What’s in the famous France2 Secret Tapes, and why hasn’t France2 released them?
The 20+ minutes of tape that France2 shows to the occasional pre-screened viewer represent (to all appearances) the footage Talal shot just before he took the famous sequence. They end with the three minutes Enderlin made available to journalists. Whether there is more footage that was taken earlier we cannot know yet. Certainly the Reuter’s cameraman took about two hours that day, and for Talal to claim his batteries were dying would imply that he had shot a good deal that day. In the meantime, the earlier footage gives us no specific information on the al Durahs (their presence behind the barrel well before any heavy shooting occurs is visible on the 3 minutes we already have, and on AP and Reuters’ footage (the Reuters’ cameraman is directly behind them not protected by the barrel, apparently not in danger of being shot). What the tapes do show is that aside from boring scenes of rock-throwing and tire burning, Talal filmed one staged scene after another, similar to the work of the
