Untitled Document
The family of an Al Jazeera reporter killed during a US bombing in
Iraq in 2003 will sue President Bush, RAW
STORY has learned.
Tareq Ayyoub, a reporter for Al Jazeera, was killed on April 8, 2003,
during a strike of the building in which the Arab-language TV station was housed.
Ayyoub was on the roof of the building for a live broadcast. The Pentagon claimed
that the attack had been an accident, having fired after it had detected hostile
fire from the building. The incident was featured in the 2004 film Control Room,
a documentary about the TV network.
Hamid Rifai, a New Jersey-based attorney for Ayyoub's family, will bring the
case to court tomorrow. The lawsuit was spurred on by the revelation in the
UK newspaper The
Mirror in November 2005 of a British government memorandum reporting that
Bush expressed a desire to bomb Al Jazeera's world headquarters in Doha, Qatar.
In a statement issued by Rifai's law firm, he said "Specifically, by falsely
claiming National Security concerns and creating Orwellian designations that
contradict existing law the administration has prevented the truth from being
disclosed to the American public. In this case the administration has decided
that since admissions of guilt had been made in the meeting between Bush and
Blair that any record of such discussion had to be sealed because of national
security concerns. The No. 10 memo as it has now come to be known clearly discloses
the truth of Bush's vindictive personal agenda to act contrary to accepted standards
and law."
Ayyoub was survived by his wife, Dima, and his daughter, Fatima, who are the
plaintiffs in the case.
The law firm's release is available here.
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Read from Looking Glass News
Memo:
Bush wanted Aljazeera bombed
UK
gags paper over Aljazeera memo
Why
Journalists Are Being Murdered In Iraq
Reuters
Claims US Military to Blame for Killing of Reporters: Not Reported in US Media
Another
Reuters Staffer Killed by U.S. Forces in Iraq
Federation
of Journalists accuses US over killing Al-Jazeera reporter
Jailing
Iraqi Journalists: The Pentagon is silent as U.S. military imprisons local journalists
Yes,
We Murder Journalists
Journalist
killed after investigating US-backed death squads in Iraq
CPJ:
47 Journalists Killed in '05, Including 22 in Iraq
111
Iraqi Journalists killed in Iraq Under Occupation
More
journalists killed in Iraq than Vietnam -RSF
US
refuses to allow evacuation of Al-Arabiya's wounded reporter
