| Submit your comments on this article |
| Arabia |
| Saudi Arabia bans Arab newspaper after report on Al Qaeda in Iraq |
| 2007-08-29 |
| Saudi Arabia has indefinitely banned the distribution of a leading Arab newspaper, days after the paper disclosed that a Saudi extremist had played a key role in a violent Iraqi Al Qaeda front group. One of the kingdom's most influential journalists immediately criticized the ban, calling it a sharp retreat from recent growing press freedoms. It was unclear if the Iraqi article was the main impetus for the ban, or merely the culmination of several weeks of disputes, mostly on other issues, between the Al Hayat newspaper and the kingdom's information minister. Saudi officials are sensitive to criticism that extremists from the kingdom are making their way to Iraq to fight against the Shiite-led government there, although in recent months, top Saudi officials have acknowledged the problem. Saudi officials also bristle at Western criticism that they tolerate clerics in Saudi's strict Wahhabi strain of Sunni Islam who promote extremism. The Al Hayat article laid out ties between the extremist in Iraq and some Saudi clerics. However, a journalist close to the newspaper in Riyadh said the Iraqi article, which appeared in Monday's editions, was just one in a series of disputes with the government. In recent months, Al Hayat's Saudi office had received several warnings from the country's Information Minister, Iyad Madani, about writings by its columnists, especially one often critical of government inefficiency, said the journalist. |
| Posted by:Seafarious |
| #4 They pretend to report The News, and we pretend to believe them. |
| Posted by: Skunky Glins5285 2007-08-29 20:09 |
| #3 Thanks to George Bush, it is getting harder and harder to keep outside news away from the public in the ME. At first such information is an amusing oddity to the public, with little credibility, because it disagrees with the official line. However, over time, they start noticing its accuracy, as government media tends to lie even when it doesn't have to, and is easy to catch out in those lies. Eventually, good quality information pushes out the lies, and the regimes lose control over what the public learns. Which is seldom good for their hold on power. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-08-29 14:51 |
| #2 There is no freedom of religious conscience in the Saud terror entity; freedom of the press hardly flows out of that environment. |
| Posted by: Cluck Lumumba9925 2007-08-29 14:06 |
| #1 Heaven forbid the truth be known. So much similarity of approach between the muzz and the left... |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2007-08-29 13:02 |