My appologies to Bruno for getting this thread so Off-Topic from his original post..

Quote:
Do you have any evidence of that fact? I've never heard it before


I'm digging through old news articles because most of this is about a year old.

This is from the Arabic newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, around Nov. 24th of 2004:
Quote:
Iraqi security investigators have revealed that Al-Zarkawi’s right hand man Omar Hadid was a member of Sadam Hussein’s personal body-guards unit. Omar Hadid later joined Al Qaeda and was trained in Al Qaeda’s Afghanistan camps. Omar is the brother of the manager of the Baghdad office of Al-Jazeera news channel, which was closed three month ago.

The investigators also revealed that Omar led the terrorists in their fight for Felujah against the U.S. and Iraqi forces. Further, they suspect that he is still in Felujah. They also said that he had left Saddam’s service about 10 years ago to join Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Omar then left Afghanistan for Pakistan after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Omar then returned to Iraq shortly before the war.

The sources also confirmed that Omar is the brother of Hamid Hadid the manager of Al-Jazeera news Channel office in Iraq. The Al-Jazeera office in Baghdad was closed three months ago because of their biased broadcasting, and inciting violence in the land. Omar’s second brother was killed with the rest of his family during an air attack on their house. This attack took place two hours after Omar visited his second brother’s home. We later tried to contact Hamid Hadid in Baghdad and Doha (Qatar’s capital) to confirm this information but to no avail.


I found references to a May 11, 2003 article of a mob of Iraqis attacking an Al-Jazeera truck because they accused them of supporting the fallen regime and the insugency, but the article is no longer available at the Guardian UK site.

A July 25th, 2004 story from CNN reporting Iraqi authorities considering banning Al-Jazeera from Iraq because of their suspected ties to the bombings is also showing a "file not found". I guess Al-Jazeera WAS banned in January of 2004, but that was only for broadcasting content that was considered "counter productive" to the US installed government. At the very least, they were accused to citing violence in the country in all of the reports later that year.

A more recent story (though not what I was referring to) on the BBC about Al-Jazeera ties to Al-Qaeda. Actually, the story dates back to 2001.

Still searching... the London bombings keep coming up as a more recent story.

///EDIT: (This part was writen while Bitt was posting his... didn't read his till after and he didn't read mine until after this was posted:)

Either way, they were merely accusations so I don't know how much hard proof there will be. The Iraqis at least thought so. But regardless, it's interesting that the CRTC saw Fox News as a thread and saw no problem with Al-Jazeera. For the record, I don't think any stations in Canada actually carry Al-Jazeera yet. The CRTC, last I read, was going to let stations carry it, but put various restrictions on it and said the cable companies would be responsible to make sure they're enforced. I guess it wasn't worth the trouble for the cable companies.


Edited by SE_Sport_Driver (24/09/2005 15:49)
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Brad B.