Mohamed Fahmy, a former Al-Jazeera English journalist who was released from jail in Egypt in 2015, has been interviewed by Gamal Essam El-Din about Qatar's role in fueling the war in Syria and spreading extremist ideas of the terrorist groups.Fahmy has been recently appointed CEO of The Investigative Journal (IJ), a newly launched online investigative news platform.
Fahmy said: "It is not new information that Qatar has been funding terrorist groups in Syria for years, especially Al Nusra Front, the former affiliate of Al-Qaeda in Syria. However, he spoke to a source who worked in the airport and witnessed the transport of the weapons to Syria. The source confirmed that he saw many cargo planes transporting the weapons who flew into Turkish airport and had the Qatari government emblems emblazed on the airplanes."
He stressed that this is yet more evidence against Qatar that funds militant groups who kill innocent people and destroy the sovereignty of nations to implement their political and religious agandas through violence, which is the classic definition of terrorism.
He also confirmed that Al Jazeera disseminated the ideas of terrorist groups and cooperated with them through unethical ways of newsgathering, saying: "Al Jazeera has destroyed the noble meaning of citizen journalism by supplying members of groups designated as terrorists with filming equipment, money in return for footage and finances in general so that these groups can facilitate for them access into conflict zones and areas where it’s hard to report from".
He pointed out that Al Jazeera’s management decided to work with terrorist groups without even informing reporters, which left them imprisoned, and at times physically targeted by the security apparatus in many countries.
He said: "Al Jazeera called for democratic changes during the “Arab Spring” and spent millions of dollars to support the views of the foreign ministry of Qatar calling for democratic change all over the Arab world, but they failed to produce content calling for democracy inside Qatar—a nation that has no parliament, labor unions, press unions and zero press freedom—a nation that had previously sentenced Qatari poet Mohamed Al Ajami to life in prison for a poem, stripped several Qatari journalists of their citizenship for writing critical opinion pieces on the government’s performance, and fabricated a case against their iconic justice minister Dr. Najib Al Nuaimi just because he spoke critically of the policies of the current regime and their support of groups designated as terrorist ones like the Muslim Brotherhood designated".
