NBC's Richard Engel Says Captors Were Assad Loyalists

At the Wall Street Journal, "Freed Reporter Links Captors to Assad":

BEIRUT—Richard Engel, the NBC News foreign correspondent freed with colleagues Monday after five days of captivity in Syria, on Tuesday said he believed his kidnappers were Shiite militiamen loyal to President Bashar al-Assad who planned to exchange the U.S. news team for prisoners held by the rebels.

NBC said on Tuesday that Mr. Engel and his production team returned unharmed to Turkey, from where they had crossed into northwestern Syria on Thursday.

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