Mustapha Karkouti (October 3, 1943 – July 16, 2020) was a Syrian freelance journalist and media consultant, residing in London since the early 1970s.

Personal and career background

He was born in

Latakia , coordinates = , elevation_footnotes = , elevation_m = 11 , elevation_ft = , postal_code_type = , postal_code = , area_code = Country code: 963 City code: 41 , geocode ...

in northern

Syria Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...

. He started as an agency journalist in the 1960s and went on to be a founding member of the Lebanese daily newspaper ''

As-Safir ''As-Safir'' ( ar, السفير, lit=The Ambassador), was a leading Arabic-language daily newspaper in Lebanon. The headquarters of the daily was in Beirut. It was in circulation from March 1974 until December 2016. The last issue of the paper wa ...

''. As its foreign correspondent he was sent to London in the early 1970s where he met his wife in 1977. They were married in 1978. In 1993 he was elected President of the Foreign Press Association in London. Karkouti was a founding member of the Arab-US Forum, and an elected member of Chatham House Council. He was a frequent guest on TV and radio talk shows, such as BBC News's '' Dateline London''.

Iranian Embassy siege

Whilst arranging a trip to Tehran, he was taken hostage in the 1980 Iranian Embassy siege in London. The hostage-takers, who were primarily Arab, used him to communicate with the police and other hostages. He was released before the British

Special Air Service The Special Air Service (SAS) is a special forces unit of the British Army. It was founded as a regiment in 1941 by David Stirling and in 1950, it was reconstituted as a corps. The unit specialises in a number of roles including counter-terro ...

(SAS) stormed the embassy.The National, 16 October 2008: ''Still a hostage, but no longer afraid''
Retrieved 2011-11-06 Karkouti was portrayed by

Michael Denkha Michael Denkha is an Assyrian-Australian actor known for his roles in ''Get Rich Quick'', ''Stealth'', ''The Combination'', ''Down Under'' and, most recently, ''Here Come the Habibs'' TV series. Biography Born in Tehran Iran, Denkha moved to ...

in the 2017 film about the embassy siege, '' 6 Days''.

References

Syrian journalists 1943 births 2020 deaths Council and directors of Chatham House Syrian expatriates in the United Kingdom People from Latakia {{Syria-journalist-stub