Dubai Security Chief Calls For Bombing Of Al Jazeera

A senior security official in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has sparked outrage after calling for the bombing of Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based media network.

In a series of posts of Twitter on Friday, Dubai Lieutenant General Dhahi Khalfan launched a scathing attack against Al Jazeera, blaming the network for a bomb and gun assault on a mosque in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula earlier in the day.

“The alliance must bomb the machine of terrorism … the channel of ISIL, al-Qaeda and the al-Nusra front, Al Jazeera the terrorists,” the former police chief and now head of security in the Emirate told his 2.42 million followers on the social media site.

“For how long will they [Al Jazeera] continue to tamper with the security of Egypt and the Arab world?” he tweeted.

Khalfan then posted an image of Al Jazeera’s iconic logo superimposed in front of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, head of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group, former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and 91-year-old Islamic theologian Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

Yaser Abuhilalah, managing director of Al Jazeera Arabic, said Khalfan bore “full responsibility for any attack against Al Jazeera and its employees”.

“The UAE needs to respond [to Khalfan’s comments]. He’s not just an Emirati citizen but an official in the UAE government,” Abuhilalah told al-Quds al-Arabi on Saturday.

“He is using a moment of anger and grief over the terrible attack in Sinai to fuel his hatred against Al Jazeera.

“What Dhahi Khalfan is doing is incitement to terrorism. Terrorism is not just limited to committing a crime, but any act or statement that paves the way for a terrorist act or incites it, and incitement to terrorism is terrorism itself,” he said.

Source: Al Jazeera