The US government placed an Al-Jazeera journalist on a watch list of suspected terrorists in the belief that he was a member of Al-Qaida, according to a top-secret document revealed by The Intercept.
Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan, a Syrian national who is Al-Jazeera’s Islamabad bureau chief, reported throughout his career on the Taliban and Al Qaida. He secured several interviews with senior Al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden.
His name emerged in one of the documents leaked by the National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden. It labelled him as a “member of Al-Qaida” as well as the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Intercept quotes Zaidan as denying “absolutely” that he is a member of either Al-Qaida or the Muslim Brotherhood. And, in a statement through Al-Jazeera, Zaidan explained that his interviews were carried out as a normal part of any journalist’s job.
“Government surveillance [of journalists] is a violation of press freedom and harms the public’s right to know,” wrote Zaidan.
A spokesman for Al-Jazeera said the surveillance of Zaidan was “yet another attempt at using questionable techniques to target our journalists, and in doing so, enforce a gross breach of press freedom”.
Peter Bergen, CNN’s national security analyst and author of several books on Al Qaida and bin Laden, told The Intercept” “I’ve known [Zaidan] for well over a decade, and he’s a first class journalist”.
The New York-based press freedom watchdog, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said it was “deeply troubled” by the report of the NSA’s surveillance of Zaidan.
Its Asia programme coordinator, Bob Dietz, described Zaidan’s work as “legitimate newsgathering”. And his colleague, Geoffrey King, said: “The NSA has once again brought the dangers of mass surveillance into sharp relief.
“Given a big enough pool of data, anyone can end up fitting a ‘suspicious’ pattern. Journalists who traverse many sectors of society to bring the public the news are particularly vulnerable”.
Sources: The Intercept/CPJ
