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CNN Live Saturday

Interview With Ibrahim Helal

Aired November 03, 2001 - 14:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN ANCHOR: As U.S. coalition air-strikes intensified over the Afghanistan capitol Kabul, Osama bin Laden lashes out at the United States and the United Nations in a videotape broadcast today by the Arab language TV channel Al Jazeera. On the 20-minute tape, bin Laden does not deny that his organization was responsible for the September 11 attacks in the United States.

Instead, he says that true Muslims celebrated those attacks. Bin Laden condemns the U.S.-led bombing campaign, and claims that it is targeting innocent Afghan civilians. He calls the United Nations an instrument of crime against Muslims, and says Muslim leaders who work with the U.N. are, quote, "hypocrites."

Bin Laden goes on to say that Arab leaders who remain in the U.N. have broken faith with Mohammed and the Koran. The U.N. general assembly convenes next week, and some Arab leaders are expected to attend, but it is unclear if bin Laden is referring to that meeting.

Al Jazeera says it does not know when or where bin Laden recorded the tape. Bin Laden's reference to the bombing in Afghanistan does suggest the tape was recorded after the bombing campaign began on October 7.

Joining us now by phone is Ibrahim Helal, the chief editor for the Al Jazeera network. He joins us.

Thanks so much for joining us today. When did this tape come into your possession?

IBRAHIM HELAL, AL JAZEERA CHIEF EDITOR: I don't know exactly when the tape was recorded. We received a tape to our office in Kabul. I don't know exactly when this tape reached our office in Kabul. But we received it, we examined it thoroughly. We cut some parts of the tape because we have our policy which doesn't allow anything to go on the air without examination.

MESERVE: So how long was the delay, do you know, from the time you got the tape to the time you aired the tape?

HELAL: I cannot tell exactly how long it takes us to put the tape on the air, but the only criteria we have that -- we had to bring the appropriate people. We had to contact the persons to comment on the tape. And as you have seen on our channel, we brought one of the advisers from the State Department, the American State Department. He speaks fluent Arabic, and he understood the statement exactly; and he managed to comment on it. And we gave him 10 minutes to comment on the tape. That was the first criteria we had to adhere before putting the tape on air.

MESERVE: So this person from the State Department commented on your air about the tape immediately after it aired. Am I understanding that correctly?

HELAL: Yes, exactly. We didn't decide to put the tape unless we have this persons to comment. So we brought three persons. One of them is a cleric from Kuwait. He is an expert in al Qaeda persons -- he knows some of them. There's the second one, is Mr. Eric Rojove (ph); he's ex-French diplomatic. He speaks Arabic and spent a lot of time in the Arab world. He knows the Islamic world thoroughly. And the third one was the most important one, is an adviser, a current adviser of foreign ministry in the American State Department. He speaks Arabic as well and he, Mr. Christopher Ross. He commented for 10 minutes about this -- on this tape.

MESERVE: So you were trying here to put this statement from bin Laden in some sort of context, am I correct?

HELAL: Yes, yes, because we didn't we have the appropriate context before. So we decided to put it inside a program to allow everybody to listen and to comment on it.

MESERVE: I'm curious as to what position you think this videotape puts some moderate Arab leaders in. Here, you've heard bin Laden say in this tape that they are traitors to Islam, in essence, by participating in the United Nations.

HELAL: I think this is his views, his own view. We don't have to believe his view. We can contradict his views. For sure, we don't share this view with him. But, as everybody knows about Al Jazeera, we put every view related to this crisis, and we have shown all ideas about it. We don't -- our policy allows us to say that even if he is speaking bad about some leaders in the area, he's speaking -- he is only expressing his own view about them.

MESERVE: Ibrahim Helal of Al Jazeera. Thank you so much for joining us.

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