The pan-Arab satellite television station Al-Jazeera rallies support for its one-time reporter in spite of Spain's refusal to let him off the hook, reports Mustafa El-Menshawy Fatma Al-Zahra described 's state of health thus: "My husband was denied access to medical treatment despite serious heart complications and back pains." His health problems "were aggravated by 119 days of solitary confinement in a small freezing cell," she told Al-Ahram Weekly. Al-Jazeera reporter Allouni shot to world fame for conducting an exclusive interview with Al- Qaeda leader and Saudi dissident Osama Bin Laden in October 2001. He later filed ground- breaking reports from Afghanistan. In November 2004, Allouni was arrested by Spanish police on accusations of being a member of Al-Qaeda. He vehemently denied the charges, which prompted a large-scale international campaign to appeal for his release. Khaled Al-Sufyani, a leading lawyer for the International Committee for Defending , said that building a judicial argument on these accusations of terrorist links is basically invalid. "The case lacks the two main conditions necessary to indict Allouni -- that he has organisational links with terrorist groups or adopts any of their principles," Al-Sufyani told the Weekly. The claims are based on tapped phone calls Allouni had made with people later found to be suspected members of Al-Qaeda. He is accused of relaying secret messages to Al-Qaeda operatives in Europe and belonging to the same Syrian cell as Emadeddin Barakat, alias Abu Dahdah, who is being held in Spain on suspicion of being involved in the 9/11 attacks. But Allouni's defence team said the accusations are based on an incorrect translation of the tapes' content which is in Syrian dialect. "My relation with Abu Dahdah or other suspects in the case was superficial and not dissimilar to that linking any member of the Syrian community in Spain," Allouni told the Weekly from his house in Granada after he was put under house arrest last week. Allouni, a Spanish national, was first detained by Spanish authorities in September 2003 on claims of helping operatives from Al-Qaeda before and after the United States offensive on Afghanistan, in 2001. He was released one month later, only to be re-arrested in November last year, for fears he might flee the country while awaiting trial. Allouni had been working as a reporter in Afghanistan for Al-Jazeera since 1999. Last week, he was released and placed under house arrest pending trial due to his poor state of health. Allouni had long been under suspicion. Before fleeing to Spain as an asylum refugee in 1983, Allouni was member of the banned Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. In Afghanistan, he conducted interviews with Taliban leaders and exclusively covered the US-led offensive in 2001. During that time Al-Jazeera was pushed to the top of the international satellite chart, with some referring to it as the "CNN of the Middle East". However, Washington accused Al-Jazeera of biased reports and Allouni himself of suspicious links with the very terrorist suspects it had deployed forces in Afghanistan to crush. The accusation constituted part of the pressures long heaped on the channel since its launch in 1996. In 2004 alone, the pan-Arab satellite channel was harshly criticised by Saudi Arabia and the US, and was censored in Algeria, Iran and Tunisia. Canada also placed restrictions on its broadcast. By 7 August its Baghdad bureau was banned from operating. India had earlier asked an Al-Jazeera correspondent to leave the country in protest against his coverage of sectarian violence. In Spain, authorities see Allouni as a key collaborator with suspected terrorists. "I think there are signs that indicate that this person [Allouni] is very closely linked with militant groups, people who think they have a mission in life to fight against what they consider as corrupt, anti- Islamic and apostate regimes as well as their Western backers," Gustavo De Aristegi, Spanish foreign affairs spokesman, told BBC's "Newsnight" after Allouni's arrest in September 2003. However, the campaign for releasing Allouni has continued unabated. Sit-ins outside Spanish embassies took place and protests were organised by Arab journalist unions. Websites were launched making the case for his release. Al- Jazeera itself joined the fray, beaming day-by- day coverage of news on Allouni and demonstrating solidarity with him throughout. "We have no doubts about Allouni's ill-health, and are pretty sure that his detention under such tough conditions came due to pressures from the pro-American politicians in Spain," Haitham Al- Mannar, head of the Paris-based Arab Organisation for Human rights told the Weekly. Spain has been a key member in the US-led coalition in the "war on terrorism", especially after the 11 March, 2004 attacks in Madrid were blamed on Arab immigrants. Although Washington was upset by the Spanish decision to withdraw troops from Iraq, it reportedly kept pressuring Madrid into more cooperation on terrorism. Other supporters have said Allouni is no more than a scapegoat in a battle of score-settling between Al-Jazeera and the US. "Washington took a world renowned controversial figure such as Allouni for indictment to prove the channel's links to terrorism -- a move which could justify a potential closure of the channel for harbouring 'terrorist' reporters," said a source close to Al-Jazeera. The source said the channel had stopped short of running videotapes of Iraqi resistance fighters vowing attacks against US occupation forces. Banning the videotapes was a key request repeatedly made by Washington, which accused the station of helping terrorists in Iraq and increasing anti-American sentiments in the region. Al-Jazeera boasts a daily viewing figure of between 355-400 million worldwide. "We all know the arrest of Allouni took place in the context of American pressures on Al- Jazeera to force it to divert from its policy which is perceived to be harmful to American hegemony," said the FreeTayseer.com, a website dedicated to Allouni's defence. However, it was evidently clear that the reaction to Allouni's detention was timid in the Arab region, at least at the official level. Many took the accusations seriously, having already expressed their reservations with the channel. "There is a thin line between objective reporting and sympathetic reporting. Whether Allouni crossed that line in his coverage in Afghanistan in 2001 remains a possibility," professor Abdallah Schleifer, the head of the Cairo-based Adham Centre for Television Journalism in Cairo, told the Weekly. "Allouni was in Afghanistan, holding meetings with members of Taliban. Besides, he clearly sympathised with the Taliban. While that does not make him guilty of being a member of Taliban or Al-Qaeda, it does make him an object of suspicion," said Schleifer, who worked as a consultant to Al-Jazeera. Allouni is the second Al-Jazeera employee to be accused of terrorism links. Cameraman Sami Al-Haj, a Sudanese national who was sent to cover the US military operation in Afghanistan, has been held since the start of 2002 at Guantanamo Bay -- where 600 people are held on suspicion of links with Al-Qaeda. Al-Jazeera says Al-Haj had lost his passport in 2000 and that it may have been fraudulently used by other people. If anything, the campaign to set Allouni free is gaining momentum, with the number of people believing in his innocence steadily rising since his arrest. Some 63,000 users enter the website of the committee acting in Allouni's defence every day. Some 8,000 of whom have signed a letter of solidarity with him. Allouni faces nine years in jail if convicted in a trial Spanish judicial sources said would be held "soon". Additional reporting by Serene Assir
