Emir’s praise for terror groups started it all

In the early hours of May 24, 2017, a news story appeared on the website of Qatar’s official news agency, QNA, reporting that the country’s emir, Shaikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani, had made an astonishing speech.

The emir was quoted praising Islamist groups Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood and perhaps most controversially of all, Iran, Saudi Arabia’s regional rival.

But the story soon disappeared from the QNA website, and Qatar’s foreign ministry issued a statement denying the speech had ever taken place.

Qatar claimed that QNA had been hacked but never produced any evidence to support their claim.

Within minutes, Saudi and UAE-owned TV networks — Al Arabiya and Sky News Arabia — picked up the emir’s comments.

Both networks accused Qatar of funding extremist groups and of destabilising the region.

US President Donald Trump welcomed the move in a series of tweets the following day. He said it was evidence of his anti-terror policies in action.

His comments fuelled the propaganda battle that had already begun on Twitter. The platform was flooded with hashtags both for and against Qatar.

On the Qatar side, hashtags “Tamim The Glorious” and “Qatar Is Not Alone” appeared on Twitter’s home page in the Gulf.

However, a BBC Arabic investigation revealed a majority of tweets using these hashtags were pushed by fake accounts known as “bots”.