Syria filmmaker planned his own murder attempt to get ‘media hype’

Leaked videos appears to show Syrian director Mohammed Bayazid plotting his own assassination attempt in Turkey in an effort to create a “media buzz” or hype around his new film.

In the videos Bayazid can be heard saying: “You and I will be the most famous people in the Middle East for 48 hours. There isn’t a channel that won’t be talking about it. The whole world will be talking about it… You are talking about hundreds of thousands of people.”

He goes on to describe what will happen, how once he wakes up from the opperations after the attack he will give police an account of what happened and that’s when the trailor for his latest movie will be released.

“I will say: ‘To be honest I didn’t want to release the trailor but after what happened I want to release it’,” he explained.

Assassination: A tool to suppress dissent in Syria

Bayazid, who has previously been arrested and tortured by the Assad regime in Syria, was stabbed in the chest in Istanbul, Turkey, in mid-October, according to close friends. The news was confirmed by his wife on Facebook.

The attack was described as an assassination attempt as it took place weeks after prominent opposition activist, 60-year-old Dr Orouba Barakat and her 22-year-old journalist daughter Halla, were found murdered in Turkey allegedly by members of Assad’s security forces..

Questions have been asked about whether Bayazid’s wife was aware that the attack was orchestrated and was not an assassination attempt as she had announced.