Al Jazeera Won’t Air Toulouse Shooter’s Video
Qatar-based news network Al Jazeera said it had decided not to broadcast video footage of three deadly shootings in southern France filmed by an al-Qaida-inspired gunman using a camera strapped to his body, news services reported.
“Al Jazeera will not air video of French shootings,” the Qatar-based news channel said in a headline on its website, according to Reuters.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy called on television networks not to broadcast video footage shot by Mohammed Merah during his attacks on soldiers and on a Jewish school in Toulouse.
The edited footage was sent on a USB flash drive to Al Jazeera in Paris. Al Jazeera sent the drive to police on Monday, Reuters reported.
The package reportedly was mailed to Al Jazeera on March 21, the day that police began their siege of Merah’s Toulouse apartment. Merah was killed following a 30-hour standoff when police stormed his apartment. He was shot in the head while jumping out a window.
A letter accompanying the footage said that Merah had acted on behalf of al-Qaida, The Associated Press reported.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
