Last week, the GMBDW reported that there had been Arabic language news reports about serious violences against Egyptian media facilities and journalists including “crucifixion” of opponents to President Morsi. Canadian media has posted a commentary casting doubt on the authenticity of the reports. According to a piece in the National Post:
Yesterday I contacted the management of Sky News Arabic, and asked them about the crucifixions. According to Fares Ghneim, a Sky communications official, the crucifixion claim “began on social media. It started getting pick-up from there and eventually reached us.”
“Our reporters came across reports of the alleged crucifixions and a story very briefly appeared on the Sky News Arabia website,” he added. “The story — which was taken down within minutes — was based on third-party reports and I am not aware that any of our reporters said or confirmed anything along the lines of what is quoted in the article [by WorldNetDaily]… What’s unclear is where websites in North America got [the]Sky News Arabia bit from. As mentioned [previously], none of our correspondents confirmed this issue or commented on it. Clearly there is an intermediate source the websites got the info from, but as of yet we haven’t been able to identify it.”
Confidential sources have also informed the GMBDW that Sky News, the source of the original story, has said the crucifixion was reported ‘second hand’ and therefore it was decided to delete the report.
Note: Whatever the truth behind the decision to delete the original report, we would like to emphasize that the GMBDW is an intelligence digest and, as such, we sometimes report items of interest that may later turn out to be less than accurate. We make every effort to post a corrective story when such a situation comes to our attention.