Syria reporters flee as jihadists adopt regime tactics

Syrian journalists who braved snipers and shelling to cover the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad are now on the run from jihadists who have kidnapped and killed their colleagues.
Reporters say the kidnapping, torture and murder of journalists and media workers by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in rebel-held parts of northern Syria mirror the oppression they faced under Assad's police state.
The danger has sent several journalists fleeing across the border into Turkey, making it difficult to report on the fighting in much of Syria or to verify alleged atrocities, such as the weeks-long aerial bombardment of the country's second city Aleppo last month.

"They started by kidnapping foreign journalists who came to cover the revolution," said a Syrian journalist in Turkey who asked to be referred to as "Abid" because he is wanted by ISIL, which has sentenced him to death.
"The next step was that they started kidnapping Syrian journalists. And finally we got to where we are now, where they have started killing journalists directly."
Syria is the most dangerous country in the world for journalists, with more than 60 reporters killed since the start of the revolt in 2011 and another 30 gone missing, half of them foreigners, according to the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) says more than 120 journalists, netizens and citizen journalists have been killed and more than 40 arrested.

ISIL "has become the single greatest threat to journalists in Syria, responsible for kidnappings and murders even in neighbouring Iraq," says Sherif Mansour of the CPJ.
The exact number of reporters kidnapped by ISIL is not known, as the jihadist group rarely claims kidnappings and many media outlets do not publicise abductions for fear it could undermine efforts to negotiate with captors.
But nearly every Syrian journalist has friends or colleagues who have gone missing, and local reporters say it has become virtually impossible to work in areas where ISIL is present.

Ahmad Brimo was working as a journalist for several local outlets in Aleppo when ISIL militants abducted him from his house in mid-November, accusing him of being an American spy and jailing him in the basement of their headquarters in the divided city.
"I was only physically tortured three or four times, but the psychological torture continued the whole time," he said, comparing the experience to the three occasions on which he was jailed by Assad's regime.