An Iranian TV station appears to have faked dozens of accounts of US drone strikes in Somalia which it says have killed hundreds of civilians.
Press TV, which was fined £100,000 by Ofcom (the UK Press Regulatory Authority) after the station hid the fact that a 2009 “interviewee” was being forcibly detained in Iran, has reported the deaths of more than 1,370 people in 56 drone strikes in Somalia since September this year.
Research by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, however, has found no evidence of the reported incidents.
The first known lethal US drone strike in Somalia occurred on 23 June 2011. A small number of similar attacks appear to have taken place since then, possibly in conjunction with operations by the French and Kenyan militaries.
But many claims of drone attacks in Somalia are highly suspect. On 15 September 2011, Press TV reported that US drone attacks on the outskirts of the town of Kismayo, Somalia, had killed nine women and children.
It was the first of many claims of civilian deaths from drone strikes in Somalia. No photographic or video evidence has ever been shown in support. At least four reports are identical in all but place name and casualty numbers, and sources are only named in four of 56 drone strike reports.
Researchers have been unable to identify the sources Hassan Ali and Colonel Aden Dheere, who were described as Somali military officials, or Mohamud Abdirahman, described as an eyewitness, despite lodging a request with the Somali government and with Press TV’s headquarters in Iran.
No representatives from the United Nations, Amisom (the African Union Mission in Somalia), non-government organisations or journalists in Somalia were able to confirm the strikes.
Tony Burns, the director of operations at the Somali charity Saacid, which operates from the capital, Mogadishu, said that Press TV’s casualty figures were “simply not possible”. “Saacid’s experience has been that Press TV does have a penchant for exaggeration. In the past they have published conflict reports which, in reality, never occurred, and casualty figures that are simply not true.”
A senior UN official focusing on Somalia said: “Press TV is not a reliable source. It exaggerates and openly fabricates reports.”
Jeremy Scahill of the US magazine the Nation recently exposed secret CIA operations in Mogadishu. He has spoken publicly about US drones operating in Somalia and elsewhere. Scahill believed there could be innocent reasons for the misinformation, including a “benign misinterpretation” of events on the ground amid the chaos. And US attacks with other weapons – including cruise missiles or air strikes – may have been misreported.
Alternatively, the reports could form part of a targeted anti-US news campaign, said Scahill. “There is an extreme propaganda war going on between Iran and the US at the moment. You’ve got to assume that everyone has an agenda.”
Asked if the station had exaggerated the number of drone strikes in Somalia, a spokesman for Press TV in Tehran declined to comment.
Source: The Guardian