DAMASCUS: Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik, journalists, were struck by a rocket on the morning of Feb. 22, 2012, in the neighborhood of Baba Amr in Homs at the beginning of the Syrian civil war. In federal court in Washington, DC, on Monday, evidence was submitted in a lawsuit accusing the Syrian government of targeting and murdering Colvin, a US citizen raised on Long Island, as she sought to cover the war.
The Intercept — in an article headlined “How the Assad regime tracked and killed Marie Colvin for reporting on war crimes in Syria” — describes how the Colvin family filed video and nearly 2,000 pages of evidence, including military intelligence memoranda and testimony from Syrian defectors, as part of the federal civil lawsuit. The documents provide detailed and unprecedented evidence to support the claim that Colvin was deliberately hunted and killed as part of a policy by the Assad regime to eliminate journalists.
The Center for Justice & Accountability, a San Francisco-based human rights group, built the case following a six-year investigation. “Three factors came together to create the conditions for the attack: The regime’s intent to target journalists, its access to powerful surveillance capabilities, and an absence of international political will to prevent atrocities in Syria,” says The Intercept.