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Politics : Stop the War! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lorne who wrote (12025)	4/10/2003 9:02:01 PM
From: lorne	Respond to of 21614

Celebrating Iraqi-Americans Condemn Al-Jazeera Wed April 9, 2003 10:41 PM ET DEARBORN, Mich. (Reuters) - Iraqi-Americans celebrating Baghdad's fall to U.S. troops on Wednesday protested the presence of reporters from al-Jazeera, accusing the Arab news channel of siding with Saddam Hussein's deposed government. Spontaneous celebrations in this Detroit suburb, which has one of the largest populations of Iraqi Shi'ite Muslims outside the Middle East, occurred all day, as people danced or paraded in the streets in noisy caravans of cars draped with flowers and Iraqi or American flags. The festivities turned ugly late on Wednesday when scores of men, among a crowd of about 1,500 demonstrators in a Dearborn park, sighted an al-Jazeera correspondent and his cameraman and began hurling insults at them. "Down, Down Jazeera," the men shouted angrily, as police moved to surround correspondent Nezam Mahdawi, who had just flown in from Washington to cover Iraqi-American reaction to the collapse of Saddam's rule. "Go Home Jazeera," the protesters chanted. Police advised Mahdawi and his cameraman to leave for their own security, and they left after a long standoff. Qatar-based al-Jazeera is widely watched in the Arab world and many Arab-Americans consider its coverage of the war in Iraq more accurate than U.S. television stations, though not without anti-American bias. "It's a great message to send for all these hypocrite Arabic networks, especially al-Jazeera and Abu Dhabi," said Cassy Mahbouba, head of a group affiliated with the opposition Iraqi National Congress and a leader of the anti-Jazeera protest. Abu Dhabi is an Arab-language satellite station that competes with al-Jazeera. "These networks talk about freedom and democracy but they don't represent freedom and democracy," Mahbouba said. "To the last moment they tried to support the dictatorship regime." Mahdawi, a 37-year-old native of Kuwait, said al-Jazeera was getting used to charges of biased news coverage even as it strives for strict objectivity. He said al-Jazeera, Launched in 1996 and with an audience of some 35 million, had been accused of everything from supporting Osama bin Laden, suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, to working with the CIA or Israel's Mossad intelligence agency. reuters.com