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Page added on September 23, 2013
Saudi Arabia Threatens to “End Career” of AP Reporter Over Chemical Weapons Story
Journalist who exposed how rebels were behind August 21st attack faces intimidation
Associated Press reporter Dale Gavlak has been threatened over her involvement in a story which exposed how Syrian rebels were responsible for the August 21st chemical weapons attack after being handed the weapons by Saudi intelligence agents.
Image: Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan
On August 29th, Mint Press News published an article written by Gavlak which detailed how FSA militants in Ghouta admitted to reporter Yahya Ababneh that they were behind the August 21st chemical weapons incident, which the United States blamed on President Bashar Al-Assad, having mishandled chemical weapons provided to them by Saudi Arabia.
Although Gavlak did not write the story in her capacity as an AP correspondent, according to Mint Press News executive director Mnar Muhawesh, within 48 hours Gavlak received threats to “end her career” if she didn’t disassociate herself from the article.
The threats came from a third party who was most likely acting on behalf of Saudi Intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan, according to Gavlak. Bandar is named in the article as having ordered the transfer of chemical weapons to Syrian rebels in Ghouta.
Gavlak also “confirmed with several colleagues and Jordanian government officials that the Saudis have been supplying rebels with chemical weapons,” according to Muhawesh.
Note that Gavlak was not threatened with a defamation lawsuit on the basis that her story was inaccurate, she was told that her career would be finished, which could also be taken as a death threat. The story’s entire credibility rests on Gavlak being an accredited AP journalist who has also worked for NPR and the BBC, which is why the people behind the threats were so insistent that Gavlak distance herself from the report.
The original Mint Press News article was published just two days before the United States was widely expected to launch cruise missile attacks on Syria, until the White House backed out at the last minute and President Obama announced he would seek congressional authorization.
“On August 30th, Dale asked MintPress to remove her name completely from the byline because she stated that her career and reputation was at risk. She continued to say that these third parties were demanding her to disassociate herself from the article or these parties would end her career,” writes Muhawesh, adding that despite the threats, he decided to keep her name attached to the report.
Gavlak’s colleague Yahya Ababneh, who personally interviewed the rebels in Ghouta, was also threatened.
“Yahya has recently notified me that the Saudi embassy contacted him and threatened to end his career if he did a follow up story on who carried out the most recent chemical weapons attack and demanded that he stop doing media interviews in regards to the subject,” writes Muhawesh.
Dale Gavlak, Yahya Ababneh, and Mint Press News should be applauded for their ethical stance in upholding journalistic integrity by refusing to back down in the face of apparent threats from the habitually corrupt Saudi government.
In revealing the threats, Gavlak and Ababneh have not only thrown a fresh spotlight on the thuggish behavior of governments like Saudi Arabia who are arming Al-Qaeda led rebels in Syria, but have also bolstered the credibility of their original story, which could very well have helped prevent an attack on Syria.
The fact that Saudi Arabia is so desperate for Gavlak to distance herself from the story that it has resorted to underhanded threats, instead of openly denying the veracity of the report, suggests that the original article is indeed accurate and that Saudi Arabia is arming the Syrian rebels with chemical weapons.
It also strongly indicates that the entire basis for US aggression towards Syria, currently playing out in the form of demands for Syria to relinquish its chemical weapons arsenal, is based on the completely fraudulent pretext that Assad ordered the August 21st chemical weapons attack, a premise that has already been discredited by German intelligence findings.
5 Comments on "Saudi Arabia Threatens to “End Career” of AP Reporter Over Chemical Weapons Story"
actioncjackson on Mon, 23rd Sep 2013 1:15 pm
Another US sponsored coup attempt using empire puppets like Bandar, what a surprise.
Arthur on Mon, 23rd Sep 2013 1:15 pm
The fine people of Infowars represent the US opposition, that operates from the internet underground and are the last hope, together with libertarians, 9/11-truthers and Ron Paul, Ventura, PC Roberts, Buchanan, Raimondo types and to a lesser extent TP people and to a much lesser extent OWS crowd, that somehow hopefully manages to keep the Constitution alive in the US.
That character Bandar bin Sultan, nicknamed ‘Bandar Bush’ belongs to a caste that will likely suffer the same fate as the caste surrounding the Shah of Persia of former fame. Reason: too much proximity to the hated infidel of the west. Oh, and that oil and gas revenues, we would like that too [this messages was sponsored by the Muslim Brotherhood].
Bandar constitutes the main link between Washington and Ryahd. For Ryahd there is no way back. The House of Saud tied it’s fate to the US military and it will go under with US presence in the Gulf.
But not now. Now that Egypt is under control of general al Sisi, who has a jewish mother from Morocco named Malikah Titani and is a Mossad agent (according to the MB)…
http://tinyurl.com/o3utxyy
… the danger of the MB has passed (for the moment). Now the next enemy to deal with is Iran, not in the least because most of the oil and gas revenues come from wells, situated in Saudi Shia inhabited territory. And we all know what happened to Shia majority Iraq: became buddies with Iran. The US has chosen the side of the Sunni’s, not for religeous reasons, the US could not care less, but to instrumentalize them in combating the real opponent: Russia/China. The Saudi satraps have no choice but to follow their de facto leaders and protectors. Iran is spared for later, Syria is first. The pattern is the same as applied to National-Socialist-Germany, Iraq, Libya, Syria and later Iran: all run by evil dictators and baby hitters, about to conquer the entire world, having weapons of mass destruction (unlike the US.lol) but fortunately the notorious noble and exceptional US is around to stop them. For the Greater Good of mankind, that goes without saying. After all: liberty, democracy, human rights are US government reserved words.
Take Syria. That country must be stopped, because they gassed their own citizens (where did we hear that story before? Oh yes, Nuremberg). Proof? US government said so. That is John Kohn… uhm Kerry, a fine gentlemen of Irish catholic extraction.lol.
And now there is a young reporter, Dale Gavlak, who does not yet seem to know on which side her bread is buttered, and stupidly reports the truth about the Syrian gassing story. What this stupid woman yet has to learn is that a reporter never reports the truth, but always only what your paymaster wants to hear.
The hilarious aspect about this story of course is that now with the internet around, these efforts like the one from Bandar, backfire enormously, further discrediting the credibility of anything coming out of Washington.
Here is a fine Canadian gentlemen, James Corbett, living in exile in Japan, where so many north Americans are living in exile these days (Snowdon, Chris Bollyn, Ryan Dawson, to name a few), as a precaution, explaining the details of this Bandar character:
http://www.corbettreport.com/bandar-bush-and-the-syrian-subversion/
Corbett is an excellent source of news and analysis as a counterweight of news from the MSM. And slightly more down to earth than Infowars.
Arthur on Mon, 23rd Sep 2013 1:16 pm
The fine people of Infowars represent the US opposition, that operates from the internet underground and are the last hope, together with libertarians, 9/11-truthers and Ron Paul, Ventura, PC Roberts, Buchanan, Raimondo types and to a lesser extent TP people and to a much lesser extent OWS crowd, that somehow hopefully manages to keep the Constitution alive in the US.
That character Bandar bin Sultan, nicknamed ‘Bandar Bush’ belongs to a caste that will likely suffer the same fate as the caste surrounding the Shah of Persia of former fame. Reason: too much proximity to the hated infidel of the west. Oh, and that oil and gas revenues, we would like that too [this messages was sponsored by the Muslim Brotherhood].
Bandar constitutes the main link between Washington and Ryahd. For Ryahd there is no way back. The House of Saud tied it’s fate to the US military and it will go under with US presence in the Gulf.
But not now. Now that Egypt is under control of general al Sisi, who has a jewish mother from Morocco named Malikah Titani and is a Mossad agent (according to the MB)…
http://tinyurl.com/o3utxyy
… the danger of the MB has passed (for the moment). Now the next enemy to deal with is Iran, not in the least because most of the oil and gas revenues come from wells, situated in Saudi Shia inhabited territory. And we all know what happened to Shia majority Iraq: became buddies with Iran. The US has chosen the side of the Sunni’s, not for religeous reasons, the US could not care less, but to instrumentalize them in combating the real opponent: Russia/China. The Saudi satraps have no choice but to follow their de facto leaders and protectors. Iran is spared for later, Syria is first. The pattern is the same as applied to National-Socialist-Germany, Iraq, Libya, Syria and later Iran: all run by evil dictators and baby hitters, about to conquer the entire world, having weapons of mass destruction (unlike the US.lol) but fortunately the notorious noble and exceptional US is around to stop them. For the Greater Good of mankind, that goes without saying. After all: liberty, democracy, human rights are US government reserved words.
Take Syria. That country must be stopped, because they gassed their own citizens (where did we hear that story before? Oh yes, Nuremberg). Proof? US government said so. That is John Kohn… uhm Kerry, a fine gentlemen of Irish catholic extraction.lol.
And now there is a young reporter, Dale Gavlak, who does not yet seem to know on which side her bread is buttered, and stupidly reports the truth about the Syrian gassing story. What this stupid woman yet has to learn is that a reporter never reports the truth, but always only what your paymaster wants to hear.
The hilarious aspect about this story of course is that now with the internet around, these efforts like the one from Bandar, backfire enormously, further discrediting the credibility of anything coming out of Washington.
Here is a fine Canadian gentlemen, James Corbett, living in exile in Japan, where so many north Americans are living in exile these days (Snowdon, Chris Bollyn, Ryan Dawson, to name a few), as a precaution, explaining the details of this Bandar character:
corbettreport . com / bandar-bush-and-the-syrian-subversion/
Corbett is an excellent source of news and analysis as a counterweight of news from the MSM. And slightly more down to earth than Infowars.
J-Gav on Mon, 23rd Sep 2013 9:19 pm
Action – Not sure who is whose puppet with Bandar … because it’s not just the U.S. involved here but the EU as well. There (here actually, because I live in France) the energy question is likely to come to a head before it does in the States. That’s due to the mad rush to frack everything in sight, temporarily giving an impression of plenty in the U.S. and to Europe’s (not exactly unfounded) fear of overdependence on Russian oil and gas.
So, for me, the main beneficiaries in the short/medium term of toppling Al Assad (and the Iranians) would in fact be Europe, not the U.S., because (they hope) that would allow constuction of a trans-Syrian pipeline to Turkey to carry the newly discovered offshore Israeli, Lebanese and Syrian gas deposits to Turkey, then to Italy, Austria, etc.
GregT on Tue, 24th Sep 2013 2:44 am
As usual when commenting on geopolitics, IMHO, Arthur is spot on.