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May 11, 2015

Snowden Docs Show U.S. Deemed Top Al Jazeera Reporter a Member of Al Qaeda 
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Leaked documents from Edward Snowden show the U.S. government labeled an
Al Jazeera journalist a member of Al Qaeda. According to the Intercept,
Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan was put on a watch list of suspected terrorists in
2012. Zaidan has spent years reporting on al Qaeda and the Taliban, and
has interviewed several top figures including Osama bin Laden. In a
statement, Zaidan dismissed the U.S. claims, saying*: "To assert that
myself, or any journalist, has any affiliation with any group on account
of their contact book, phone call logs, or sources is an absurd
distortion of the truth and a complete violation of the profession of
journalism.”

 

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