Identification of participant in Atareb Hospital footage

See also: Have journos (and filmmakers) passed up the Beatles of all scoops? and Email to BBC crisis actor. Background on Saving Syria’s Children here and here.

On 14 June 2014 a woman contacted me through Facebook and asked me in Dutch to remove this image from a post I had made on a Facebook group.

The woman’s message and my response is below (I have erased the woman’s name and profile image).

The woman’s message translates as: “I see that I am in this photo, but I do not want others to see this photo. Would you want to delete the photo please? Thank You!”

The image to which the woman was referring (approx 34:29 in Saving Syria’s Children https://vimeo.com/140567469)

The woman’s message translates as:

“I see that I am in this photo, but I do not want others to see this photo. Would you want to delete the photo please? Thank You!”

This seemed a mysterious request as no woman featured in that particular image from the “tableau scene” in Saving Syria’s Children. [1] However one possibility was that the woman was not writing in her native language [2] and that she had perhaps more generally meant that she had been filmed at Atareb Hospital, Aleppo on 26 August 2013 alongside the alleged victims featured in Saving Syria’s Children. I received no response to my request for an explanation on this point, nor to a subsequent request some time later.

A Google search found the two images below associated with the woman’s Facebook account. Both pictures were also posted on other sites under the same name. The woman was 51 years old at the time she contacted me and is a resident of the Netherlands. [3] Her Facebook account gives her home town as Kamishli (Al Qamishli) in north eastern Syria and I am advised that this fact, along with her name, indicates that she is of Armenian heritage. Her Facebook timeline reveals that she travelled between Syria and the Netherlands in 2012. There are no posts on her Facebook account between 9 August and 10 September 2013 (the attack is alleged to have occurred on 26 August 2013).

Some weeks later I came across this video of the aftermath of the alleged attack [4] in which at 20:36 a woman wearing a black hijab is briefly seen having white cream applied to her face and hands. The resemblance between this person and the woman who contacted me on Facebook is extremely striking and it appears plausible that they are one and the same.

giphy (11)

There can be no doubt that the video is from the “napalm bomb” incident of 26 August 2013. Aside from the date shown at 20:13 this section of the film is replete with familiar faces from Saving Syria’s Children. [5]

Why would a resident of the Netherlands apparently become a victim of an air strike on Urm Al-Kubra, Aleppo?

It is surely incumbent upon the BBC as a journalistic organisation to investigate this woman’s apparent connection to the events featured in Saving Syria’s Children. It should, for example, be a straightforward matter to determine whether she indeed suffered napalm or thermite burns to her face and hands, as the footage suggests.

I therefore invite the BBC to contact me in order that I can provide the woman’s name and further details.

Update May 2016 – Further images of the woman who contacted me are currently viewable on the Facebook account of one of her relatives. Two are reproduced below. The first is dated 10 January 2015 and tagged “in Netherlands”. The second is dated 22 October 2014 but appears to have been taken some years earlier. I have cropped the woman’s relative out of both images.

Update July 2018 – a more recent Facebook image, contrasted with a still of the woman at Atareb Hospital on 26 August 2013.

Update August 2019 – In November 2017 I was given information about two former acquaintances of the woman who contacted me on Facebook. These acquaintances are:

(A) A former neighbour of the woman’s from when they both lived in Kamishli, Syria, and who now lives in Canada.

(B) A former colleague of the woman’s in the Netherlands, to whom I could not speak as her English is poor.

I spoke to acquaintance (A) at some length by telephone who provided further information about the woman’s family and circumstances.

Acquaintance (A) told me that that the woman had come to the Netherlands about 20 years ago as a refugee, claiming persecution by the Syrian government.

Both (A) and (B) are convinced the woman filmed at Atareb is the person they both know. Both are angry with the woman for apparently having participated in anti Syrian government propaganda.

Via (B), I have been provided with the woman’s mobile number, two email addresses and location. It appears the woman has now relocated within the Netherlands, from Amstelveen to Weesp.

Update May 2020 – Using the email addresses provided by (B) I have sent this email to the woman. I have as yet received no response.

Notes

[1] There is indeed a woman standing behind the central figure of Mohammed Asi as the full tableau sequence shows (see first image below), however she is not visible in the particular image I posted. This woman is certainly not the same person who contacted me via Facebook. She is the younger and slimmer woman seen entering Atareb Hospital at 34:02 in Saving Syria’s Children (see second image below), clutching a red bag and exclaiming “yalla yalla yalla” (her exclamation is, incidentally, inauthentically imposed over the sequence of “Victim Y” entering the hospital at 31:44 in the programme).

[2] I have subsequently been advised that the woman’s words are an automatically generated Facebook message, which would account for the fact that they do not strictly apply to the circumstances.

[3] In June 2014 her “current location” was given as Amstelveen.

[4] The section of the video featuring the hospital scenes was produced by “Banan Art production” whose You Tube channel hosts a number of versions subtitled in different languages, including English.

[5] Including: the “black dress woman” (20:38); the boy in the white shirt who effortlessly rises to his feet in the tableau scene (20:48); Dr Saleyha Ahsan (21:08); Siham Kanbari (21:08); Mohammed Kenas (21:18); Anas Said Ali (21:20); Lutfi Arsi (21:22); Dr Rola Hallam (21:23); Ahmed Darwish (21:30) and the alleged “college” teacher (21:48).