The falsified material Member of Parliament George Galloway is referring to in the video above is of course the famous report the BBC released in August 2013, which was claimed to portray the victims of a napalm attack on a school near Aleppo, perpetrated by the Syrian air force.

Too many are the questions that have been raised by independent researchers since the report’s release, questions that cast serious doubts into the report’s authenticity.

Such as the multiple takings of the same scene, despite a life-or-death emergency, as we were told. Or this group of victims on the right, that seemed to get into character on cue, as soon as the person in the foreground gave the peace sign.

Some of these questions have already been explored in a previous video: The Role of the BBC in the Syrian Conflict, which you might want to acquaint yourselves with: practically none of these questions have been adequately answered by the BBC. This new study tries to put more pieces of this puzzle together, by taking a look at the people involved in the footage you are seeing, and their various endeavours to slap some credibility to the piece of reporting on a supposed incendiary bomb attack on a school which, for some reason, was ostensibly crowded with children two full weeks before the beginning of the school year.

For starters, you might be interested to learn that the team behind this footage was given an Emmy award precisely for this kind of reporting.

Cameraman Darren Conway is also the recipient of an OBE, which – of course – stands for Order of the British Empire, fittingly, and the organisation One World Media which, incidentally, counts a member of the Jordanian Royal family among its patrons, has nominated Ian Pannell for the International Journalist of the Year Award.

Meet Dr. Rola Hallam, star of the video Saving Syria’s Children, which was shot and edited by the same BBC team with extended footage from the previously released BBC reports. Reporter Ian Pannell introduced Dr. Rola Hallam to his audience as a doctor, working for a charity called Hand in Hand for Syria, supposedly a neutral organisation… except for a little detail: the charity had a flag of the Syrian opposition in its logo, denoting an affiliation to the Syrian National Council – hardly a neutral stance. Furthermore, we learned from Mimi Al Laham, also known as Syrian Girl, that Dr. Hallam’s father, Dr. Mousa al Kurdi, is or has been a member of the Syrian National Coalition. There are quite a few interviews and features on him dotted around, such as this one.

Apparently, there is a reference somewhere that he was involved in the selection of victims for presentation to the UN investigators, following the 21 August Ghouta incident. This site states: “One of the group’s doctors, oncologist Mousa al-Kurdi, an Englishman, says he was inside Syria, Idlib, when four victims of the Saraqeb incident, all from one family, were brought in, he says, looking like Sarin victims. –Caustic Logic (talk) 11:10, 2 June 2013 (UTC)”.

There are, to be sure, a few factual mistakes in this article. What is of interest, however, is that the incident referred to here is this one, reported again by… that’s right: Ian Pannell

See the connection?

The other doctor featured in the documentary Saving Syria’s Children, Dr. Saleyha Ahsan, gave an interview to Channel Four, where she said this about Dr. Hallam: “She [Rola] remains frustrated at not being able to attract support from international agencies and funders, who had so willingly supported the Libyan uprising.”

Question: would an aid agency want to be seen as supporting uprisings?

Incidentally, this is the same Dr. Ahsan who, in an article she wrote for the New York Times, claimed that she had found herself “in a school that had been hit by a napalm-like bomb”, contradicting the BBC report that placed her in the field hospital, overwhelmed by an influx of victims arriving from that very same attacked school – indeed, some of the victims arriving twice: first on foot then, again, on a stretcher.

In November 2013, Dr. Rola Hallam participated to an event in London called How Should the World Protect Syria’s Children? – organised by the institute Intelligence Squared and Save the Children. That’s right, the same Save the Children which sold us the story of Gaddafi’s troops being given Viagra to use mass rape as a weapon of war back in 2011.

At the event, independent researcher Robert Stuart confronted Dr. Rola Hallam with some of these questions on the charity Hand in Hand for Syria. This can be viewed at 51′: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-C9PDOSp7g.

The question on Dr. Hallam’s father was given an answer that wasn’t technically a lie. However, in this article, her colleague, Dr Ahsan again (who was also in the audience), stated: “The crisis has had a very personal impact on Rola’s family. Her father, also a doctor, helped coordinate medical logistics from inside Syria in the early days of the uprising. He is now involved politically with the Syrian National Council”. In fact, in this video, Dr. al Kurdi can be seen on Al Jazeera, advocating for the Syrian National Council’s recognition as sole representative for the Syrian people, as – of course – any London-based gynaecologist would do, right?

So, to recap: Dr. Hallam, frustrated at the fact that the international community isn’t really doing its best to get behind the Syrian uprising and has failed to bomb the hell out of Syria, works for an organisation that sports the flag of the opposition and has a father who is involved politically with the Syrian National Council. Given this background, does it really matter whether or not these people are card-carrying members of the Syrian National Council for the purpose of determining their neutrality in the conflict, or whether they have a dog in this fight?

The question on the charity’s logo was ignored altogether which, in our humble opinion, was a smart move on Dr. Rola’s part, considering that, (from Wikispooks) “[a]ccording to the UK charity commission, ‘an organisation cannot be a charity if it has a political purpose’ (see UK Charity Commission, What Makes a Charity? Annex B – Political Purposes). As a UK charity, Hand in Hand for Syria is therefore explicitly prohibited from ‘furthering the interests of a particular political party’ or from ‘securing or opposing any change in the law, whether in the UK or overseas’”; it should be noted that, since this exchange, Hand in Hand for Syria decided to quietly drop the three red stars from the logo after the event, presumably because they were going to step up their donations campaign. UK residents are now accustomed to seeing huge posters in their towns, where the charity rattles its begging bowl. However, the logo is now slightly different, making the affiliation to the Syrian opposition less apparent.

The search for truth continues. For updates on the search, please turn to:

http://bbcpanoramasavingsyriaschildren.wordpress.com/

With invaluable contributions from Robert Stuart

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