MIDDLE EAST: The jailing for seven years of Taysir Alluni, an al-Jazeera foreign correspondent found guilty in a Madrid court on Monday of collaborating with al-Qaeda, has drawn sharp reactions from organisations concerned about journalists operating in war zones.
Alluni (50), a Syrian-born journalist who holds Spanish citizenship, was the first correspondent to interview Osama bin Laden after the September 11th, 2001, attacks on the US. His reporting from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan had made him a household name in the Arab world. Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based broadcaster, regarded him as its chief analyst on Islamist terror groups.
Alluni was convicted of helping to finance al-Qaeda by knowingly acting as a courier for the terrorist group under cover of his reporting assignments in Afghanistan. He was acquitted on another charge of forming a terrorist cell in Granada, where he lives.
Reporters without Borders, a Paris-based press freedom organisation, has said the Spanish prosecutor's frequent references to Alluni's interview with bin Laden "makes it impossible to rule out a link with the defendant's job as a journalist and therefore with freedom of expression". It said: "If it had only been a case of terrorism, the prosecutor should never have used this interview as part of the accusations."
The collaboration charge rested on $4,500 (€3,700) Alluni took to a family of Syrian exiles in Afghanistan. The prosecutor alleged the family were al-Qaeda operatives but made no effort to contact them.
Alluni said he took the money "for humanitarian reasons" and denied the recipients were linked to terrorists. Throughout the trial, he defended his innocence, saying his contacts with al-Qaeda were strictly professional.
"Taysir will appeal and al-Jazeera will stand by him to the very end. We will take his case to the highest court in Europe," Ahmed Sheikh, al-Jazeera's editor-in-chief, said.
"The verdict has deep implications for all journalists. It curtails freedom of speech and the freedom of journalists to do our jobs. From the moment the world was divided into two camps - an axis of evil and an axis of good - our job became more complicated. As journalists, we have to talk to both camps."
Alluni's world exclusive with bin Laden became part of the prosecution's case against the reporter. "You look as though you were interviewing your boss," Pedro Rubira, state prosecutor, told Alluni.
Mr Rubira said it was "suspicious" that al-Jazeera had chosen to send Alluni to Afghanistan. - (Financial Times Service)