Basil al-Sayed, Syria Journalist, Dead At Age 24

A 24-year-old journalist reportedly has been killed in Syria.

The video below purportedly shows Basil al-Sayed's mother and relatives grieving before zipping up his body bag. According to Ahmed Al Omran at NPR, al-Sayed had recorded hundreds of hours of footage of unrest in Syria using a small red camcorder to chronicle the situation.

NPR posted the last video filmed by the young journalist before he was reportedly shot in the head by security forces firing directly at protesters.

In Syria's restive city of Homs, nearly daily protests against President Bashar al-Assad's regime have been met with a brutal crackdown.

According to a CNN correspondent, government snipers patrol Homs "picking off their victims apparently indiscriminately and at will."

Arab League monitors arrived in Homs -- the country's third-largest city and center of Syria's uprising -- this week to assess whether the Assad regime is cooperating with the president's promise to withdraw heavy weaponry from the streets.

Foreign journalists are largely banned from Syria, and the Committee to Protect Journalists has documented at least 29 cases of journalists arrested for their reporting. Citizen journalism has sprung up as a result, with locals uploading amateur videos of protests and government forces opening fire to the Internet. Groups estimate that over 5,000 people have been killed since protests began in March.

WARNING: Graphic video below

Comments

[ZeoGetty]

07:41 PM on 01/03/2012

It's so sad, the mom at the end asks to see her sons hair but the guy refuses as it will only make things worse for her.. I can hear her begging them to let her touch her son's hair

[mjune]

09:43 PM on 01/01/2012

A truly brave hero who knew he had made himself a target, yet still believed the world would help.

Let this brave journalist not have died in vain!

[madcityy]

03:09 PM on 12/31/2011

SADDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

[Charles Queen]

02:19 PM on 12/31/2011

While Iran is delaying missle tests and is reopening talks with the 6 major orld powers,unfortunately Assad is not going to budge.There is only one way that this is going to come to an end and it will not be with talks with anyone.Assad ill be killed,it may be awhile but make no mistake he will end up dead either that or in exile someplace and probobly not with his friends in Iran as they don't need or want that problem either.He has no regards for the U.N. or any of the other country's in the region or for the people who live in Syria.He is a power crazed dictater who's time is coming to an end along with some military officials as well

[kevmi16]

11:12 AM on 12/31/2011

Where is Obama's support for this "uprising"? I guess they are an oil well short of his support.

[mjune]

09:44 PM on 01/01/2012

The complexity includes the Arab League.

[billlesd]

11:02 AM on 12/31/2011

Arab Spring? NOT!

[eric14]

01:31 PM on 01/01/2012

Now is the winter of their discontent.

[wildeowens]

06:55 AM on 12/31/2011

Is this the same guy who was on Democracy Now on Thursday, speaking to Amy Goodman? That person was reporting from Homs, identified himself as "Bassel", and no last name. Just wonder if anybody knows. DN doesn't air until Monday again, and I see no mention of it on their website as yet.

[rebel0498]

04:08 AM on 12/31/2011

The Free Syrian Army consisting of defectors number about 25K according to Wikipedia. But it doesn't say where there funding is coming from. It appears they have stopped fighting for now.

[baldbiker2]

11:28 PM on 12/30/2011

Assad first, everyone else is disposable. He'll protect his rear end til every Syrian is dead. He doesnt care. The interview with Barbara Walters tells all, he acted like he has nothing to do with anything going on in Syria.

[King Nine]

11:13 PM on 12/30/2011

MOSCOW – An alien spaceship from Planet Zeeba was seen hovering over the Kremlin last night.

An “unidentified flying object” appeared above Moscow during a political protest last night. 25,000 protestors saw the Amateur footage in the flying object in the sky, which drew even more citizens to Bolotnaya Square.

Russian authorities were quick to contact experts from the U.N. Panel on Extraterrestrials. Dr. Susan Begley of the U.N., spoke with Vladmir Putin directly and confirmed that the alien spaceship over the Kremlin was a peaceful ship from Planet Zeeba. Three ships from the hostile, Planet Gootan landed on Earth in late November and there have been a number of Gootan sightings, but Begley assured Russians that the Zeebans are peaceful beings and are most likely on Earth to protect humans from the Gootans.

Shocked onlookers climbed trees to get a closer look at Zeeban craft which seemed to be observing them.

Instead of making clear their opposition to Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party’s contentious victory in elections the week before, the throng were more concerned with watching the skies and the Zeeban spaceship hovering above them.

[kateland23]

11:07 PM on 12/30/2011

this is what is wrong with the media now...it is one thing to report a tragic event such as this man's death..but it is quite another to show photos of the dead. please, have some respect!!! how shameful. would you want the world to see your corpse plastered on the internet? no, i think not.

[DoctorBri1776]

01:47 AM on 12/31/2011

The photo showed this young man's ashen face and it was a face exposed to the throng mourning his death. It surely puts a face on the fallen courageous people who are battling a murderous regime. What do you think about the larger issues at hand which brought this young man's life to such a horrific end? Where is your respect for the bigger story of what is being done by this outlaw regime. While you note your own view of the niceties and rituallistically correct things to be done at a funeral or handled by the media, flesh and blood people are being exterminated by an outlaw regime and with impunity. Where is your sense of proportion?

[eric14]

01:37 PM on 01/01/2012

English-speaking countries are the exception in not showing the dead. All other media I have been exposed to show everything caught by the camera.

What effect would there be showing body parts of men, women and children blown to pieces by a U.S. drone? Is it censorship to conceal that from the public? Should Americans only see a cleaned up version of reality?

[surfandshop]

10:26 PM on 12/30/2011

We are blessed to have had the wisdom of America's Founding fathers....the right to freedom of speech.

[bluestarrlry]

09:57 AM on 12/31/2011

yes we are and i wish the govmt would quit messing with it !

[hard2swallovv8]

03:09 AM on 01/01/2012

Well said.

[Orange22]

11:12 AM on 12/31/2011

libs and african americans should appreciate what we have here, one bashes american and the other wants more for nothing

[dsmithsfamily]

05:28 PM on 01/01/2012

wow who taught you to think that way

[ancientgame]

06:24 PM on 01/01/2012

what would you say you spend on your dry cleaning per year for just one robe and one hood?
just asking.

[cbrepo]

10:05 PM on 12/30/2011

Any loss of innocent life is a shame. At least in our culture this is true, but in theirs I really do not know. Events over the past few months make me wonder just what kind of animals really live there.

[DoctorBri1776]

01:54 AM on 12/31/2011

Are you talking about the courageous general populace as animals or the criminal regime killing its own? And since when does this culture care about the loss of innocent life? Tell that to the millions of Vietnamese slaughtered in that criminal invasion, the three million who died at the hands of Pol Pot and his Communist fanatics whose path to power was forged by Nixon and Kissinger and a compliant Congress, the Native Americans whose genocide is essentially swept under the rug by our so-called history books. What about the El Salvadoreans, Nicaraguans, Hondurans, Dominicans, Haitians, Guatemalans and a host of South Americans murdered in our CIA-supported and enabled regimes...and the Afghanis, Iraqis, Pakistanis currently suffering at the hands of forces enabled if not executed by USA policies and troops.

[Michele Bennington]

10:50 AM on 01/01/2012

Well said, and don't forget state/religious supported use of slavery.

[dsmithsfamily]

05:29 PM on 01/01/2012

maybe the same kind of animals that linched people here not to long ago

[Alfred Leffall]

09:49 PM on 12/30/2011

fox news an other networks want to cover ''SYRIA''what about ''SUDAN'S DARFUR''AREA.millions have been killed there.Its all about bringing down syria,an drawing ''IRAN''into the conflict.So the rich neo-cons can have another war an access to the oil fields,of both ''SYRIA & IRAN.Enough,of this nonsense.Today i even heard our president sold,$30 billion dollars worth of f-15 figher planes to ''SAUDIA ARABIA,Even though they mistreat the ''shiites ''in Bahrain.But oh i forgot,thats where the u.s. fifth fleet is docked.So its okay how the saudis treat,the shiites in BAHRAIN.We will absolutely start a war with iran & syria,An it will all be in the name of protecting ''ISRAEL.While inrichning the pockets of ''HALLIBURTON AN BECHTEL

[mdh461]

10:56 PM on 12/30/2011

Allah Akbar. For Shiites and Sunni, oh I forgot, muslims kill more muslims for the tribe.

[Tonelook]

09:32 PM on 12/30/2011

Our prayers that the Syrian government falls; Bashar al- Assad is a cancer, a plague. May he be deposed and tried and convicted by his people for his atrocities.

[rebel0498]

02:07 AM on 12/31/2011

Don't you think it might be reasonable to wait what the delegation has to report. Since there is a ban on foreign media, all the reporting has come from the opposition. The government appears to still have strong support.

[mjune]

09:46 PM on 01/01/2012

No. Look at the make-up of the delegation.