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Lhe last footage of journalist murdered in Syria
Exclusive: Life with ISIL, Al Nusra Front - the last footage of journalist murdered in Syria a year ago
Premieres 6 December on Al Jazeera English, 20.00GMT
Cameraman Yasser Al Jumaili’s unseen footage offers chilling insights into the lives of rebel fighters behind Syrian frontlines – but he pays the ultimate price.
A year after his murder in Syria, Al Jazeera honours Iraqi freelance cameraman Yasser Faisal Al Jumaili, whose last footage of rebel groups cost him his life. As the world demands to know who ISIL are, this film offers access to ISIL in their early phase, along with Al Nusra Front, The Free Syrian Army, Al Tawhid Brigade, and Ahrar Al Sham groups.
On 20 November 2013, Iraqi freelance cameraman Yasser Faisal Al Jumaili crossed the Turkish border into Syria with his trusted Syrian fixer Jomah Alqasem. By this time in Syria, various rebel groups were splitting from one another along ideological differences. Yasser’s assignment was to access the groups and build a picture of who these men were, away from rhetoric, both off-duty and on the frontlines. Now, in this film, only Jomah lives to tell the tale of their last assignment together.
Yasser manages to get access to ISIL in the early days, before they were on the world’s radar, before they had declared the caliphate. This was the moment they turned on other rebel groups considered traitors to their aims of establishing an Islamic state in Syria and Iraq.
His vivid account of their journey portrays the fragility of being embedded in a fast-changing war environment.
On 4 December 4 2013, as the crew headed for an interview with a top Nusra Front figure, their car was stopped. Yasser was shot multiple times with a Kalashnikov, his body left in the road. Yasser’s killers remain unknown.
In this film, we discover Yasser the journalist and the man, from moving accounts of those who knew him best professionally. But his unique footage, later smuggled out of Syria by friends and colleagues, stands here as the greatest testament.
Syria, The Last Assignment, airs on Al Jazeera English on 6 December at 20.00GMT and later available to view at www.aljazeera.com/syriathelastassignment.
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