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From
ABC News Online
http://www.abc.net.au/fly
Iraqi spies infiltrated
Al-Jazeera news channel: report
May 12, 2003
Iraqi intelligence agents
infiltrated the Arabic satellite news channel Al-Jazeera in an effort to influence
its coverage, the Sunday Times reports, quoting documents allegedly obtained in
Baghdad.
In response to the claims,
the Qatar-based station denies that its coverage of Iraq was biased and says it
was unaware of any wrongdoing by its staff. The report could not be independently
verified.
The Sunday Times says
its journalists had been given access to some of the files by the Iraqi National
Congress (INC), the long-time opponents of Saddam Hussein's ousted regime.
The INC says it had retrieved
the documents, which cover a period from August 1999 to November 2002, from a
local office of the Iraqi intelligence service in Baghdad after US-led forces
toppled the Iraqi regime last month. "Senior officers of Iraq's intelligence agency
controlled three agents who worked at the Al-Jazeera network, say the files,"
the Sunday Times reported.
"Their detailed reports
also refer to the Qatar-based news network as an 'instrument' of the regime. "They
claim the channel was used to 'foil' American aggression and outline the secret
contacts between Al-Jazeera's staff and Saddam's intelligence network." It says
one of the files contained a registration document for "Iraqi or foreign secret
co-operatives".
It also names an Iraqi
employee at Al-Jazeera's headquarters in Doha who is alleged to have provided
the Iraqi regime with two letters written by Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden,
according to the Sunday Times.
Al-Jazeera, which has
emerged as a rival to international media giants but whose no-holds-barred coverage
has also sparked rows between Qatar and several Arab governments, denied it was
influenced by Saddam's regime.
The station's editor-in-chief,
Ibrahim Hilal, told Britain's Channel 4 News that it was highly unlikely Iraqi
agents were working at Al-Jazeera. But he added: "You can never guarantee that
any person working in a newsroom cannot be an intelligence agent."
The station also pointed
out that one of its journalists was expelled from Iraq by Saddam's regime last
month.
The network's communications
director Jihad Ballout told the Sunday Times that no "allegation affects Al-Jazeera's
adherence to its core values, especially its determination to provide all sides
with a platform".
ENDS
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