Craft Solidarity: "The Romanian Journalists Seemed Relaxed"

The journalists from the Arab TV station Al-Jazeera have appealed to the kidnappers of the Romanian colleagues, asking for the immediate freeing of all the four hostages.

THE MEDIA POWER. Al-Jazeera headquarters, the Arab CNN.

In a first step, the nationality of the three Romanians wasn’t known by Al-Jazeera. "Our appeal targets not only the three Romanian journalists, but the fourth hostage as well, no matter his citizenship. We don’t make such discriminations", the deputy editor-in-chief of the Qatar station told us. He said he didn’t initially know about the citizenship of Iraqi-born American Mohamad Munaf. In the broadcasted statement, Al-Jazeera seemed open to do everything they could to free the hostages.

TAPES. Contacted by Jurnalul National, the TV station’s representatives said they could not supply any detailed information on the cases in which they received footage with kidnapped hostages in Iraq. "We don’t have such statistics, I could tell you only about the case I remember, and these are the very recent ones, which everybody remembers", the deputy editor-in-chief stated for us. Actually, there have been situations in which Al-Jazeera didn’t do anything else but broadcast the images sent on the Internet by the kidnappers. "It is extremely hard to make such calculations now", the Al-Jazeera journalist also said.

However, the kidnappers have sent to the TV station in Qatar images with all the kidnapped journalists, realizing the much greater impact of their claims when they counterbalance the life of a mass-media representative.

‘THEY LOOKED RELAXED". Used to watch and edit video-tapes received from the kidnappers ever since 2003, when such methods have become the new tactics of the Iraqi rebels, Ayman Jaballah says that the images with the Romanian journalists aren’t as shocking as the ones with other hostages, but they remain in a certain pattern: "They seemed quite relaxed in comparison with, for example, the French journalist Florence Aubernas, from Liberation. But there have been other cases when the journalists looked calm, like the other two French journalists, the ones that got free, Christain Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot. They also seemed calm, even though we all know now they didn’t have such great times. Georges Malbrunot has actually said, a while after that, after getting free, he has always feared for his life. But, as I said, others look much more scared", Jaballah appreciated. He cannot say anything about the kidnappers of the Romanian journalists. "I am not a defence expert, to say my opinion on the way they hold their guns and, I have to admit, I didn’t watch them very carefully. They don’t look different compared to the things I have seen in other images", he also said. Jaballah stated that he said the same things in a discussion with the Romanian ambassador in Baghdad, Mihai Stuparu, who was yesterday at noon in the editorial office of the TV station in Qatar.