Run Time: 1 hr 35 mins

Chair

Lindsey Hilsum is Channel 4 News’ International Editor. Her biography, “In Extremis; the Life of War Correspondent Marie Colvin” will be published in November. She has covered many of the conflicts of recent times, including Syria, Ukraine, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan. She has also reported on the Trump administration, terror attacks in Europe and refugees, and was Channel 4 News China Correspondent from 2006 to 2008. During the 2004 US assault on Falluja, she was embedded with a frontline marine unit, and in 1994, was the only English-speaking foreign correspondent in Rwanda when the genocide started. She has won awards from the Royal Television Society and BAFTA, aswell as the Charles Wheeler Award and the James Cameron Award, and was the recipient of the 2017 Patron’s Medal from the Royal Geographical Society.  Her writing has been featured in the New York Review of Books,  Granta, the Sunday Times and the Guardian among other publications. Her first book was ‘Sandstorm; Libya in the Time of Revolution’.  Before becoming a journalist, she was an aid worker, initially with OXFAM in Latin America and then with UNICEF in Africa.

Speakers

Scott Gilmore is Staff Attorney at the Center for Justice and Accountability. He is an expert in strategic litigation on behalf of victims of international crimes in national courts, including cases involving genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture, sexual and gender-based violence, universal jurisdiction and foreign sovereign immunity. For the past six years, Mr Gilmore has investigated war crimes and torture in Syria and filed the first-ever war crimes case against the Assad regime for the targeted killing of American journalist Marie Colvin. He has investigated crimes committed against Yezidi, an ethno-religious minority targeted by ISIS, for potential prosecution of Duvalier-era officials in Haiti, and pioneered litigation strategies to challenge cyber-surveillance targeting journalists and human rights defenders. He has a BA from McGill University, a JD from George Washington University Law School (high honours, Order of the Coif), and certification in international human rights and humanitarian law from Oxford University. He was formerly a professional musician in the Indie rock bands A Silver Mt. Zion and Black Ox Orkestar, and a theatre performer in Le Petit Théâtre de l’Absolu.

Paul Conroy is a former soldier who spent seven years with the Royal Artillery. He developed a passion for photography and first became involved in journalism on a mission to the Balkans. He has since worked extensively as both a photojournalist and filmmaker in combat zones around the world, producing footage from conflicts in the Balkans, Iraq, Democratic Republic Congo, Rwanda and most notably Libya and Syria. Paul first met Marie Colvin in March 2003 in Syria. He was attempting to smuggle himself across the Tigris on a raft made of tubes stolen from lorries, with the aim to get into Iraq to cover the final assault on Baghdad. A firm friendship was forged over their many shared interests: sailing, whiskey, and their extraordinary dedication to covering the atrocities of war. Having worked together in Libya in 2011, they were a natural pairing for an assignment to Homs. They were determined to cover the Syrian regime’s brutal crackdown and the devastating impact this was having on civilians. Conroy is the author of Under The Wire. Offering a testimony of war reportage, and a personal account of the final assignment he embarked on with Marie Colvin.

Cat Colvin is Marie’s sister. She and her three children filed a lawsuit against Syria in 2016 in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C., alleging that Marie was targeted and killed by the Syrian regime. Cat is the founder of the Marie Colvin Fund, which supports charitable organisation that reflect Marie’s life-long dedication to humanitarian aid, human rights, journalism and education. The fund’s primary donation recipient is the Marie Colvin Center for International Reporting at Stony Brook University of Journalism, where Cat serves as a founding Board Member. The mission of the Marie Colvin Centre is to nurture and grow the next generation of overseas reporters, to cement Marie’s legacy by rewarding tenacious overseas reporting with a journalist-in-residence fellowship, and to raise awareness about the need for robust international coverage through the Marie Colvin Distinguished Lecture Series, which has welcomed Christiane Amanpour, Clarissa Ward, Ann Curry, Rukmini Callimachi and Lindsey Hilsum. Cat currently serves as General Counsel and Senior Vice President of a large US-based multinational corporation, where she is responsible for all aspects of legal and regulatory affairs, and architect of her company’s Charitable Giving Programme, which promotes active participation by more than 10,000 employees worldwide in STEM education, humanitarian and environmental causes. After graduating from Yale Unversity, Cat started her career as Programme Director for the Executive Council on Foreign Diplomats, then spent several years working as a professor of Rural Development for United World Colleges at FUNDACEA in Barinas, Venezuela. Cat is a graduate of Fordham University of Law and began her legal career as an associate of International Project Finance at Shearman & Sterling in New York, the law firm that currently represents her in the Colvin v. Syria lawsuit, along with the Center for Justice and accountability. She subsequently worked as a foreign Legal Consultant for Baker & McKenzie in Santiago, Chile, and in house Corporate Counsel for the Independent Film Channel in New York.

Chris Martin is an award-winning director he has made films for all the major UK and US networks as well as a number of feature documentaries (Palestine is still the Issue, War on Democracy)

Nearly three years on from President Obama’s infamous ‘red line’ statement, Syrian activist and filmmaker Orwa Nyrabia, Syrian human rights lawyer Laila Alodaat, journalist Jonathan Littell and Nerma Jelacic of the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA), joined an audience at the Frontline Club on Thursday 21 May. In a discussion chaired by Owen Bennett-Jones, host of Newshour on the BBC World Service, the panel discussed Syria’s increasingly fractured reality and seemingly endless turmoil. Also under discussion was the investigative work currently underway to record evidence linking the Syrian regime to the atrocities committed, in the hope that the acting parties will one day be held accountable for their crimes.

L-r: Laila Alodaat, Jonathan Littell, Owen Bennett-Jones, Orwa Nyrabia and Nerma Jelacic

Despite the media frenzy in recent months, the evening’s discussion avoided focusing solely on ISIS.

Nyrabia commented: “I don’t know what sadomasochism western media have towards ISIS, but they always blow it up and make it very attractive for anyone who is angry with the West.”

Instead, the speakers shed light on tangible developments on the ground, ongoing external interests and alliances in the region, and the failure of the international community to intervene.

In the wake of news that same day that ISIS had captured the territories surrounding Palmyra, Bennett-Jones began discussions by asking Nyrabia for a brief overview of the groups currently active in Syria.

Nyrabia answered that, while local Islamist groups and ISIS were gaining ground, the regime was not advancing but rather maintaining its highly populated and strategic strongholds.

On the subject of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Nyrabia commented: “it was made public that the Iranians were not giving him [Assad] the loan he requested.” Nyrabia connected this to Iran’s conflicting objectives in relation to pleasing all facets of the international community over its nuclear program.

Nyrabia went on to lay out the following summary of regional allegiances, useful even to those well-versed in the Syrian conflict: Assad is backed by Iran with Hezbollah support, and is bolstered by Afghan and Iraqi militias. On the other side, aside from ISIS, local Islamist groups have joined together, notably since the beginning of Saudi offences in Yemen, to form part of what is called Al-Fath. Finally, there is the moderate, secular opposition, exemplified by both Nyrabia and Alodaat, which feels increasingly marginalised and underrepresented.

Alodaat asked: “Where is the secular opposition in all of this? I think they have been set up to fail, they have been set up to fail by the international community that gave them no support.”

Bennett-Jones questioned Alodaat on whether the civilian opposition failed due to their low numbers. Alodaat responded: “Are we expecting civilians to have more power than arms? The answer is no.”

Alodaat went on to remind the audience of the dirty tactics used by the regime against its people.

“A perpetrator can spend a lot of arms and take the guilt of killing a thousand people, or can kill the one person who provides healthcare and make sure these people will die. And Assad did that.” The pinnacle of these crimes and the crossing of the red line occurred in August 2013, when 16,000 people were killed by chemical weapons.

An intervention by the United States never followed.

Nyrabia commented on what he saw as the dire consequence of this failure by the international community to act, and the part this played in legitimising the mass-scale crimes that followed. “We believed that after it [a US-led intervention] was mentioned it had to happen, because the cost on our people is going to be even worse than intervention. And that’s what happened.”

L-r: Owen Bennett-Jones, Orwa Nyrabia, Nerma Jelacic

Littell, who was smuggled into Homs for three weeks on an assignment for Le Monde in 2012, spoke of another tipping point.

“Homs, because of the divided nature of the city, was where things got the most conflictual the fastest,” Littell said.

He spoke of the ideals still upheld at that time by the locals who believed that a civil movement, led by the free Syrian Army (FSA), could topple the regime.

Littell commented on the regime’s tactic of allowing and encouraging the growth of radical Islamist groups, in order to do their work of suppressing other, more moderate, opposition, in the hope that they could later defeat these groups. Littell went on to draw parallels with other conflicts in which this tactic had been used.

“To me, this looks exactly like the curve in Chechnya in which the Russian special services fostered the more Islamist Chechen groups to try and crush the more moderate nationalists.”

Jelacic then discussed the work of her organisation, the Commission for International Justice and Accountability, in gathering evidence linking perpetrators to crimes in the Syrian conflict. However, as Syria is not signed to the Rome Treaty, Jelacic explained that a referral must go through the United Nations Security council (UNSC) in order to bring perpetrators to trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

On this point, Jelacic commented: “You are more or less doomed if you are in a war and waiting for the UNSC to agree on anything.”

She added: “Even if the referral to the ICC happened, it would not be able to do justice to the widespread crimes that have been committed throughout the years.”

Despite a bleak outlook, Jelacic offered clear progress in the process of compiling evidence against the regime, currently consisting of over 600,000 separate documents.

She went on to explain that, despite popular opinion, harrowing victim testimonies account for little in a case of this nature: “You need to prove the three C’s: Command, Control and Communication… It’s amazing how meticulous autocratic regimes are in documenting their crimes.”

Audience questions ranged from the involvement of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Russia, to the meaning of Syrian identity today.

On the subject of an end to the conflict, Alodaat called for a total disarmament, while Nyrabia suggested that the international community actively support local opposition groups.

Jelacic closed the discussion by commenting: “Human intervention: that is something that this conflict has killed as an idea. The second thing it has killed is diplomacy.”

Return to Homs follows two close friends and young revolutionaries as their beloved city is taken over by the army. Basset is a local football star, the goalkeeper for the Syrian national team who also became an iconic singer in the revolution, and Ossama is a media activist and pacifist.

The intimate portrait shows how they transform from peaceful protestors by August 2011 into rebel insurgents in August 2013 as Homs is turned into a bombed-out ghost town. The film directed by Talal Derki was previewed at the Frontline Club on Friday 13 June and a Q&A with producer Orwa Nyrabia via Skype followed.

Nyrabia started by explaining that he wanted to find the right production strategy and position the film in the right way from the start:

“For the way that really fits its nature . . . we [wanted] people to follow our protagonists and not only to watch from a distance, with the alienation of distance as they watch on the news. Syria today, it’s a far away world between al-Qaeda and some lunatic dictator. . . . [We were] trying to get the world to connect to our reality rather than only to the stereotyped media image.”

An audience member asked how the local people had been affected by the conflict in Syria and how it had radicalised them.

“The world media did not manage to accept the boring news of a peaceful revolution and really were calling on all the rebels for sexier news. . . . A lot of the media pressure that was taking place was being initiated towards Syria asking where is al-Qaeda because the news was boring. And in that sense what happened was disastrous because it was all about appropriation to al-Qaeda or whatever is a similar thing and it was all in supporting favour of Assad who claimed it was a sectarian revolt.”

“Syrians were left alone and we reach what happened yesterday and the day before in Iraq. We get the point where nobody wanted to give weapons to the Syrian opposition, the Free Syrian Army and any of its branches because the weapons might fall into the wrong hands. . . . When you stand aside and watch from afar . . . and try to count many Salafists are there and how many non-Salafists are there . . . today the wrong hands went for themselves and got the better weapons and now they will have their following because people need those weapons; . . . they will follow the people who have the weapons and who can arm people to protect themselves or to try to achieve whatever their schemes are or agenda is.”

Nyrabia said that he could understand why Basset was pushed so far away from his peaceful beginnings when pressured for such an extended amount of time:

“Of course after all this time in the siege, as much as any others in the siege he is definitely more radical than before. But who am I to judge someone, a human being . . . after all this pain . . . and really agonising experience. I am being radicalised in my European exile (or residency) so I cannot imagine how bad I would be if I was still in Syria.”

What about the role of Salafists in Syria? Another audience member asked.

“What’s happening now should be a big alarm to the world. This inaction, standing in silence saying lets leave them because we don’t understand al-Qaeda versus Assad. . . . There’s a total of 750 lines of subtitles in the film, something like 10,000 words. . . . Once in the film the word Salafist was mentioned. . . . It’s not a priority in the film, it’s a priority in the stereotype, in the prejudice. We had no Salafists until the end of the shooting of the film. . . . They were no more conservative or more radical but just our own local neighbourhood inhabitants. What’s been happening the past year to 18 months with a lot of anger from my side now is this major international investment in not doing anything and that is the best empowerment to both Assad and al-Qaeda.”

Return to Homs premiered as the opening film of the International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam in November 2013; won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Documentary at Sundance Film Festival 2014 (among others) and will be released by Journeyman Pictures in Picturehouse Cinemas across the UK from Friday 27 June.
 

Filmed between August 2011 and August 2013, Return to Homs is an intimate portrait of a group of young revolutionaries in the city of Homs. Filmmaker Talal Derki followed the journey of two close friends whose lives were turned upside down by the events in Syria.

Nineteen-year-old Basset is a local soccer star, the goalkeeper for the Syrian national team who also became an iconic singer in the revolution. His songs reflect his dreams of a peaceful liberation from Assad’s brutal regime. Ossama is a 24-year-old media activist and pacifist who wields his camera to capture the revolution. When the army cracks down and their beloved city of Homs becomes a bombed-out ghost town, these two peaceful protesters finally take up arms and transform into rebel insurgents.

Directed by Talal Derki
Duration: 90′
Year: 2013

Return to Homs is being distributed by Journeyman Pictures and will be released in Picturehouse Cinemas across the UK from Friday 27 June.

The month of Ramadan is usually a time for festivities and celebration but in Syria there is little to rejoice about.  The United Nations has estimated around 93,000 Syrians have died since the civil war began in 2011 and the number of refugees fleeing the country recently exceeded 1.5 million.

On Wednesday 17 July, the Frontline Club hosted a discussion with four leading journalists to dissect recent developments on the ground in Syria, in the international community and to analyse the role the media has played in reporting the conflict. The event was chaired by the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent Lyse Doucet.

A consensus was made early on that the Syrian conflict has reached an impasse. James Harkin, director of think-tank Flockwatching and a journalist who has covered the Syrian conflict for numerous publications, argued that despite recent media analysis that President Assad is winning the war, the reality is a stalemate:

“On the ground the regime forces are regaining Homs. They may even be able to recapture the whole of Homs, but if they do their combined forces . . . won’t be able to hold the city for very long. There simply aren’t enough government forces to recapture the whole city. As for government forces marching on Aleppo, that is propaganda puff… ”

Patrick Cockburn, a Middle East correspondent for over forty years who has written for the Financial Times and The Independent, agreed with Harkin but focused on how poor reporting has led both governments and the public to have a skewed idea of what is happening on the ground:

“At the beginning of this conflict, the idea of the citizen journalist . . . was taken somehow as being neutral, but it’s not citizen journalists or citizen activists, it’s citizen propaganda. It gave an impression early on that the government was on the verge of defeat. . . . Giving the impression that Assad was going to go down at any time.”

He further argued that no side would gain any “conclusive victory” over the other which will mean no solution for Syria.

“Cutting to the chase, I don’t think there will be successful negotiations. There may be a ceasefire and maybe you can do it in two hops. Until you have a ceasefire you have what we called in Northern Ireland ‘the politics of the last atrocity’ where everyone is so het up about things that no one can really talk until the level of violence is reduced.”

Anthony Loyd, an award-winning writer and current roving foreign correspondent for The Times, concurred with the previous two speakers in that the north of the country has now reached a bloody stalemate, but recent successes by government forces will “make them even more intransigent to negotiations.”

For Dr Halla Diyab, an award-winning screenwriter, producer and broadcaster from Syria, the question of who will win is a relatively unimportant one. What is happening in Syria now is simply war:

“These people have killed what ordinary Syrians want… What we need to work on now is how to end this conflict… We need to strengthen the political opposition in Syria – where are the future Syrian leaders, ministers, MPs? Where are the people who will stand in future elections? The West has to order a ceasefire and bring Assad and the opposition to the negotiating table and find strategies to contain violence and extremism in the country.”

Diyab further opened up the debate by arguing that Syria has now become a proxy war for other countries – Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Russia and America – all weighing in and supporting their own national and ideological interests.

There was disagreement on various issues including on whether and how the rebels should be armed, with reference to the arming of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan as an example of how one can never be sure who one is arming and where the weapons may end up.

Diyab and Harkin also disagreed strongly on the role Salafism is playing in the country, especially with younger Syrians.

The debate finished with all parties predicting a gloomy near future for Syria.

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/syria-conflict-developments-on

Photojournalist and filmmaker Paul Conroy joined Channel 4 News’ international editor Lindsey Hilsum at the Frontline Club on 6 June, to give a personal account of his experiences in Syria, detailed in his new book Under the wire: Marie Colvin’s Final Assignment.

Encouraged by his friends, Conroy wrote the book as he recovered from serious injuries suffered while reporting the siege of Homs in February 2012.

“In a way I was bringing Marie [Colvin] back to life, revisiting everything…but all of the time that I was writing this, I knew there is going to come a day – one day – when I am going to have to write that chapter.”

Along with French photojournalist Remi Ochlik, Sunday Times foreign affairs correspondent Marie Colvin was killed, and French journalist Edith Bouvier was seriously injured when a make-shift media centre came under intense fire from government forces, in the rebel-controlled district of Baba Amr.

Lindsey Hilsum and Paul Conroy in conversation. Photo credit: Millicent Teasdale

Without a doubt, said Conroy, the media centre was a deliberate target. Reading an excerpt from his book, he described the room as:

“. . . the headquarters of a hunted and starving band of outlaws, bound together by their desire to survive . . . targets of a murderous regime. They were the media and this was their temporary home.”

Hilsum asked him about the role of a “camera as shield”. While fighting his way out of the city and after field surgery to his injured leg, he continued to film footage of his fellow wounded:

“I had a flip cam; all my other cameras had been blown up. I felt a bit useless . . . but I thought I might be able to get something out of what’s happened.”

He added that during the attack his laptop was demolished and few images from his camera were recovered after it was found and returned. Conroy then explained how he escaped through a secret tunnel with the help of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Commentators have subsequently expressed opinions that this help has made his views biased in favour of the rebel group. On this, Conroy said:

“Anyone who says I was a cheerleader for the FSA has got to suck it up really – they saved my life. I actually saw, because of those guys, what was happening.”

“That is why we went, that is why Marie died, that is why Remi died . . . Syrian activists who stood on rooftops and were blown to pieces . . . and everyone else who has died out there, and suffered and been maimed and wounded. There is no reason the world shouldn’t know this.”

With the death toll now estimated at 80,000 by the UN, there is little hope of a conclusive resolution anytime soon. The Syrian conflict threatens to destabilise the region further, against a backdrop of cynicism towards diplomatic efforts.

Audience members asked about the implications of a lack of international support, which may have caused more radical groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra (JAN) to gain power. It is a reflection of how much the situation has changed since his time in Baba Amr, Conroy said, when the lone “jihadist” who showed up was kidnapped and escorted to Lebanon by the FSA.

Now, JAN has become a “definite presence” in the country:

“The Jihadists are a powerful fighting force and if you look at the situation, for years now Syrians have sat there and nobody has lifted a finger.”

Conroy has worked in combat zones around the world – the Balkans, Iraq, Congo, Rwanda, Libya and Syria – as well as spending seven years with the Royal Artillery as a soldier. His friendship with Marie Colvin goes back to 2003, when he made an ill-fated attempt to raft himself into Iraq to cover the final assault on Baghdad. Colvin, well known for not working well with photographers, was rather impressed by his efforts and the two struck up a friendship over their shared loves of sailing and whiskey. The two worked together in Libya in 2011 before being paired to cover Homs.

In spite of this adventurous background and the risks he has taken, one of his most serious injuries came a little over a month ago in Exeter. When walking down the High Street he was hit with a projectile after walking away from an altercation with a man. He now has a titanium plate holding up part of his face.

Hilsum told the audience she was shocked at the time to get a message saying he might lose an eye.

Conroy said: “I could not honestly have worn a patch could I?”

On the same day as this event, the Frontline Club published its white paper, Newsgathering Safety and the Welfare of Freelancers.

http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/newsreview/features/article1267580.ece

You can watch the event or listen to the podcast below:

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/in-conversation-with-paul

Paul Conroy first met Marie Colvin in March 2003 in Syria. He was attempting to smuggle himself across the Tigris on a raft made of tubes stolen from lorries, with the aim to get into Iraq to cover the final assault on Baghdad. A firm friendship was forged over their many shared interests: sailing, whiskey, and their extraordinary dedication to covering the atrocities of war.

Having worked together in Libya in 2011, they were a natural pairing for an assignment to Homs. They were determined to cover the Syrian regime’s brutal crackdown and the devastating impact this was having on civilians.

Paul Conroy will be joining us in conversation with international editor at Channel 4 News, Lindsey Hilsum, to talk about Under The Wire. Offering a testimony of war reportage, and a personal account of the final assignment he embarked on with Marie Colvin, one of the foremost journalists of our generation.

Paul Conroy is a former soldier who spent seven years with the Royal Artillery. He developed a passion for photography and first became involved in journalism on a mission to the Balkans. He has since worked extensively as both a photojournalist and filmmaker in combat zones around the world, producing footage from conflicts in the Balkans, Iraq, Democratic Republic Congo, Rwanda and most notably Libya and Syria.

“I would be more pessimistic if I had to rewrite the last sentences,” said Christophe Ayad, co-director of Syria: Assad’s Twilight. The documentary finished where it began – with Bashar al-Assad’s brutality unleashed upon his own people, captured only on shaking mobile phones – but with a feeling of optimism that the regime’s days are numbered and its power is waning.

But things have changed since Christophe Ayad and Vincent De Cointet finished filming in June 2011. There is no longer any certainty that the Assad regime will have to go. On the same day as the UK premiere of their documentary, Kofi Annan told the UN Security Council that the Syrian government had agreed to withdraw forces from towns and cities.

The film takes us back to the beginning of the Assad regime in 1971, to Hafez’s establishment of a single-party state that ruled with an iron fist, to his longstanding conflict with Israel, and his entrenched involvement in Lebanese politics. Little changed in 2000, when Bashar came to power after his father’s death. In particular, neither man could tolerate opposition.

We see parallels between father and son in the only surviving evidence of the 1982 Hama massacre – four weeks of mass murder, rape, and torture – a series of faded photographs of destroyed buildings, looking then like the Homs district of Baba Amr does today.

After the screening, Patrick Seale, author and Middle East expert featuring in the documentary, joined Ayad on stage for the Q&A.

Ayad was asked to expand upon his pessimism. He said: “The peaceful demonstrations were totally new to the regime, but the moment the demonstrators took up weapons they entered a game that the regime knows how to play.”

Seale described the mounting layers of Syria’s problems: “Unemployment, drought, a demographic explosion and an education system and government services over-burdened . . . coupled with the mindset of Bashar – he has faced a series of external conspiracies which have threatened the regime.”

Ayad agreed, but said: “The external problems can be changed, solved, but I’m pessimistic about the regime’s capacity to reform in its approach to its own people. The regime does not consider them as citizens – they are just there to shut up. Syria has lost its people, but you can run a country without your people.”

“After 2005, Bashar felt that he had overcome something and that he didn’t have to listen anymore. Even Hafez was more political – for example, he sided with the US against Iraq during the Gulf War – but Bashar is not political. He’s a mix of Western idealism and Eastern autocracy.” – Christophe Ayad

Ayad is no longer certain that we are witnessing the Assads’ twilight because Syria has various assets that prolong its grip on power: agricultural wealth and the support of two substantial powers – Russia and Iran. It also maintains control of a strong security apparatus which, until now, has not fallen apart. But what remains of Bashar’s capacity to rule?

Colvin and Ochlik died the day after Syrian activist, Rami al-Sayed. His video footage, uploaded to YouTube and Bambuser, was used by the world’s media to report what was happening in Homs.

It is a sad day for journalism – "old", "new" and what they have become together.  

In Colvin’s last report for the newspaper on Sunday, she had described the desperation of the brutal government assault on Homs, part of a crackdown which has claimed the lives of an estimated 5,400 Syrians since March 2011.

This is a collection of Colvin’s final broadcast interviews and tributes from the world of journalism. 

Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin remained in Syria because she was determined the terrible story of events  there had to be told.

Marie had hoped to moderate a discussion that is taking place on the growing crisis in Syria at the Frontline Club this Friday, but said in an email to programme editor Millicent Teasdale on Sunday that she had decided to stay “at the epicentre of the storm” in Baba Amr in Homs:

“They are killing with impunity. Sadly I wont be able to make 24th have decided I should stay and write what I can to expose what is happening here..”

Reports that Marie was one of two Western journalists killed in the Syrian city of Homs, when shells hit the building they were staying in, have shocked and saddened friends and colleagues at the Frontline Club.

Writing on Twitter, Channel 4 News presenter, Jon Snow, said "Assad’s assassination of Marie Colvin: Utterly devastating: the most couragious journalist I ever knew and a wonderful reporter and writer."

Last night, Marie described on Channel 4 News the "merciless" attacks on civilians surrounding her.

She said: "I think the sickening thing is the complete merciless nature. They’re hitting civilian buildings mercilessly and without caring. The scale of it is just shocking."

She also spoke on the BBC, telling viewers: “I saw a baby die today".