committing the crime to prevent the journalists from investigating the opposition's movement against him.
Malbrunot said that the juridical investigation in the killing of the French journalist opened by the prosecutor was inclined to the hypothesis of blunder, quoting a juridical source as saying that it was clear that it was not one aimed bullet.
R. Raslan/ H. Said
http://sana.sy/eng/22/2012/07/18/432294.htm

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