29-Mar-23: The Sbarro bomber's thwarted extradition from Jordan: Where does the State Department actually stand?

Al Arabiya News, April 5, 2021 [Image Source]

One of the useful indicators of how Washington views terror and terrorists comes in an annual publication, "Country Reports on Terrorism". Though mandated by Congress and issued by the State Department's Bureau of Counterterrorism, it gets surprisingly little public attention.

The State Department itself gives this background:

U.S. law requires the Secretary of State to provide Congress, by April 30 of each year, a full and complete report on terrorism with regard to those countries and groups meeting criteria set forth in the legislation. This annual report is entitled Country Reports on Terrorism. Beginning with the report for 2004, it replaced the previously published Patterns of Global Terrorism.

The report covers developments in countries in which acts of terrorism occurred, countries that are state sponsors of terrorism, and countries determined by the Secretary to be of particular interest in the global war on terror. As provided in the legislation, the report reviews major developments in bilateral and multilateral counterterrorism cooperation as well. The report also provides information on terrorist groups responsible for the death, kidnapping, or injury of Americans...

If you're reading this on the This Ongoing War blog site, you probably know our interest isn't academic or theoretical. We want our child's killer, an admitted bomber, a zealous terrorist and for more than a decade a media celebrity in Jordan, brought to Washington to face trial for her central role in the 2001 Sbarro pizzeria massacre atrocity. 

Her name is Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi. 

She has so far evaded American justice thanks to a dubious and highly problematic claim made by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in March 2017 that the Jordan/US extradition treaty is invalid.

The problematic part of this stems from how the US has demonstrated incredible and almost totally-unreported deference towards its Jordanian ally by deflecting attention and commentary away from the embarrassment of America's most lavishly funded foreign-aid beneficiary sticking a finger in Washington's eye.

At the same time, in one of the exceedingly rare communications we have gotten from any State Department officials, a senior figure in Washington sent us a letter dated October 25, 2022 which makes some bold and serious-sounding claims about what the sender calls "a foremost priority for the United States" when referring to bringing Tamimi to US justice.

In the five months since that letter was sent to us, we have responded to that official in writing on seven occasions. Number of responses received by us: nil.

The last photo taken of our daughter Malki
the evening before her murder

Country reports

You get a sense of that by looking at the Jordan section of State's Country Reports on Terrorism over the past several years. 

But first this.

The Justice Department filed a criminal complaint against Tamimi almost a decade ago on July 15, 2013: see "US -v- Ahlam Al-Tamimi - Criminal Complaint (Sbarro Pizzeria Bombing)". She's been free the entire time. And not only free but influential in the worst way. She's a poster child for terrorism with access for most of the past decade to high-powered media channels. 

Now read on.

At the request of DOJ prosecutors, the criminal complaint (essentially the same as an indictment) was then immediately sealed. In other words, it remained undisclosed and unknown to us and to the general public for the next four years. 

We wrote about the eventual announcement here: "14-Mar-17: Sbarro massacre mastermind is now formally charged and her extradition is requested".

What we were quietly told by people familiar with the details is that between the summer of 2013 and the spring of 2017, the US made repeated but unsuccessful efforts to persuade the Jordanians to extradite Tamimi to Washington. They were doing their best to get a strategic US ally to respect and comply with their bilateral treaty. And they failed.

It's likely those efforts continued after the charges were made public. But no details have ever been made public. 

However there's little doubt about the bottom line: the Jordanians were not willing and remain unwilling today to do what their solemn bilateral treaty demands they do. What the US position is in all of this is worth trying to decipher.

What the reports reveal

If you look at the annual State Department Country Reports on Terrorism for the years 2014, 2015 and 2016, there's a consistent and unmissable emphasis on how true Jordan is to the mission of defeating the terrorists. The praise flows without interruption down through the years.

The 2014 report, issued a couple of months after the deadline in June 2015 [PDF] says in its Overview to the Jordan section starting at page 182, that in the year under review - 

Jordan remained a key ally and a model partner in combating terrorism and extremist ideology. Jordan’s geographic location leaves it vulnerable to a variety of regional threats, while also facilitating its regional leadership in confronting them... Jordan demonstrated regional leadership in the fight against ISIL, joined the Global Coalition from the outset, and participated fully on the diplomatic, political, financial, and military fronts...

There's no mention here of Tamimi. She had been received as a hero in Jordan in October 2011 and hosted a weekly made-in-Jordan global TV show starting in early 2012 and continuing for the next five years. This Hamas-aligned program, beamed throughout the world and garnering an international audience of Arabic speakers, had a singular focus of encouraging support for terror. That show, "Breezes of the Free", was still thrilling its worldwide audience weekly at the time the report was published. 

The 2015 report, issued in June 2016 a little more delayed than the previous year's edition and adopting similar but not identical language, says at page 191 that -

Jordan remained a key U.S. ally in countering terrorism and violent extremist ideology in 2015. Jordan’s location in a tumultuous region made it vulnerable to a variety of threats, yet also facilitated its regional leadership in confronting them. Jordan continued to take part in all key aspects of the Global Coalition to Counter Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)...

Once again, no mention of Tamimi. Nor of the 1995 treaty or its breach or her weekly terror-promoting TV show.

The 2016 report came out on July 19, 2017, later than in the past. By then, the US criminal charges against Tamimi had been unsealed in Washington (that was done on March 14, 2017). And Jordan's Court of Cassation had ruled on March 20, 2017 that Jordan was free to ignore the 1995 Extradition Treaty with the United States because it was flawed and for that reason invalid. [See "Jordan court blocks extradition of bombing suspect to US", Associated Press]
 

The court's ruling makes clear the flaw, if there is any flaw at all, is a Jordanian flaw - a failure by Jordan to comply with its own rules. 

Using similar phrasing, this 2016 report says 

Jordan remained a committed partner on counterterrorism and countering violent extremism in 2016. As a regional leader in the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, Jordan played an important role in Coalition successes in degrading the terrorist group’s territorial control and operational reach. Jordan faced a marked increase in terrorist threats, both domestically and along its borders...  

Tamimi once again isn't mentioned at all.

The 2017 report emerged on September 19, 2018, nearly five months after Congress' statutory deadline. By that time Tamimi, who continued to be harbored by Jordan in breach of the 1995 treaty but was never in hiding and lived an unusually high profile public life, had already been an FBI Most Wanted for a year and a half. Her TV show had meanwhile come to an end. 

The report again says 

Jordan remained a committed partner on counterterrorism and countering violent extremism in 2017. As a regional leader in the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, Jordan played an important role in Coalition successes in degrading the terrorist group’s territorial control and operational reach. Although Jordan experienced a decrease in terrorist activity in 2017 compared to the previous year, the country faced a continued threat posed by terrorist groups, both domestically and along its borders...

This time, however, the Tamimi case is a key part of the discussion:

A U.S. criminal complaint was unsealed in March charging Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, a Jordanian national in her mid-30s, with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against U.S. nationals outside the United States resulting in death. The charge is related to her participation in an August 9, 2001, suicide bomb attack at a restaurant in Jerusalem that killed 15 people, including two U.S. nationals. Four other U.S. nationals were among the approximately 122 others injured in the attack. Also unsealed was a warrant for Al-Tamimi’s arrest and an affidavit in support of the criminal complaint and arrest warrant. Jordan’s courts have ruled that their constitution forbids the extradition of Jordanian nationals.

We were gratified to note that the State Department narrative explicitly mentions Tamimi's victims in addition to the fugitive zealot herself. At the same tine, it raised some troubling concerns:

• The validity of the 1995 US/Jordan treaty isn’t discussed here at all. 
• What does get mentioned is the Jordanian view that their constitution forbids the extradition of Jordanian nationals. Whatever the compleixities of Jordan's stand, this claim is plainly untrue. There's abundant evidence that Jordan has - and is very public about - the multiple extradition treaties it has negotiated with numerous countries. 
• What's more - and this too goes unmentioned - Jordan has extradited to the US multiple times in the past.
• Does the United States regard the extradition of Tamimi as being within the power of Jordan to do? There's no examination here of that question.

The 2018 report was published on November 1, 2019 - later than those that came before. Its Jordan chapter this time is explicit about the Tamimi case:

A U.S. criminal complaint was unsealed in 2017 charging Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, a Jordanian national in her mid-30s, with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against U.S. nationals outside the United States resulting in death. The charge is related to her participation in the August 9, 2001 suicide bomb attack at a restaurant in Jerusalem that killed 15 people, including two U.S. nationals. Four other U.S. nationals were among the approximately 122 others injured in the attack. Also unsealed was a warrant for Al-Tamimi’s arrest and an affidavit in support of the criminal complaint and arrest warrant. In 2018, Jordan continued to cite a court ruling that its constitution forbids the extradition of Jordanian nationals.  The United States regards the extradition treaty as valid.

We were glad to see these aspects covered: 

• The extradition treaty is mentioned.
• For the first time, the US calls it valid. That should never gave been a contentious issue but it's good to see it there in black and white.

The 2019 report was published on June 24, 2020. It covers terrain similar to that of the previous edition but significantly more than in earlier years.

In 2019, Jordan did not extradite Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, a Jordanian national in her mid-30s, who has been charged in the United States with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against U.S. nationals outside the United States resulting in death. The charge is related to her participation in the August 9, 2001, suicide bomb attack at a pizzeria in Jerusalem that killed 15 people, including two U.S. nationals. Four other U.S. nationals were among the approximately 122 others injured in the attack. Following publication of the 2018 Country Reports on Terrorism, Foreign Minister Ayman al-Safadi confirmed that U.S. authorities asked Jordan to extradite Tamimi, and he expressed the view that Jordan’s constitution does not allow the extradition of a Jordanian citizen to a third country. The United States regards the extradition treaty with Jordan as valid and in force.

Notably it adds the view of Jordan's foreign minister (who has also been the kingdom's deputy prime minister since 2021) that Jordan had indeed been asked by its American ally and benefactor to comply with the extradition request made under the treaty. And that in US government eyes the treaty is not only valid (as the 2018 report says it is) but also "in force". 

In this battle of contending claims, every word counts and the implied assertions about Jordan being in breach encouraged us.

Then the 2020 report appeared (on December 16, 2021, later than ever) and the mood changed. Throughout that year, the US was under a Trump administration. But the report itself was published after almost a year of a Biden presidency.

In dealing with Jordan, it says that

Jordan remained a committed partner on counterterrorism and countering violent extremism.  As a regional leader in the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, Jordan played an important role in Defeat-ISIS successes by preventing the terrorist group from regaining any territorial control and restricting its operational reach…

But then this:

The United States continued to press Jordan to extradite Jordanian citizen Ahlam al-Tamimi for her role in a 2001 suicide bomb attack at a pizzeria in Jerusalem that killed 15, including 2 U.S. citizens.

And that's all they say. We were alarmed by how

• While the word “extradition” does appear...
• the 1995 treaty is not mentioned at all.
• The legal duty to comply with a treaty obligation is translated to an absurdly, misleadingly bland formulation in which the US continues to press. Pressing for a decade? Is that even called a press?
• No statement that Jordan breaches the treaty 
• No mention of the fact that the US views the treaty as being valid and in full force. 
• And this: The State Department's authoritative Treaties in Force, an on-line compendium whose name describes its contents and function well, lists the Clinton-era Jordan/US extradition treaty at page 245 of the downloadable PDF in these words: "LAW ENFORCEMENT - Extradition treaty. - Signed at Washington March 28, 1995 - Entered into force July 29, 1995."

And finally the 2021 report. It's the last one to have appeared so far and was published just a month ago on February 27, 2023. The mandated deadline was April 30, 2022. But the 10 month delay for an annual report doesn't seem to have troubled anyone. 

Its full text is downloadable here; the Jordan chapter is here. It opens with the now-customary formulation that

Jordan remained a committed partner on counterterrorism and countering violent extremism in 2021. As a regional leader etc.

and then goes on to say this about Tamimi and her scandalous freedom:

The United States has emphasized to the Jordanian government the importance of holding Ahlam al-Tamimi accountable in a U.S. court for her admitted role in a 2001 bombing in Jerusalem that included two Americans among the 15 victims. She had been serving a prison sentence in Israel for a terrorism conviction related to the bombing before she was released by Israel as part of a prisoner exchange.

It's fair to say the cold disdain to which we, the parents of one of Tamimi's victims, have been treated at the hands of State Department officials in all the years since Tamimi's indictment, ought to have prepared us for this. But it didn't and we were stunned. 

Note what's said and what is not:

• As with the report covering 2020, the cornerstone 1995 Jordan/US extradition treaty gets no mention here at all.
• In fact, the word ‘extradition’ doesn't even appear.
• The Jordanian court decision invalidating it in 2017 gets no mention either.
• Nor do the grounds on which the invalidation was based by the Jordanian judges.
• Nothing is said about the nature of the flaw alleged by the Jordanian court six years ago. Even if it is real and even if it has legal consequences (both very unlikely), this is a self-inflicted Jordanian flaw. 
• And by definition - since it involves a failure by the Jordanian parliament to take a certain step - it's a flaw that could have been cured by the Jordanian parliament on any day that its members sat in session from 1995 right up until this morning. That a defective Jordanian procedure hasn't been repaired is a result of Jordan deciding to leave it that way.
• No mention of the US government's position as articulated in previous State Department Country Reports on Terrorism. The US says the treaty is valid and in force. Why after years of asserting what is plainly true is this central issue now dropped from the State Department analysis?
• No statement that Jordan is breaching it. 
• But what is mentioned, and for the first time, is that Tamimi was imprisoned and then released by Israel. There's surely a good reason for the Bureau of Counterterrorism in Washington doing that. But right now we can only think of reasons that are not good.
• Something else that could have - and perhaps should have - been included in this important survey: some mild expression of US determination that in fighting terrorism the US has its principles and red lines. Whether or not the DOJ people articulating them in the 2017 unsealing ceremony for the Tamimi charges believed what they said, they said important things about justice and US determination. Check it out: "Individual Charged in Connection With 2001 Terrorist Attack in Jerusalem That Resulted in Death of Americans" [Department of Justice Media Release, March 14, 2017].
• Has that important moment been flushed away along with the principles and the determination? 

As we said, stunning. 

But also revealing about what the US government wants Americans to know about Tamimi's ongoing freedom.

The take-aways

1. We're not giving up.
2. But if we could tap into wider and stronger support from Americans (and not only Americans) who get the same sickening sense we do that Jordan unjustly benefits from unprincipled backing in Washington, we and our pursuit of accountability and justice would be in a better place. 
3. If only the State Department's annual reports got more attention.

05-Feb-21: The Sbarro savagery: The on-air apology BBC Arabic broadcast to its viewers [Video]

This screen cap comes from the October 8, 2020 edition of BBC Arabic's hugely popular, five-nights-a-week news and analysis show, Trending. This edition contained a segment of about 6 minutes devoted to explaining the 'predicament' of FBI Most Wanted Fugitive Ahlam Tamimi, a boastful bomber of children including ours, whose husband, it was claimed, had been forcibly deported from Jordan on October 1, 2020. Outrage against the BBC's judgement soon followed.

How they do apologies at the BBC is almost as interesting as how they consistently and systematically get certain things wrong a lot.

In October 2020, we (Frimet and Arnold Roth who write this blog) protested what we see as the inexcusably disgraceful way the BBC's BBC Arabic unit aired a fawning and - in our view - completely misleading news segment about the Jordanian woman who killed our daughter Malki.

The details are laid out in these earlier reports (listed chronologically):

• 04-Feb-21: The BBC is sorry they showcased a terrorist. But do they actually grasp the problem? [Our blog]
• BBC refused request by father of teen terror victim to address staff over interview with her killer [Jewish Chronicle UK, December 24, 2020]
• 15-Nov-20: On SKY Australia, Arnold Roth says what he thinks about the BBC promoting Tamimi [Our blog]
• 22-Oct-20: Whose business is it if BBC engages in advocacy journalism? [Our blog]
• BBC World Service boss: Giving mass murderer airtime was a ‘lapse in standards’ [Jewish News UK, October 21, 2020]
• ‘BBC lost its moral compass’ by giving mass murderer a platform [Jewish News UK, October 21, 2020]
• Why does BBC‏ ‏promote my daughter’s murderer? [Palestinian Media Watch, October 13, 3030]

How the BBC handled the Ahlam Tamimi matter is also the subject of a front-page expose (photo on the right) in the current (February 3, 2021) edition of the London-based Jewish Chronicle

• Shame of BBC Arabic as systematic bias revealed | A JC investigation shows a pattern of anti-Israel bias and inaccuracies"

It's also at the heart of an incisive column, "Terrorism, Malki Roth’s murder and questions to answer for the BBC’s Arabic service" by Chris Blackhurst, published in Reaction. We have an extract from it below.

We mentioned in our February 4, 2021 post that BBC management, responding to the public outrage over what the clever people at BBC Arabic did when they sympathetically showcased the world's most wanted female fugitive Ahlam Tamimi, arranged for one of the BBC Arabic Trending program's presenters to deliver an on-air apology. This was broadcast on October 29, 2020.

There's much criticism we want to share about the apology's content and style. (To understand how we feel about what's said - and how it's presented - we urge you to pause now and read our previous post: "04-Feb-21: The BBC is sorry they showcased a terrorist. But do they actually grasp the problem?")

One of the puzzling aspects was that the apology itself was not stored away as video-on-demand on any of the BBC's media platforms. In other words, if you didn't see it in real time, there was no way to review it or draw your own conclusions afterwards. Once delivered, the apology immediately disappeared. (A few more words about that below.)

So this week, we asked BBC management to allow us to republish their highly problematic October 29, 2020 apology here on our blog. To their great credit, they didn't hesitate to give their explicit permission. 

Here it is:

As you see, it comes with no English sub-titles. But in sharing the on-air apology video with us, the BBC also sent us their translation of the Arabic. 

Here it is below - unedited, unchanged. The speaker is BBC Arabic’s Rania ‘Attar; one of Trending’s regular presenters since it got started in 2017.

On 8 October, BBC Arabic’s Trending programme item on social media reactions to a phone call made by Ahlam Tamimi to a Jordanian radio station. Trending then broadcast a short clip recorded with Tamimi.

This item was in breach of the BBC’s editorial guidelines. Tamimi was convicted on terrorism charges and sentenced to multiple life sentences in Israel for an attack that killed 15 civilians including eight children, she is on the FBI’s most wanted terrorist list and is a member of an organisation proscribed by the UK and  several international governments.

Therefore, any contact with her should have been approved in advance by senior editors in the BBC, as per our editorial guidelines. That approval was not sought and would certainly not have been given.

This item should not have been shown.  It was a clear breach of our editorial guidelines and we apologise for it.

As we wrote in our February 4 post, this apology has some troubling features. 

• It’s devoid of any on-screen headline. There is no photo of Tamimi or of the massacre or of anything else that would catch a viewer's attention. In fact, there's no visual link to convey that this is important. All that the audience experiences is the rapidly spoken flat-toned speechlet of the cold-faced presenter herself saying that it’s about Tamimi. There's simply no indication that this has any special significance.
• On the positive side, it’s delivered by the same journalist who was the program’s presenter when they showcased the Sbarro monster a few weeks earlier. That on its own is important. But her tone is monotonous and uninflected, and her brief recitation lasts just a minute. 

Arnold Roth showed the BBC’s transcript along with the video clip to an expert Arabic-to-English translator who pointed out some problems. The biggest was in the opening words. 

On screen, the Trending presenter, Rania ‘Attar, speaking Arabic says this:

“Our viewers, I read you a message from the BBC”.

The transcript that the BBC gave us does not have those words or anything like them.

The omission leaves us feeling that the non-Arabic speakers at the world’s most important broadcast enterprise, including senior BBC management, don’t realize that this (using our words and not hers) is what their audience actually heard from Trending’s presenter:

“Friends, what I’m about to say is not me speaking but something the BBC people have obliged me to say. So here goes. We’ll get this out of the way in a minute and then return to our show.”

Image source: REACTION screen cap

And one more important thing to know about this on-air apology.

As CAMERA Arabic points out [here in Arabic] all of the Trending program's segments for October 29, 2020 were stored on the BBC website for some time after they went to air. But not the apology. 

If you go now to BBC Arabic's YouTube channel, you can still see all of those October 29, 2020 Trending segments today. But (and we hope BBC senior management see these words) you will not see the apology that went to air the same night. It alone is missing. 

As we noted above, Chris Blackurst, who served as editor of the UK's The Independent in the recent past, published a powerful takedown today in his first column for Reaction (background here). 

Since his excellent comments are behind a paywall, here's a brief extract:

Even though [Malki] died 20 years ago, [Arnold Roth's] pain at her loss is obvious and still raw. It does not diminish. Imagine, then, in October last year, him turning on theBBC Arabic TV programme, Trending, to watch the mastermind of her deathbeing interviewed and treated respectfully... 

Listening to Roth and observing his anger and hurt, you do wonder. One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter and all that... This isn’t about IRA versus Britain or Palestine versus Israel; it is about grief and torment. Here, there was not even an attempt at balance, no account of what happened, and Tamimi’s role. That one-sidedness was then compounded by the robotic, distanced apology.

Perish the thought that the BBC’s Arabic service is pursuing a political agenda at the expense of the Corporation’s mission statement: “To act in the public interest, serving all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output and services which inform, educate and entertain.”

Shame on you, BBC.

[From "Terrorism, Malki Roth’s murder and questions to answer for the BBC’s Arabic service", Reaction, February 6, 2021]. 

As we keep saying, and as respected voices like Mr Blackhurts's are reiterating, there is a serious problem here. Arnold Roth expressed it this way in his interview this week with the Jewish Chronicle:

There's a toxic culture at BBC Arabic... This isn’t journalism. It’s the advocacy of pushing their own hateful views. She confessed to all the charges in court and is unabashedly proud of what she has done. Yet BBC Arabic wants to treat her like Joan of Arc. I believe in senior management’s good faith but fear they don’t fully grasp the BBC Arabic agenda. The language barrier leads, I suspect, to the Arabic producers and reporters playing BBC senior people for fools.[Jewish Chronicle. February 4, 2021]

Since you are here at our blog, you likely know that we are in the midst of a years-long battle to see justice done. We want the woman who boasts - boasts! - of killing the children inside the pizzeria brought to justice in Washington. We believe the US Department of Justice wants to see her stand trial and we are doing all we can to expose the obstacles (about which we have never been explicit) and get them removed. 

What the BBC allowed to be done in shamefully platforming Tamimi and what she stands for is a microcosm of what we personally have encountered over and over again. And still do. 

The media part of this is particularly painful. Faced with a news story involving pure unadulterated evil in a very specific political setting, a broad spectrum of editors, reporters and commentators prefer to stay silent. 

Or, as the BBC did in October, put lipstick on a pig rather than deal with the crucial matters (of terrorism, justice, malfeasance, cover-up) at hand. 

Tamimi's years of illicit freedom and the fact that Jordan breaches its own extradition treaty with its most powerful and important ally in order to keep her safe and out of the reach of law enforcement is a time bomb. Failing to deal with terrorism, with those who do it and with those who ensure it endures and thrives has real consequences. 

And so does lethal journalism.

UPDATE February 9, 2021: And another valuable contribution on holding the BBC to account comes today from Jake Wallis-Simons in The Spectator: "What’s the problem with BBC Arabic?". A brief extract:

...it should come as a cause for concern – if not necessarily surprise – that a Jewish Chronicle investigation has uncovered evidence of shameful and systematic bias at the channel. The idea for the investigation came after a conversation with an Australian-born Israeli called Arnold Roth, 69, whose teenage daughter Malki was one of 15 people killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber in 2001. The female terrorist who masterminded the attack, Ahlam Tamimi, was released from jail in a prisoner exchange in 2011 and went to live in Jordan, where she became a celebrated media personality.

Last year, BBC Arabic broadcast a fawning interview with the convicted terrorist. Incensed, Roth complained and won an apology from Jamie Angus, head of the World Service. Roth suspected, however, that this was not an aberration but a symptom of a rotten culture at the heart of the licence-fee-funded Arabic channel.

The investigation appears to confirm this view.

We're waiting to see where, if at all, this attention goes and who steps up to propose actual next steps. 

UPDATE June 30, 2022: A British news report today [here] says Jamie Angus, head of the World Service at the time and the official who issued an apology on the BBC's behalf has now left the BBC. In the words of the MailOnline article, he

is understood to have left the corporation in favour of a top role with Saudi Arabia's state broadcaster. Jamie Angus quit his position as BBC News's senior controller of output and commissioning in April for an unspecified new post, after failing to be appointed BBC director of news... [He] has secured a top job at Al Arabiya News, part of the Saudi conglomerate MBC Group, The Times reports. His position is not known but sources have speculated he could serve as the station's chief finance officer or chief operating officer... But his new job is not viewed favourably by BBC bosses due to ethical concerns around Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses.

04-Feb-21: The BBC is sorry they showcased a terrorist. But do they actually grasp the problem?

The presenter of BBC Arabic's Trending tribute to Ahlam Tamimi
introduces the fugitive terrorist [Image Source: Screen Capture] 

Arnold Roth writes: 

I’m not a broadcaster, not a journalist, not a policy-shaping official. But I have things I feel ought to be heard and known about one of the world's most important media platforms, the BBC. 

I am writing now because there is an important, sober and factual expose of the problems there in today's edition of a British weekly ["Shame of BBC Arabic as systematic bias revealed | A JC investigation shows a pattern of anti-Israel bias and inaccuracies", Jewish Chronicle, February 3, 2021]. 

I am quoted briefly there but want to raise some larger aspects of the deeply disturbing affair.

On November 9, 2020 I took part in an intense meeting with senior executives at the BBC. The subject was a complaint I had published some weeks earlier [see “Why does BBC‏ ‏promote my daughter’s murderer?” Arnold Roth/Palestinian Media Watch, October 13, 2020] about a Jordanian woman, a fugitive from US justice, being given the celebrity treatment before a global audience tuned in to a BBC show that has a huge following among Arabic speakers.

The meeting by video conference was at my request. 

I was and continue to be impressed that the senior executive at BBC World Service responded positively to me and without hesitation. He could easily have ignored or deflected what was clearly an uncomfortable proposal. That’s pretty much what the vast majority of media organizations and their editors and management with whom I have tried to engage have done during the past four years.

Is this because I am rude? Nasty? Perhaps, but I believe it has more to do with how I bring disturbing messages with me.

* * *

But first some needed background.

My daughter, Malka Chana Roth, a beautiful high school student with a sunny disposition, was one of 15 innocent people murdered in a pizzeria attack carried out by Islamist terrorists in the center of the city where we live, Jerusalem, on August 9, 2001. A sixteenth victim remains in a coma all these years later.

That Islamist terrorist, who was 21 years old at the time and responsible for selecting the target and planting the bomb, was a part-time news-reader at a Palestinian Arab TV station and personally reported the news on camera some hours after engineering the massacre. She went on to publicly call the savagery “my operation”. She has been explicit about how she wanted her victims to be children and took pains to ensure that is what happened. In this she succeeded on a monstrous scale.

My wife and I are battling to see the woman whom the BBC so generously profiled in its October 2020 broadcast, Ahlam Tamimi, locked up for life in a maximum-security prison. Dedicated investigators, prosecutors and agents in the US Department of Justice are too.

This is a battle we have waged – in the literal sense, a fight for justice – since February 2012. There have been meaningful achievements along the way, most notably the unveiling of terror charges against Tamimi on March 14, 2017. 

But what counts is that Tamimi remains free. She’s based in Jordan’s capital, living a life of privilege, influence, public adulation.

Jordan is a monarchy with friendly ties throughout the Western world. It happens also to be a tightly controlled state with famously unfree media. Despite the restrictive policies and willingness to silence the regime's critics, it has extended a rare degree of generosity to Tamimi. Most notably this has extended to the privilege of allowing her to host her own television program devoted to promoting terror and terrorists. 

That show, distributed and watched globally via Hamas satellite TV from a studio in Amman every week for five years, allowed Tamimi’s unique incitement to terror to reach Arabic-speaking audiences in virtually every country on earth.

The Jordanian woman not only spearheaded the atrocity and has never stopped boasting about it. She boasts on camera of slipping into Jerusalem multiple times by means of her media credentials, of selecting the target with great care; of personally planting the bomb. And in due course she celebrated the many deaths and injuries with manifest glee. On any reasonable view, this is a monster.

That along with her years of exposure via frequent public appearances – live and via television – in large parts of the Arab world have made her a global celebrity. (I can barely type those words.)

It’s a crushing reality made much worse by foolish political decisions and the moral cowardice of a long line of public and media figures. In practice, the outrage tends to be somewhat muted largely because, unless you are fluent in Arabic, you may well have had no idea of ay of this till now.

* * *

This is not how we thought things would turn out.

Malki was just 15 years old - a lovely, almost-young-woman, brimful of musical talent, sweetness, empathy - when she stood with her lifelong friend Michal Raziel at the counter of the Sbarro pizzeria in the center of Israel’s capital on a hot school holiday afternoon in the summer of 2001.

Sbarro immediately after the attack [Image Credit:

Avi Ohayon and Israel Government Press Office]

The human bomb (a term I urge people to think about and use), a religious zealot in his twenties from a family of well-off Palestinian Arab restaurateurs, was brought right up to the shop’s entrance by Tamimi. She fled the scene before he walked in.

Had anyone stopped the young, ordinary-looking man at the door to check the contents of the guitar case slung over his shoulder (but guards were not posted in those more innocent days), they would have been shocked.

Instead of a musical instrument, it was filled with kilograms of tightly packed explosives, grotesquely augmented with a large quantity of human-flesh-ripping nails.

The explosion that ensued was thunderous; the outcome utter carnage. An Israeli court convicted Tamimi on terror charges after she admitted to all of them.

But eight years later she walked out, thanks to a deal made by Israel with Hamas for the freedom of an Israeli hostage, Gilad Shalit, held by the terrorists for more than five years.

Tamimi returned to Jordan and her family and was received there as a triumphant conquering heroine and role model. Her wedding less than a year later was a live TV event.

For us, things then went downhill quickly. From bad to worse to literally unbearable.

In March 2017, the US unsealed terrorism charges against Tamimi. They had been issued in 2013, but at the request of the prosecutors they were kept confidential and secret by order of the court.

The charges were based on a Federal law that applies to acts of terror committed outside the territory of the US that cause the death of American nationals like my Malki.

The Jordanian was added to the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list the same day and is still there – the second female ever to be on the list - along with a multi-million-dollar reward for her capture and conviction.

The Hashemite Kingdom response came, to our astonishment, just six days later.

Jordan’s highest court handed down a ruling that the extradition treaty signed by the late King Hussein - the widely admired father of the current king - with the Clinton Administration in 1995 was invalid. It was therefore unenforceable, the judges declared. And Jordan, as a result, not only would not, but in their explanation could not, hand Tamimi over for trial. So said the highest tribunal in the land.

For their part, King Abdullah II and his diplomats and ministers found it unnecessary to say a single public word. With two small exceptions, they have remained silent ever since. 

A handful of news stories blandly and briefly reported the legal decision. But no questions were ever asked by any reporters – questions like: how could Jordan protect an admitted mass murderer and, in the process, thumb its nose at its American benefactor? And what about the string of fugitive terrorists whom Jordan had in fact extradited to the US when so requested?

And that was that.

The woman who confesses happily (the videos show how literally true this is) to blowing up children in a fast-food place morphed into arguably the most protected fugitive alive.

* * *

With all its exhausting frustrations, the situation is not static.

Tamimi learned this past September that Jordan intended to deport her husband, Nizar Tamimi. He is a convicted murderer who was released in that same deal as Ahlam Tamimi despite having been sentenced to a life term.

On October 1, 2020 he appears - though the matter is not clear - to have left Jordan to take up residence in Qatar.

The US State Department posted a $5M reward, still in effect,

in January 2018 [Image Source]

It appears he went alone. His wife, the FBI’s Most Wanted. fugitive -- has said noisily and repeatedly that she calls Jordan home and will not leave. Let’s note that Qatar has no extradition treaty with the US or, as far as I can tell, with any other country. The Tamimis have both visited Qatar several times in the past few years and have said to the media that each of them was given residential rights there.

Ahlam Tamimi quickly embarked on a campaign demanding the restoration of her right to live in Jordan with her husband. The female fugitive who has boasted for years of spearheading a slaughter of children says her entitlement to have him back is enshrined in Jordanian law. That it’s a matter of elementary human rights.

With a perfectly straight face, she presents herself as the victim of an incomprehensible injustice.

It’s a message she delivered personally by calling-in to various Arab media outlets, including a high-profile talk-radio station in Jordan’s capital, Amman, called Melody FM.

On October 6, she phoned the presenters of a popular program there and managed to start explaining that she wanted to address Jordan’s king over the airwaves so he would know about the abridgement of her rights and would restore them.

The presenters, claiming there was an audio problem, abruptly cut her off.

The barely-disguised silencing of one of Jordan’s best-known voices instantly became a major issue. On social media, an Arabic hashtag meaning “Your voice is loud and clear, Ahlam Tamimi” got tremendous traction.

* * *

Which brings us to the United Kingdom.

Some 48 hours later, the daily edition of a prime-time current affairs TV show called Trending produced in London went to air on BBC Arabic, amplified by global distribution via YouTube.

The Trending program included a six-minute segment overviewing some of what I have just written. The core message was Tamimi’s demand for her infringed rights to be restored, delivered by the $5 Million woman herself speaking straight into the camera.

In a disturbing example of ill-conceived advocacy, what was conveyed is that here was a Jordanian woman, deprived of something fundamental, deserving support, sympathy, intervention.

A brief video clip overviewing the back-story then drove home to viewers the notion of Tamimi as a victim of cruel injustice, a detainee (that’s a key word) eventually released from imprisonment… and now, being victimized all over again by her own royal majesty!

What possessed the BBC reporters and producers to put this abomination to air? [1]

Screen cap from the Palestinian Media Watch

English translation of the Ahlam Tamimi appeal
promoted in the BBC Arabic program

From senior levels of the world’s largest broadcasting organization [2], the BBC has expressed its apologies. The media, including Britain’s major Jewish news platforms, have duly reported this. The Jewish News, another British-Jewish weekly gave this front-page coverage in October: "22-Oct-20: Whose business is it if BBC engages in advocacy journalism?"

It’s my opinion that the apologies mis-state what’s happened here. They are not directed at the actual problem and fail to adequately deal with how the problematic sequence of events presages a problematic future. The one carried in the UK Jewish News weekly put it this way:

“Following an editorial review, we found that this segment was in breach of our editorial guidelines and we removed the clip from our digital platforms last week. We accept that the segment should not have been shown and apologise for the offence caused.”

By my count, to this point the BBC has issued at least five Tamimi/Trending apologies. All of them are framed as a breach of the BBC’s editorial guidelines, as a failure to meet the BBC’s own standards, as a mistake.

All are inadequate because, failing to identify the problem they therefore do not address it.

Not one of them details Tamimi’s crime. Or her explicit and repeated admissions of guilt. Beyond that, they fail to ask what the British public needs to know: Given the BBC’s history, scale, standing and massive resources, how could this have happened?

BBC Arabic is a very serious media business with a weekly audience, according to the BBC’s own data, of some 43 million. Its Twitter account alone has 7.7 million followers. It broadcasts programs and hourly news bulletins 24 hours a day, 7 days a week on radio and via cable, satellite, streaming video and BBC News Arabic television. It has an impactful web-based presence on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

Far from being some minor add-on to a mainstream media operation, BBC Arabic is a full-blown world-class competitor to the likes of Aljazeera, SKY News Arabic, Al Arabiya, Iran’s Alalam, and Arabic channels from France and Russia. Friends familiar with the Arab world have told me it’s considered the most credible and least problematic of the pack.

Then there’s the matter of public resources that have been placed at its disposal. In October 2017 (according to a BBC media release: “BBC Arabic launches Trending”), the British Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office – the UK’s foreign ministry – handed £291 million, equivalent to US $387M at today’s rate, to BBC management as part of the biggest expansion of BBC World Service since the 1940’s when all it did was radio.

BBC Arabic is the largest beneficiary of that funding. And the Trending program is singled out for special focus in the media advisory.

With more than 250 staff (some estimates say 400) in London and bureaus in (at least) Cairo, Baghdad, Ramallah and Washington DC, it’s seen as having a serious role in British foreign policy and projecting British influence into strategically important demographics.

Now zoom down to the BBC’s October apologies and you are left wondering how one of the world’s most important Arabic-language media platforms, controlled and funded by Her Majesty’s Government, could have thought it right to give the world’s most wanted female fugitive a sympathetic platform so as to portray her as a victim.

* * *

Some aspects that bear on that question:

• The BBC Arabic Trending show’s presenter introduced Tamimi, the confessed bomber and fugitive murdering terrorist, by calling her “the Jordanian prisoner of Palestinian origin [who] has returned to the headlines.” That’s it – the entire description.
• A subtle but related point: the Arabic word usually translated as prisoner is more accurately rendered as detainee – meaning a person captured or held for one reason or another. And maybe for no reason at all.
• They made no mention of the death toll. Deaths don’t even get a mention in this report. The production people could have framed this as being about fifteen innocent people, Israelis and tourists, adults, children and infants, murdered by the Jordanian. And that more than 130 others were injured, some horribly. That the dead included a mother and a father and three of their children under the age of ten – five members of a family, leaving young, orphaned children at home. Instead, they breezily air-brushed all these realities out.
• They did not say Tamimi specifically chose a pizzeria filled with children. Or that, based on previously checking out the area to plant a different bomb the previous month, she decided this was the most child-rich target to be found that day (school holidays) at that hour (lunch time) in Israel’s bustling capital.
• They concealed how, for Tamimi, this attack, from the outset of its planning, was all about murdering Jewish children and mutilating (think of those nails) as many as possible.
• That she has no regrets: “You know how many casualties there were? This was made possible by Allah. Do you want me to denounce what I did? That's out of the question. I would do it again today and in the same manner.” [Source: An earlier published interview]
• With absurd delicacy, Trending whitewashes Tamimi as someone “accused of participating in the bombing”. Accused? Tamimi confessed to the Israeli court that tried her for terrorism, admitting all the charges against her and denying none of them. She was then convicted and sentenced. In a different context, calling her accused might be disingenuous. Here, it’s simply an attempt to deceive.
• Tamimi has gone on to publicly admit, to boast about, to regale in the celebrity that comes with being the cause of so many horrific deaths.
• This, along with her current freedom – a finger in the eye of the Zionists -  is what has made her the figure of adulation that she has become,  without any doubt.   
• BBC Arabic did not say that Tamimi, speaking to a documentary film maker, framed the massacre as part of a religious struggle between Islam and the Jews.
• They did not say Tamimi is currently the most wanted female fugitive in the world with a State Department reward of $5M for her capture and conviction.
• They did not say that an Extradition Treaty was signed by the present king’s father and the Clinton State Department in 1995. That the US says it is perfectly valid today - despite a Jordanian court ruling that cites a dubious technical defect (and suggests no other basis) for its finding.
• That no court in Jordan goes so far as to claim Tamimi is innocent or “accused” or suspected – only that, whatever she is, Jordan is not obliged to do anything. No legal source outside Jordan has supported the logic of the Jordanian judges.
• The Trending people did not spend even a moment telling viewers about the unremitting misery that the destruction of so many lives – mostly of children and infants – inflicted on ordinary Israeli, American, Australian, French, Brazilian and Dutch families. Or that Tamimi smiled happily into the camera when informed by an interviewer how many children (eight) perished at her hands.  
• They did not name Malki or Michal or any of the other luminous lives this beast snuffed out. For those packaging and marketing it, they don’t advance the tale of Tamimi’s victimhood. So, who cares?

It’s simply stunning that, in the considered judgement of BBC’s leadership, what happened here amounts to a mere breach of guidelines, some kind of technical error. As if they were saying, “Perhaps a rule or two may have been infringed. But now leave it to us to see it doesn’t happen again,” et cetera.

* * *

Totally missing in the BBC’s public statements on this scandal is any sign of introspection.

What, you might want to ask, is wrong with the BBC staffers who put this to air? Were they brought up to think this way? Is this what they learned in journalism school? Is this how the BBC trained them?

Malki, of blessed memory

I don’t know where the foreign ministry of the United Kingdom stands on any of this. I wish I did. While they are the channel through which very large slabs of tax-payer money are poured into BBC Arabic, giving it a voice of unmatched authority and tremendous reach, they have deferred to the providers of “Sorry, we’ll do better next time” to handle the flack.

The BBC incomprehensibly handing one of the world’s most powerful megaphones to a terrorist isn’t a procedural issue. It’s not a marginal disciplinary matter. And it is surely not some trivial search to find the most efficient words.

Reasonable observers making an honest assessment would see, I believe, that the Trending show and its well-funded staff have just served up an unblinking validation of Tamimi’s demand to be heard and supported. This blood-drenched celebrity jihadist, on the run from Interpol and the FBI, is promoted as an icon of resistance. The unimpeachable BBC brand is there to seal the credibility of the framing.

* * *

But there’s more.

While rejecting the steps my wife and I urged them to take in our meeting, BBC management in mid-November sent me a video clip along with an Arabic-to-English translation of what it says. It’s one more apology – but this time, one they told us went to air on the Trending program itself at the end of October.

As reported in today's 
Jewish Chronicle UK cover story

They were good enough to email me the actual video of the on-camera Arabic-language apology, but I am unable to find it found online now. I believe it's not there - not anywhere. There is also no mention of it on Twitter, Facebook or elsewhere in BBC’s social media world. I certainly believe the BBC when they say it went to air. I’m just not sure how impactful it could have been and wondering how much impact they wanted it to have if they made it disappear the instant after it was delivered live. In any event, I have it because they gave it to me, and I plan to ask for permission to publish it.

This on-air BBC apology has some odd features. 

First, it’s devoid of any on-screen headline. It has no photo of Tamimi or of the massacre or of anything else that would catch an audience’s attention. There's no visual link to convey that this is important. No sign other than the rapidly spoken flat-toned words of the cold-faced presenter herself that it’s about Tamimi. Or about anything else of significance.

On the positive side, it’s delivered by the same journalist who was the program’s presenter when they showcased the Sbarro monster a few weeks earlier. That on its own is important. But her tone is monotonous and uninflected, and her brief recitation lasts just a minute.

I showed the BBC’s transcript along with the video clip to an expert Arabic-to-English translator who pointed out some problems. The biggest was in the opening words. On screen, the TV presenter speaking Arabic says this:

“Our viewers, I read you a message from the BBC”.

The transcript that the BBC gave me does not have those words or anything like them.

The omission leaves me feeling that the non-Arabic speakers at the world’s most important broadcast enterprise, including its top management, don’t realize that this (now expressed in my words, not hers) is what their audience heard from Trending’s presenter:

“Friends, what I’m about to say is not me speaking but something the BBC people have obliged me to say. So here goes and we’ll get this out of the way in a minute and get back to our show.”

In the wake of a searing experience, watching incredulously as the killer of my child (roll those words around in your own minds) is presented to millions of viewers as if she were the overworked head of some worthy charity in need, the pro forma apology underscores how, sorry to say, I fear BBC management has lost the plot.

The professionals who formulate and deliver BBC Arabic content don’t need more rules, guidelines or direction. Whatever may be called for, it’s surely not another apology.

What’s just happened and what it says about a precious British resource is far too serious for that. Getting the world’s most important broadcaster to understand this ought to be at the top of some senior UK government official’s list of things that - once and for all - need to be gotten right at the BBC.

UPDATE February 6, 2021: If you have read this far, we want you to know of an update post ["05-Feb-21: The Sbarro savagery: The on-air apology BBC Arabic broadcast to its viewers [Video]"] with additional revelations that expose unacknowledged dysfunctionality at the BBC.

UPDATE June 21, 2021: In a major expose into ongoing malfeasance by BBC management, Hadar Sela at CAMERA UK ["BBC Arabic Employees breach corporation's social media guidance"] reminds us how, in our words and not her's, BBC Arabic's journalistic staff - or significant parts of it - continue to treat the BBC's rules, guidelines and values with utter contempt. With the passage of years and in relation to how it deals with the Middle East's various conflicts and especially with Israel and the challenges we face here, more and more the massive BBC enterprise has become a by-word for genteel bigotry masquerading as something more serious and objective. It's time serious-minded people, perhaps from the UK's Jewish leadership, perhaps from its parliament, perhaps from its designated regulators, brought this multi-billion pound rogue operation under effective control and back in line with its own declared values and mission. 

Footnotes

[1] I amplified my criticisms of what the BBC did in several other published pieces during October 2020. See  “‘BBC lost its moral compass’ by giving mass murderer a platform” [Jewish News UK, October 21, 2020]. And “Father of murdered daughter condemns BBC for giving platform to Ahlam Tamimi” [Jewish News Syndicate, October 14, 2020]. And via a televised interview with SKY News Australia [“Father of murdered child ‘nauseated’ BBC gave terrorist killer a platform”, October 18, 2020]

[2] 22,000 staff of whom 16,000 plus are in public sector broadcasting). Add in part-time, flexible, and fixed-contract staff and it’s 35,402 [Wikipedia]