Posted on 09/06/2003 5:30:25 PM PDT by Ranger
DOHA, 6 September 2003 — Arabic television channel Al-Jazeera said yesterday that Spanish police had arrested one of its most renowned war correspondents on charges of belonging to Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network.
Al-Jazeera said police detained Tayseer Alouni, who shot to fame in the Arab world covering the US-led war on Afghanistan and then the Iraq war, at his home in Granada in southern Spain.
It said Alouni and his wife were Spanish citizens.
Spanish police sources confirmed they had arrested Alouni.
“Alouni has been arrested in Granada... in principle for connections with Islamic terrorist organizations,” one source told Reuters, but gave no further details.
The source said Alouni had been arrested on the orders of Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon, best known for an unsuccessful bid to put former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet on trial.
Alouni’s wife, who was not named, told Al-Jazeera in an interview that a Spanish police warrant had charged her husband with having links to an Al-Qaeda cell that was busted in the country.
“Police in civilian clothes came to our door with a warrant to search the house and to arrest Tayseer because he was a member of Al-Qaeda,” she said. “I don’t know where they took him; Madrid I assume.”
Alouni is renowned for covering the fall of Afghanistan’s Taleban rulers for Al-Jazeera, which made its name by airing statements by Bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda members after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
He was one of a few international correspondents allowed to operate under the Taleban and his close ties to that now defunct Afghan government raised questions about his objectivity and Al-Jazeera’s coverage.
Meanwhile, the FBI issued a bulletin yesterday announcing a worldwide search for four men in connection with possible terrorist threats against the United States.
The FBI posted the bulletin on its website and circulated it among law enforcement agencies after recent intelligence indicated the four could be involved in an unspecified plot against US interests, said a law enforcement official.
The FBI had been seeking information about all four for months, but the new intelligence led officials to intensify the search, said a second official.
None of the four is believed to be in the United States.
The men being sought are Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, 28; Karim El Mejjati, 35, who holds a French passport and last entered the United States between 1997 and 1999; Zubayr Al-Rimi, 29, and Abderraouf Jdey, 38.
Officials have previously described El Shukrijumah as a possible Al-Qaeda operational planner similar to Mohamed Atta, a key organizer of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Jdey was among five men who left suicide messages on videotapes recovered in Afghanistan at the home of an Al-Qaeda man killed in a US attack.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.