We won't call it cosmic justice but it does make you wonder: On Wednesday, an Egyptian journalist died on live TV while defending Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime. The bizarre moment occurred on an Iraqi TV station during a heated on-air phone debate between the Egyptian 56-year-old, Adel Al-Gogary, and Brigadier-General Hossama, a member of the Free Syrian Army, who Al-Gogari called a "fugitive soldier" and a paid mercenary for Israel shortly before he died. According to the UAE's daily newspaper al-Bayan, he suffered from a blood clot Wednesday night and was pronounced dead on arrival at a hospital in Cairo. 

It's the sort of situation where sympathies are due for the late journalist's family, who are receiving condolences today in his birthplace city Abu-Suweir. Still, it's hard to pick a worse time to be an Assad defender, as allegations build that his cronies just carried out the worst massacre yet in the 16-month conflict, resulting in the deaths of more than 200 men, women and children near Hama. According to the Pakistani newspaper The News Tribe, al-Gogary wasn't expressing an errant opinion. "Al-Gogari recently appeared on Al-Jazeera Arabic’s controversial programme 'The Opposite Direction', where he vehemently defended the Syrian regime, claiming that what is happening in the war-torn country is 'an international conspiracy' against Al-Assad." The above photo is taken from a previous interview. (Clips of the incident, which occurred on Iraq's al-Hadath private station, don't appear to be circulating on the web). [h/t Max Fisher]

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John Hudson