Family of slain journalist Marie Colvin sues Syria
BEIRUT: Relatives of Marie Colvin, a veteran US war reporter who died more than four years ago in an artillery barrage in Syria, have filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the Syrian government, accusing it of targeting and killing her as part of a systematic strategy to silence civilian journalists and activists covering the war.
The civil complaint, filed in a federal court in Washington, contends that highranking Syrian officials, including President Bashar Assad’s brother Maher and other top advisers, worked in concert to locate, track and target foreign journalists and Syrians who had helped them. It lays out new details of the events leading to Colvin’s death, citing witnesses and government sources and documents uncovered in what the family’s lawyers described as a three-year investigation.
Colvin, a longtime correspondent for The Sunday Times of London, was killed on Feb 22, 2012, along with a French photojournalist, Remi Ochlik, when Syrian government forces shelled an apartment building used by journalists.
The attack occurred during weeks of bombardment of the rebellious neighbourhood Baba Amr in the city of Homs — the first of many operations in which government forces used siege tactics and indiscriminate shelling against rebel-held areas — and before the emergence of extremist Islamist militant groups such as the Nusra Front and the Islamic State.
Colvin’s family and colleagues have long argued that the attack — hours after she had issued a live report accusing the Syrian government of bombarding “cold, starving civilians” — was deliberate. The government has always contended that its attacks have targeted terrorists and that journalists operating outside government-controlled territory, as Colvin was, break Syrian law at their own risk.
But now the plaintiffs say they will present evidence of what they describe as a murder that resulted from a government policy. It is the first attempt to sue the Syrian government for its war conduct under a statute allowing US citizens to sue foreign governments, such as Syria’s, that the United States lists as state sponsors of terrorism, said Scott Gilmore, a lawyer in Washington, DC, with the Centere for Justice and Accountability. Mr Gilmore led the investigation and helped file the lawsuit.
The lawsuit accuses nine Syrian officials, including intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk and military officers in Homs, of developing and executing the strategy against journalists and activists. It details meetings in which an informant helped officials verify the location of the media centre using phone-tracking data.