The head of BBC Arabic said the Paris attackers who killed 12 people at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo should not be called terrorists.
Tarik Kafala said that “terrorist” is “too loaded” of a word to describe the actions of Said and Cherif Kouachi. The two died in a shootout with French authorities on Jan. 9.
“We try to avoid describing anyone as a terrorist or an act as being terrorist. What we try to do is to say that ’two men killed 12 people in an attack on the office of a satirical magazine.’ That’s enough, we know what that means and what it is,” the senior BBC executive told The Independent Jan. 25. “Terrorism is such a loaded word. The U.N. has been struggling for more than a decade to define the word, and they can’t. It is very difficult to.”
Mr. Kafala told the newspaper that when all the other major news outlets called the Charlie Hebdo attacks terrorism, BBC Arabic ultimately decided to go along.
“We avoid the word terrorists. It’s a terrorist attack, anti-terrorist police are deployed on the streets of Paris. Clearly all the officials and commentators are using the word, so obviously we broadcast that,” Mr. Kafala told The Independent.
Authorities believe that at least one of the Kouachi brothers traveled to Yemen in 2011. Yemen’s al Qaeda branch has also claimed responsibility for the Jan. 7 terrorist attack.
Nasr al-Ansi, a top commander of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, called the Charlie Hebdo attack “revenge for the prophet” in a video posted online Jan. 14, The Associated Press reported. Video footage taken just moments after the Charlie Hebdo attack shows one of the Kouachi brothers screaming in Arabic with a raised fist “We have avenged the Prophet Mohammed!”
“The gesture we see in the videotape of the raised index finger is a popular jihadi signal which ISIS has popularized and widely used by jihadis and their supporters,” terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank told CNN Jan. 15.
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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