Marie Colvin family sues Syria for journalist’s murder
The family of Marie Colvin has filed a lawsuit in which it claims the journalist was targeted and killed by the Syrian government in an attempt to silence her reporting.
MArie Colvin
US-born Colvin, a correspondent for The Sunday Times, was killed in the city of Homs in 2012.
The Colvin family say in the wrongful-death lawsuit that Syrian officials deliberately launched a rocket attack on the makeshift broadcast studio, which they were able to target by tracing the satellite phone she was using.
According to the lawsuit, a government informant confirmed the location and the attack was ordered that night.
"The transmissions were intercepted, and they were tracked to their GPS co-ordinates. On top of that there was a whole web of informants who were already out searching for the journalists. Any journalist in Homs… could have been a target,” said Scott Gilmore, who is on the legal team.
The family claims to have documents, smuggled out of Syria, which prove the strike was approved or ordered by President Assad's brother Maher, commander of the Republican Guards.
They believe this is part of a wider policy of deliberately killing journalists and media activists in Syria. More than two dozen journalists were killed in the country in 2012.