BBC In “War Crime” Cover-Up Controversy

Broadcaster lies in claiming its reporter didn’t characterize forced suicide bomber incident as “war crime”.

The BBC has dug itself a deeper hole in the aftermath of a censorship controversy which saw the broadcaster pull a video about Syrian rebels forcing a prisoner to become an unwitting suicide bomber, with the BBC claiming its reporter never characterized the incident as a “war crime” when in fact the opposite is true.

As we highlighted yesterday, a video clip showing a prisoner being made by Syrian rebels to drive a truck full of explosives to a military checkpoint in Aleppo was pulled from both the BBC website and the official BBC channel on You Tube hours after it was published. Bloggers were able to capture and upload a copy of the video which can be viewed below.

BBC World News editor John Williams responded to the controversy in a blog post on the BBC News website by noting that “the story has generated much interest across the Arab World and beyond.”

Though Williams fails to address why the BBC has sent the story down the memory hole, he does attempt to explain away the fact that the events depicted in the footage clearly represent a war crime, noting that the attempted murder of a captive has been defined as such by Amnesty International.

“Some pro-government news agencies in Syria have suggested the BBC and the New York Times have termed the act as a “war crime”. This is not true,” claims Williams.

And yet it is true.

At the 2 minute 13 mark in the clip embedded above, BBC reporter Gordon Corera clearly states, “Using prisoners as suicide bombers would certainly be considered a war crime.”

So in fact yes, the BBC did term the act as a “war crime” and John Williams is being brazenly dishonest.

CONTINUE . . .

Remember now folks the Syrian rebels (Islamic extremists) are supposed to be our new "sexy" foreign fighter allies. (see my other threads this week) The corporate mass media can't allow them to get a bad image just because of a few war crimes and other assorted atrocities here and there. And we're all supposed to forget that some of them fought against or own troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Talk about twisting the "official" narrative. Covering up war crimes is a crime in itself is it not?