BBC Upholds Complaint
Robert Stuart
Global Research, July 25, 2015
The below admission from the BBC that its substitution of Syria
footage between two 2014 broadcasts breaches its own Editorial
Guidelines on accuracy is a modest victory in the battle to attract
scrutiny to the wider charges that one of the reports in question (at
least) was largely, if not entirely, fabricated.
For almost two years I have pursued the question of
whether scenes of the aftermath of an alleged incendiary attack on an
Aleppo school – filmed by BBC staff and first broadcast as UK
legislators voted on military intervention in Syria – were staged for
the purposes of propaganda.
Many compelling evidence points have arisen: the widely contradictory accounts of precisely when the alleged attack occurred – including disagreement between the BBC reporter and cameraman concerned; the testimony of
a former Free Syrian Army commander stationed in the vicinity denying
that an attack occurred; a fortuitously-grabbed screencap of one of the
alleged teenage victims grinning broadly into the camera; “victims” sharing the same “costume”, and, most astonishing of all, the self-identification of
a “victim” seen in footage from the day (in reality a 52 year old
Netherlands resident) who contacted me on Facebook, anxious that she may
be recognised.
The backgrounds of the two doctors featured in the BBC’s report are of considerable interest: Dr Saleyha Ahsan, a former British army captain, has a personal connection with a military officer who runs large-scale medical simulation exercises, employing professional casualty make-up artists; Dr Ahsan’s colleague, Dr Rola Hallam,
is the daughter of Dr Mousa al-Kurdi, who is “involved politically with
the Syrian National Council”. The co-founder of Hand in Hand for Syria,
the “humanitarian” charity for which the doctors are filmed
volunteering, has expressed bloodthirsty promises to bring Assad to justice “NO MATTER WHAT LIVES IT TAKES, NO MATTER HOW MUCH CATASTROPHE IT MAKES”. A Hand in Hand for Syria nurse seen working alongside Drs Ahsan and Hallam is pictured elsewhere tending to the wounds of a child opposition fighter.
Very many other discrepancies are noted on my blog. It is hard to escape the conclusion, voiced by
former UK ambassador Craig Murray, that the BBC’s ‘Saving Syria’s
Children’ “documentary” represents the fruit of a collaboration between
BBC personnel and UK state security services and marks a unique and
historic breach of trust between the corporation, its UK licence
fee-payer funders and its millions of viewers and listeners worldwide.
Robert Stuart
bbcpanoramasavingsyriaschildren.wordpress.com/