Posted on 11/26/2003 10:33:27 AM PST by jempet
French mag's Iraq photo scoop From correspondents in Paris November 27, 2003
FRENCH weekly magazine, Paris Match, is to publish exclusive pictures of what it says are Iraqi rebels launching a missile attack on a German DHL cargo plane over Baghdad that led to a shutdown of commercial air traffic to the Iraqi capital.
The images were taken by one of the magazine's photographers, Jerome Sessini, who was with the attackers - described in the accompanying article as "Iraqi guerrillas" - at the time of Saturday's missile strike, editor-in-chief Alain Genestar told AFP today.
He said Sessini and a special correspondent sent to Iraq, Claudine Verniez-Palliez, had been with the group for several days beforehand and were unaware they were about to witness the attack.
"They had been asked to come see caches of arms very close to Baghdad and didn't discover the real reason for the operation until the last minute," Genestar said.
The pictures, seen in an advance copy of tomorrow's edition of the magazine, show a group of men wearing scarves over their heads and faces brandishing grenade launchers, and one man firing a shoulder-launched missile, said in the article to be one of two Russian-made "Strella" SA-7 surface-to-air units.
In the article, Verniez-Palliez writes the rebels thought they had spotted a US military plane and the leader gave the order to fire.
But Genestar rejected accusations that his magazine could be seen to be sympathising with the Iraqi rebels. "We don't make the perpetrators of this act to be heroes," he said, adding the correspondent and photographer had been brought back to France "for safety reasons".
Three pictures show a plane trailing smoke with a second smoke trail - said to be a second missile that missed the aircraft - behind it. There is also a close-up of a plane with DHL clearly marked on its side with smoke coming from its left wing, and a wider shot of a plane trailing thick white smoke from its left wing.
Genestar said there was no picture of the missile actually hitting the aircraft because that was "technically impossible".
The strike on the DHL Airbus A300 came just after it took off from Baghdad bound for DHL's Gulf hub in Bahrain.
The plane was forced to quickly turn around and make an emergency landing at Baghdad. No-one was hurt. It was the first successful strike on a civilian aircraft in the seven-month-old Iraq insurgency.
The next day, the US authorities occupying Iraq declared they had suspended all commercial air access to the city, though military flights would continue. The Paris Match photographs were not the first images said to document the attack.
Another French journalist in Iraq, Sara Daniel, correspondent for the Paris-based weekly Le Nouvel Observateur, showed other journalists a video she said had been left at her Baghdad hotel on Sunday.
The six-minute video, seen by AFP on Monday, shows one of a group of masked militants firing a missile that hits the DHL cargo jet.
Agence France-Presse
DHL now needs to file a suit against the French Magazine since these terrorists had an accomplice.
Yeah. That would make me feel terrible, if something like that happened. Just terrible.
So, assuming they're not lying about these pictures (a leap of faith I'm not entirely ready to make), then they know how to contact these mutts, know where weapons stashes are, and are welcome by the terrorists. If that doesn't indicate complicity I don't know what does. If I were the commander on the ground they'd be incarcerated and interrogated.
Crunch all you want, we'll make more.
In my outrage I didn't read far enough.
OK. then let's go to France and get 'em.
First to Paris Match, then to Nouvel Observateur.
The elites in France really are wretched humans, aren't they? They are ungrateful,forgetful and truly deserve the Socialist state they live under. Only a french person could utter his quote w/ a straight face.It's sickeningly farcical.
"British agent James Bond faced death at the hands of many a polite-talking madman. Maybe he could have avoided confrontation all together if he'd flashed the bad guys a press card. A spy masquerading as a journalist makes a fine movie plot, but now the British Secret Service, also known as MI6 has been accused of adopting that very scenario. According to Richard Tomlinson, the renegade MI6 officer whose whistle-blowing book The Big Breach: From Top Secret to Maximum Security was just published in Russia, MI6 officers used journalistic cover on 4 of every 10 missions in conflicts ranging from Afghanistan to the Balkans. Tim Gopless from the National Union of Journalists in Britain joins me. Mr. Gopless, if we're to believe what we hear from Richard Tomlinson, the British intelligence community and Fleet Street are dangerously intertwined. ..."
[Journalist Spies ]
"The French Government has asked Pakistan to help secure the release of a French journalist being held in Kabul on suspicion of spying.
"Michel Peyrard, who works for the French news magazine Paris Match, was arrested on Tuesday in the east of Afghanistan wearing a full-length women's veil, or burqa."
[French seek Pakistan help over journalist]
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