Tayssir Alouni
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Taysir Alluni (born 1955) has become best known for his arrest and subsequent conviction for collaborating with Al-Qaida. This has been given particular prominence as he was working for Al Jazeera at the time of the alleged crimes.
[edit] Background to Alleged Criminal Activities
On Monday September 26, 2005, a Spanish court found Alluni guilty of collaboration with al-Qaida, sentencing the Syrian-born, naturalised Spaniard to seven years in jail. Alluni, who had insisted on his innocence throughout Europe's biggest al-Qaida trial, interviewed the group's leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan weeks after the September 11 attacks in the United States. Accused of acting as a financial courier to the group while in Afghanistan, Alluni, who had faced a maximum nine-year term, said in testimony he was only doing his job as a journalist. A campaign regarding his innocence has been mounted by amongst others Al Jazeera and the Arab Commission for Human Rights.
[edit] Life
Alluni was born in Syria in 1955 and went on to obtain a bachelor's degree in economics from a Syrian university. He travelled to Spain in 1985 to continue his studies but due to economic hardships he worked as a trader instead. He married Fatima al-Zahra in 1987 and is a father of five children.
After becoming a Spanish citizen in 1988 he held a number of jobs in Spain, including teaching Arabic and working in the municipality taxation office of the city of Cueta. In 1996, he joined the Arabic service of the Spanish news agency Efe as a translator. During his work there, he started freelancing for Aljazeera. During this same year he also began working with the Institute of Peace and Dispute Studies in Granada. In 1999, he joined Aljazeera as their correspondent in Afghanistan and headed the Kabul office for a period of two years before 11 September 2001. During the US war against the Taliban and al-Qaida, he was the only foreign journalist to remain in Kabul and broadcast to the world images of the unfolding events.
After the US bombing of the Aljazeera office in Kabul, he returned to Doha, Qatar, to continue his work for Aljazeera as a newsroom journalist. During the Iraq war in 2003, he went to Baghdad and covered the US-led invasion.
