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Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Al-Jazeera chooses not to air video of the Toulouse shootings.

BBC reports:
[Mohamed] Merah filmed himself killing seven people, including Jewish children and unarmed soldiers, before he was shot dead after a 32-hour siege last week....
Someone mailed al Jazeera a USB memory stick with edited footage and a note claiming the attacks were committed in the name of al Quaeda. Since the postmark shows it was sent after Merah was under siege and from outside of Toulouse, it indicates that Merah had at least one accomplice. Whoever prepared the video combined footage of all 7 shootings with music and Islamic verse.

Al-Jazeera explained its policy:
"Given its contents, we immediately passed the video on to the French police as we were duty-bound to do and they are conducting their investigation. In accordance with al-Jazeera's code of ethics, given the video does not add any information that is not already in the public domain, its news channels will not be broadcasting any of its contents."

..."You hear the voice of the person who carried out the killings," [al-Jazeera Paris bureau chief Zied] Tarrouche told French channel BFM TV. "You also hear the victims' cries. My feelings are those of any human being who sees horrible things."

Mr Tarrouche said he had to weigh up the "risks and the consequences" of airing the video, but he added: "We are not a sensational network."
I hope that is indeed their policy. I suspect that there are also fears of legal consequences. This is al-Jazeera in France, where presumably there is law enforcement against those who are in a conspiracy with murder and who serve as accomplices after the fact.

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