Strange and stranger ... The narrative from the two kidnap victims

Some things just don't make much sense.  The two guys who were captured by a group of  America's foot soldiers in Syria, seem to tell almost the same story but with one difference.  The Belgian teacher/journalist  says he "knows" that Assad was not responsible for the August 21 CW attack because he heard his captors saying so when they were conversing in English with someone on Skype.   Whereas;  the Italian war journalist says “It is madness to say I knew it wasn’t Assad who used gas”.  Is he mad at the other kidnap victim for having included him in the statement he gave or is he suffering from some kind of ailment akin to Stockholm syndrome? Or is this a case of a journalist at La Stampa not knowing which way to lean with the telling of the kidnap tale?  Europeans!!

From LaStampa:
La Stampa’s veteran war correspondent was released Sunday after being kidnapped in Syria in early April.
“It’s madness to say I knew it wasn’t Assad who used gas,” Quirico said after hearing about a statement made by Pierre Piccinin - the Belgian teacher who was also kidnapped in Syria - and the interpretations that are being given. 

“We heard some people we didn’t know talking through a half-closed door. It’s impossible to know whether what was said was based on real fact or just hearsay,” says La Stampa’s veteran war correspondent Domenico Quirico, who was released Sunday after being kidnapped in Syria in early April. 
.....“During our kidnapping, we were kept completely in the dark about what was going on in Syria, including the gas attacks in Damascus”, Quirico said. “But one day, we heard a Skype conversation in English between three people whose names I do not know. We heard the conversation from the room in which we were being held captive, through a half-closed door. One of them had previously presented himself to us as a general of the Syrian Liberation Army. The other two we had never seen and knew nothing about”. 

“During the Skype conversation, they said that the gas attack on the two neighbourhoods in Damascus had been carried out by rebels as a provocation, to push the West towards a military intervention. They also said they believed the death toll had been exaggerated,” Quirico said in his statement.  

“I don’t know if any of this is true and I cannot say for sure that it is true because I have no means of confirming the truth of what was said. I don’t know how reliable this information is and cannot confirm the identity of these people. I am in no position to say for sure whether this conversation is based on real fact or just hearsay and I don’t usually call conversations I have heard through a door, true,” Quirico said. 

“You must bear in mind the conditions in which we were; we were prisoners and heard things through doors. I have nothing to judge whether the things that were said are true or not. I am used to checking my facts before I speak and confirm something as true. In this case I was unable to check anything. It is madness to say I knew it wasn’t Assad who used gas,” Quirico added. .....


Umberto Bacchi writing at Intl.Business
...A Belgian writer held hostage for five months in Syria has said that his own rebel captors denied that President Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the Ghouta massacre.
Pierre Piccinin said that he and fellow hostage Domenico Quirico, an Italian war reporter, heard their jailers talking about the chemical weapon attack and saying that Assad was not to blame.
Piccinin said the captives became desperate when they heard that the US was planning to launch a punitive attack against the regime over the gas attack in the Damascus suburb....
...."It wasn't the government of Bashar al-Assad that used sarin gas or any other gas in Ghouta," Piccinin told Belgian RTL radio after he was released.

"We are sure about this because we overheard a conversation between rebels. It pains me to say it because I've been a fierce supporter of the Free Syrian Army in its rightful fight for democracy since 2012," Piccinin added.

"We were prisoners, stuck with this information and unable to report it," he said......