Adham Center News

Reports From the Front

The Adham Center for Television Journalism kicked off its new series of occasional talks by visiting correspondents with an address on 2 October by Al Jazeera's London deputy executive director and Adham Center alumni Yosri Fouda ('92). The center's director, Abdallah Schleifer, told an audience in the Oriental Hall of the American University in Cairo that the open lectures, under the general title "Special Reports from the Front," will invite correspondents of international news organizations to present their accounts of covering significant events. "They will provide perspectives on sensitive areas not available to the local press," Schleifer said.

Schleifer gave a warm welcome to Fouda, a seasoned correspondent who has been with Al Jazeera since from its inception. Fouda moved to London in 1994 and joined the BBC Arabic Service's new TV station. When the station closed down after only two years, Fouda moved on to the London headquarters of Associated Press TV, and in 1997 he helped open Al Jazeera's London office, where he is chief of bureau.

Fouda was delighted to be invited to speak at AUC. "It feels so good to come back to where I started to learn the very basics of TV journalism, at the Adham Center," he said, before inviting the audience to a show of hands in response to the question, "How many of you believe Al-Qaeda was behind 9/11?"

The raised hands indicated that the 'yes' vote slightly outnumbered the 'confused', while there were very few who did not hold Al-Qaeda responsible for the attacks. Fouda has no doubt who perpetrated the "crime," as he carefully termed it. The main topic of his talk was his famous meeting with members of Al-Qaeda's top command in Pakistan. One of the first things he was told at the meeting in April 2002 was that Osama Bin Laden had put forward his name - together with The Independent's Robert Fisk who, Bin Laden suggested, should interview his wife, Umm Abdallah. "I was too flattered not to believe it," Fouda said.

The summons, which came through to London on Fouda's mobile phone, was followed by a dossier that Al-Qaeda faxed to him outlining its own point of view. "Once I had made the decision to go I wasn't scared but just got on with it," Fouda, who has made a name for himself as an investigative journalist for Al Jazeera, told AdhamOnline.

On Al-Qaeda's instructions Fouda flew via Islamabad to Karachi from where he was taken blindfolded for a two-day interview with Ramzi bin Al-Sheeba, head of Al-Qaeda's military committee and a former roommate of Mohammed Ata, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Al-Qaeda operations chief for the 9/11 attack.

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"He waited until they found enough people of the caliber of Mohamed Ata," Fouda said.
Al-Qaeda revealed how Ata had planned every detail of the attacks, choreographing the routes and movements of the highjackers, where they stayed, and how much they knew. Were they bluffing, he asked himself? "You can't always trust your instincts as a journalist," Fouda said. "You have to go deeper.

"I was not worried about the immediate danger but the dangers I might have to live with for the rest of my life once the story was out. I was more worried about the program than about the 48 hours with those guys."

But he quickly saw the strength of his position. "Five minutes into the interview I realized I was in a win-win situation. The Americans were trying to convince the world it was Al-Qaeda who did it, and these guys were wanting to admit it. I thought, 'OK, let's start rolling'."

Fouda still didn't know if they were pretending. As if to convince him, they began to mention checkable facts. They spoke of specific e-mails and phone calls. "And I have no doubt someone called Bill Gates and these were checked out after the program. They knew these things would be checked," Fouda said.

He had to "stay with them, eat with them, pray with them." This gave him a certain short, shared intimacy with the Al-Qaeda commanders. Nevertheless, he was careful not to shed his professionalism. He asked himself what he would do if information were revealed to him about an attack on a civilian target. He would report it, he said. But if it the target were to be a military one? "As a journalist I don't think I would ever find myself in the position of doing someone's else's job."

Fouda drew comparisons between himself and Ata - whom he described as a "frustrated intellectual" who up to the last minute "drank and had a girlfriend" - that gave him cause for reflection. "Ata was born 30 to 40 kilometers from where I was born. He came to Cairo, like I did. He joined AUC to do an English course. He went to London. There are so many similarities between him and me. It frightens me."

But at the same time he tries to keep his personal views under wraps. "I try to look at this from a detective's point of view," he said. "I don't make judgments. What should worry us is the Western way of handling it. How they are trying to find the perpetrators of this crime - and it is a crime." Fouda said Muslims abroad should not be demonized. Hostility was not always spoken aloud, but felt. "Many people believe there is an inevitability about the clash between East and West," but not Fouda. "Islam complements Christianity," he says. "Civilizations are built on one another. This is the nature of human integration." Only extremists on both sides can profit from an idea like this, he said.

Fouda was conscious that his role as an independent investigator might be misinterpreted. "It did cross my mind that the safe house [where the meeting took place] might be raided and I'd end up in Guantanamo Bay. There's always a risk. You're more useful to your audience if you take a risk." As for the conspiracy theorists who think 9/ll was masterminded by the US, or by Israel, or that they knew about it but let it happen, Fouda is skeptical. "Maybe long years will pass before we know the whole picture, but I have no doubt that Al-Qaeda was behind it. Whether or not it was preventable I have no idea. This is the question that needs more clarification."

Since Fouda's coup for Al Jazeera, new TV stations have started up in the Arab world. But he welcomes the competition. "I always wished there would be another Al Jazeera. Having no competition leads to complacency. Al-Arabiya is a serious competitor. This can be very good news, and not only for the Arab World but for Al Jazeera too. They've done us a great favor. Now when they criticize Al-Arabiya we can say, 'We're not the only one'."

Living in London gives Fouda a clear view of how attitudes differ across the globe. He understands why a few people, "especially in our part of the world," believe in a conspiracy. "In the US administration is a small right-wing group trying to capitalize on this. We are still very much in the dark, all of us. But I was lucky. Because I was invited to meet these guys, I know it was Al-Qaeda."

And Bin Laden? "He must be looking at every day as a victory. That will be his ultimate goal now. That is, if you believe he's still alive."

By Jenny Jobbins