In late December 2012, Lebanese
American journalist Serena Shim filed a report for Iran’s Press TV, ‘Turkey’s
Pivotal Role in Syria’s Insurgency’. However by that time, US complicity in
channelling weapons via Turkey into the hands of Syria-bound al-CIAda terrorists had
already been publicised by the New York Times, no less. In June 2012, Eric Schmitt explicitly stated that
“A
small number of C.I.A. officers are operating secretly in southern Turkey.
…weapons, including automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and
some antitank weapons, are being funnelled
mostly across the Turkish border by way of a shadowy network of intermediaries
including Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood and paid for by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and
Qatar.”[1]
Shim therefore was only
providing a more detailed picture of an already well-documented situation when
she informed her audience:
“The American air base located
inside Turkey, Incirlik, has enabled the Turkish government to facilitate the
movement of arms without facing public scrutiny. The base is located eight
kilometres east of the Turkish city of Adana. Sources say when weaponry arrives
it is given to two American and one Mexican man, who either distribute them
among refugee camps, or across the border into Syria. Turkish military officials
ensure the weapons are transferred swiftly and discreetly to Syria. […] the
funds have been provided by Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Syria’s foreign ministry in
a letter to the United Nations blamed Turkey along with Qatar and Saudi Arabia
for sponsoring terrorists inside Syria.”
Even so, Shim's focus on the role of the Turkish government is likely to have incensed then Prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his MIT (National Intelligence Organisation) henchmen; especially alongside her exposure of the use of World Food Programme trucks
to ferry jihadists (nationals from a variety of Middle Eastern and North
African countries) into Syria. In
May 2015 upmarket daily Cumhuriyet
published pictures of a January 2014 interception by the Turkish gendarmerie of
a convoy of MIT-loaded trucks headed for Syria, containing arms and ammunition.
Telling editor-in-chief Can Dundar he would “pay a heavy price”, Erdoğan
accused both him and journalist Erdem Gul of “espionage”.[2] In
December of that year, when MP Eren Erdem produced documentation showing Ankara
had turned a blind eye to the transfer from Turkey to Syria of materials to
make sarin gas, the “treason” accusations levelled at him were very similar.[3]
This helps to explain how it
came to be that on 17 October 2014, having returned to Turkey earlier in the month, Serena Shim disclosed in a Press TV interview that she too stood
accused of being a spy, by MIT.[4]
Although she expressed her fear of arrest and imprisonment, it’s now clear
Ankara had issued a fatwa, condemning
her to death at the first available opportunity. So with their wealth of
experience, MIT’s ‘road safety experts’ set to work; but automobiles are blunt
instruments, making it difficult to contrive a fatal crash without detailed
long-term preparation. It appears that neither Shim nor the driver of their
rental car, her cousin and camera operator Judy Irish, were critically injured
after an impact with a truck[5] on 19 October.
Irish was treated at a nearby hospital and survived. Shim however was murdered,
either at the crash-site or more likely at the medical facility she was taken
to (reportedly in Turkey’s Hatay province nearly three hours drive away). There
may be a precedent for this. In the aftermath of the undisputed pre-planned car
crash at Susurluk[6]
on 3rd November 1996, the three people who died were said to be
still alive until MIT's secret traffic police finished them off.
In 2016 Serena Shim’s mother
clarified:
“There is no doubt in my mind that my daughter did not die in a car accident. There was not one single scratch on her there was no blood absolutely anywhere.”
Meanwhile the US government has
never called for Serena Shim’s death to be properly investigated; and the next
part of her mother’s testimony is a further indictment of their attitude:
“I have tried to contact the American Embassy in Turkey with the cell phone numbers they gave me originally when I was going to get my daughter. Absolutely no response from the American Embassy in Turkey, including via personal cell phones.”[7]
[1] Eric
Schmitt, ‘C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition’, New York Times, 21-06-2012
[2]
‘Turkish president Erdoğan wants editor jailed for espionage in video row’,
Reuters, 03-06-2015
Besides being jailed, Dundar survived an assassination attempt in the
following year.
[3]
‘Sarin gas materials sent to Isis from
Turkey, claims MP Eren Erdem’, Befast
Telegraph, 14-12-2015
See also: Coleen Rowley, ‘Calling (Again) for Proof: 2013 Sarin
Attack at Ghouta’, Huffington Post,
26-12-2015
“Small wonder President Erdogan
has accused Erdem of “treason.” It was not Erdem’s first “offense.” Earlier, he
exposed corruption by Erdogan family members, for which a government newspaper
branded him an “American puppet, Israeli agent, a supporter of the terrorist
PKK and the instigator of a coup.””
[4]
Serena Shim’s sister Fatmeh later explained that she saw this television
appearance in terms of a lesson their Lebanese father had taught them as
children:
“He always said, ‘If you’re
being attacked, scream.’ Because if you don’t scream, you die for
any reason. But when you do scream,
people are going to find out why you died. If she didn’t go on air, my sister
would [just] have been “killed in a car accident”.”
Mark Mondalek, ‘Remember
American Journalist Killed in Suspicious Car Crash in Turkey After Entering Erdoğan’s
Crosshairs’, Mint Press News, 05-08-2016.
[5]
The authorities subsequently put out a pre-fabricated story about a head-on collision
with a cement-mixer.
[6]
The scandal which erupted in the wake of the
Susurluk incident was perhaps greater and more far-reaching than that which
surfaced as a result of the Watergate break-in in the US.
[7]
Eva Bartlett, ‘Killed in Turkey: No
investigation two years after suspicious death of American journalist Serena
Shim’, The Duran, 20-10-2016
