reports of US snipers firing at women and children in the streets of Falluja have now been corroborated by international observers in the city
As the invasion was getting underway, aljazeera.net was taken offline by a hacker attack mounted from California by John William Racine III. With a maximum tariff of 25 years available, the US attorney's office agreed [to] a sentence of 1,000 hours community service.
Ever since al-Jazeera broadcast videotapes of Osama bin Laden in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Washington has treated it like a fifth column. There have been allegations that intense pressure from the White House led the network to silence some of its more outspoken journalists, such as aljazeera.net's senior website editor, Yvonne Ridley, who was dismissed in November 2003.
In the weeks following 9/11, Colin Powell visited Emir al-Thani, the ruler of Qatar - and financier of al-Jazeera - to request that he rein in his country's free press. The emir went public about Powell's mission and, during the subsequent war in Afghanistan, al-Jazeera's offices in Kabul were bombed - by accident, the Pentagon said.
Sami al-Haj, an al-Jazeera cameraman seized in Afghanistan, remains detained in Guant�namo Bay to this day, and al-Jazeera's journalists in the west have been singled out. After attending the European social forum in Paris, I myself was detained for an hour by British special branch officers at Waterloo station. The questioning focused on my employer. The officers also wanted information about other al-Jazeera journalists in Paris and London, and asked if I would speak to someone in their office on a regular basis about my work contacts. I declined both requests.
Arthur Neslen/Guardian UK Apr.21.04
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