Now Al Jazeera is a voice for terrorists, former reporter says
Al Jazeera journalist says the network coordinates and takes direction from Qatar
Mohammad Fahmy is the last person one would expect to make the case against Al Jazeera.
In 2014, the former Cairo bureau chief for the Qatar-funded television network began a 438-day sentence in an Egyptian prison on terrorism charges and practicing unlicensed journalism. His incarceration made Al Jazeera confront Egypt’s military.
Today Fahmy is preparing a lawsuit against his former employers. And while he is still highly critical of the regime that imprisoned him, he also says the Egyptian government is correct in saying Al Jazeera is really a propaganda channel for Islamists and an arm of Qatari foreign policy.
A mouthpiece now
“The more the network coordinates and takes directions from the government, the more it becomes a mouthpiece for Qatari intelligence,” he said in an interview on Thursday. “There are many channels who are biased, but this is past bias. Now Al Jazeera terrorists.”
Fahmy’s testimony is particularly important now. Al Jazeera is at the centre of a crisis ripping apart the Arab Gulf states. Earlier this month Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain cut all political and diplomatic ties with Qatar. As part of that boycott, Al Jazeera has been kicked out of those countries.
The treatment of Al Jazeera as an arm of the Qatari state as opposed to a news organisation does not sit well with many in the West. In some this is understandable. Al Jazeera’s Englishlanguage broadcasts certainly veer politically to the left. At times the channel has sucked up to police states. The channel embarrassed itself with such fluff as a recent sycophantic feature on female traffic cops in North Korea.
But Al Jazeera English has also broken some important stories. It worked with Human Rights Watch to uncover documents mapping out the links between Libyan intelligence under Muammar Gaddafi and the British and US governments.
Al Jazeera’s Arabic broadcasts, however, have not met these same standards in recent years. To start with, the network still airs a weekly talk is a voice for show from Muslim Brotherhood theologian Yousuf Al Qaradawi. He has used his platform to argue that Islamic law justifies suicide attacks.
US military leaders, such as retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who commanded forces in the initial campaign to stabilise Iraq, have said publicly that Al Jazeera reporters appeared to have advance knowledge of terrorist attacks. Fahmy told me that in his research he has learnt that instructions were given to journalists not to refer to Al Qaida’s affiliate in Syria, Al Nusra, as a terrorist organisation.
He said Qatar’s neighbours were justified in banning Al Jazeera. “Al Jazeera has breached the true meaning of press freedom that I advocate and respect by sponsoring these voices of terror like Yousuf Al Qaradawi,” he said. “If Al Jazeera continues to do that, they are directly responsible for many of these lone wolves, many of these youth that are brainwashed.”
Eye-opener
Fahmy didn’t always have this opinion of his former employer. He began to change his views while serving time. It started in the “scorpion block” of Egypt’s Tora prison. During his stay, he came to know some of Egypt’s most notorious Islamists.
“When I started meeting and interviewing members of the Muslim Brotherhood and their sympathisers, they specifically told me they had been filming protests and selling it to Al Jazeera and dealing fluidly with the network and production companies in Egypt associated with the network,” he said.
One example of Al Jazeera’s coordination with the Muslim Brotherhood revolves around Muslim Brotherhood sit-ins in the summer of 2013, following the uprising that unseated Mohammad Mursi, the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated president. As part of Fahmy’s case against Al Jazeera, he took testimony from a former security guard for the network and the head of the board of trustees for Egyptian state television.
Both testified that members of the Muslim Brotherhood seized the broadcast truck Al Jazeera used to air the sit-ins that summer.
That incident happened in the weeks before Fahmy was hired to be the network’s Cairo bureau chief. When Fahmy learnt of these arrangements, he said, he became angry. It undermined his case before the Egyptian courts that he was unaffiliated with any political party or terrorist groups inside Egypt. “To me this is a big deal, this is not acceptable,” he said. “It put me in danger because it’s up to me to convince the judge that I was just doing journalism.”
Former Al Jazeera reporter
Taking Al Jazeera to court
Fahmy was released from prison in 2015, but not because Al Jazeera’s lawyers made a good case for him. Rather, it was the work of human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, who eventually got him safely out of the country to Canada.
Now Fahmy is turning his attention to Al Jazeera. He is pressing a court in British Columbia to hear his case in January against the network, from whom he is seeking $100 million in damages for breach of contract, misrepresentation and negligence.
Fahmy’s case is one more piece of evidence that the Al Jazeera seen by English-speaking audiences is not the Al Jazeera seen throughout the Muslim world. It’s one more piece of evidence that Qatar’s foreign policy is a double game.