The French President Sarkozy is pressing for "humanitarian corridors" into Syria. These would of course have to guarded by foreign soldiers and would likel lead to an escalation.
The French journalist Edith Bouvier is in Homs, Syrian and is said to be injuried and in need of evacuation.
The role of one Khaled Abu Saleh in this gives reason to believe that she is probably not injuried at all and her case is made only to increase the pressure for Sarkozy's corridor towards regime destruction.
The nuggets for this post were found by commentator ZOO at Prof. Joshua Landis' blog Syria Comments.
The pic is out of a (90° rotated) screenshot at 0:13 into a 1:01 long video uploaded by live19820 to Youtube on February 6.
The video is headlined in Arabic. The narrative in the video is that this guy is laying on the ground in a room and seriously wounded. He has an infusion drip visible on his right arm and his left hand is slightly bandaged. He says something in Arabic which I do not understand (please translate the Arabic in the comments).
This pic is out of a screenshot at 0:04 into a 0:51 long video uploaded by Souria2011archives to Youtube on February 16.
The guy is standing next to a burning pit with a large amount of oil on fire. His left hand is heavily bandaged. The headline of the video is "Syria Dictator Blows Oil Pipeline at Baba Amr -Activist Khaled Abu Saleh Reports 2-15-12 Homs". The guy gives a very energetic rant and he does not appear to be a recent reconvalecent from any serious wounding.
This pic is out of a screenshot at 0:36 into a 2:20 long video uploaded by Syria Free Voice to Youtube on February 19.
The narrative in the video is that the guy is seriously wounded and was "targeted in fronts of the hospital while he was covering a large number of wounded" as the English subtitles say. His left hand is slightly bandaged and rests in a professional sling. The guy later starts into a rant. Then appears another allegedly seriously wounded guy introduced by a person clothed as a doctor as "great international (photographer "wael")" who also starts a rant.
The "Injury activist Khaled Abu Saleh" also features at the end of this short propaganda video which was distributed with a logo and under the name of some Omawi News and uploaded to Youtube on February 8.
I believe the first and third and fourth videos are fake in that the persons pretending to be seriously wounded are, if at all, only slightly injured and otherwise actors.
The guy was honored with an Al Jazeerah Khaled Abu Salah Live Blog which receive only one rather meaningless post 12 days ago (Feb 13).
Now it gets interesting.
This pic is out of a screenshot at 5:11 into a 6:31 long video uploaded by syrbouazizi5 on February 23. The video is also available on the French website www.20minutes.fr "Dans Actus 20minutes, le 23 Février 2012".
On the French website the video is headlined "Blessée à Homs, la journaliste Edith Bouvier appelle à l’aide" – wounded in Homs the journalist Edith Bouvier is asking for help.
The first part of the video presents the French journalist Edith Bouvier laying on a couch with her body covert with a blanket. She allegedly has a twice broken femur but neither her legs nor a cast is ever shown in the clip. She talks into the camera in French. In between a person clothed as a doctor explains her broken leg in Arabic which gets translated to English by a person off the screen. That person says that Bouvier is in dire need of care because a blood clog could appear in her broken leg. Bouvier is smiling and seems to be joking with him. At 2:10 she is asked but unsure of which of her legs is broken. The doctor has to tell her "it's the left". She has obviously no pain at all.
Another French journalist, a photographer, appears and talks first in French about the difficulty of the situation and the need for transport. Then comes the guy above and he talks in Arabic. The translator says that "Khalid is asking the French government and the Red Cross for help and evacuation."
We obviously see the same guy in all five videos and his business seems to be to create propaganda videos involving fake wounded persons and to distribute these under various Youtube (and Facebook) accounts.
Since November last year the French president Sarkozy is pressing for "humanitarian corridors" into Syria which the Turks so far rejected.
Such a "humanitarian corridors" would of course violate Syria's sovereignty and would likely have to be implemented by military force which would then result in a full blown war and "regime/state destruction". We saw Sarkozy playing that dirty trick in Libya.
Sarkozy recently again pressed for such corridors:
"The idea of humanitarian corridors that I previously proposed, to allow NGOs to reach the zones where there are scandalous massacres, should be discussed at the Security Council," Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told France Info radio.
Now we have a (maybe) wounded, pretty French journalist in Homs in a video made by folks who are seriously into the propaganda business, with routinely presenting injuried persons there, asking for her evacuation. The video is distributed by French TV stations. Would that not be a good reason to press even more for Sarkozy's "humanitarian corridors"?
It was reported (by AFP!) yesterday that the Syrian Red Crescent attempted to evacuate the wounded journalists including Edith Bouvier:
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said negotiations with the authorities and opposition groups to resume evacuations from Baba Amr, where two wounded Western journalists are trapped along with the bodies of two killed colleagues, failed.
…
Nadir Husseini, an activist in Bab Amr, said people in the neighbourhood were suspicious of the ICRC's local partner, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, and did not want to work with a group "under the control of the regime".The ICRC denied this, saying the Syrian Red Crescent was an independent organisation.
…
A journalist involved in Saturday's negotiations told the AFP news agency that ambulances entered rebel stronghold Baba Amr twice in the afternoon but were blocked by the Free Syrian Army."At one point they said they could not allow more evacuations, including those of foreign journalists, because nine people evacuated on Friday had been arrested," she said on condition of anonymity.
She said the ICRC investigated the rebel claim and reported that the charge that evacuees had been arrested "were totally false".
Talks have resumed over the issue but it is still the militia that is blocking the Red Crescent access.
Assad would certainly not arrest wounded foreign journalists. It would mean additional international trouble for him which he does not need at all. He would very likely let them go. There is no good reason why the militia should keep them.
But if one wants to press for "humanitarian corridors" which must of course be watched over by foreign military forces one can not allow for the evacuation of the wounded French journalist by the Syrian Red Crescent. Besides – the Red Crescent folks would probably also find that Edith Bouvier's twice broken leg is not that broken at all.
Her role in this lets me wonder if she is a journalist at all or if she is using that profession as a cover for her real job.