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Stephen Pollard

ByStephen Pollard, Stephen Pollard

Opinion

BBC reporter on terrorists and elected politicians - both great leaders

February 18, 2008 24:00
2 min read

A report last week by the BBC correspondent Humphrey Hawkesley, on what he called "an amazing day for Lebanon" - the day when a memorial rally for Rafik Hariri was followed by Imad Mughniyeh's funeral - concluded with this astonishing sentence: The army is on full alert as Lebanon remembers two war victims with different visions but both regarded as great national leaders. That's a former Prime Minister being equated by the BBC with one of the most unspeakable terrorists ther world has ever known.

Not that it went unnoticed. As the Jerusalem Post reported: Don Mell, The Associated Press's former photographer in Beirut, lambasted the parallel, drawn by BBC correspondent Humphrey Hawkesley in a BBC World report last Thursday, as "an outrage" and "beyond belief."

American journalist Mell was held up at gunpoint by Mughniyeh's men as his colleague Terry Anderson, AP's chief Middle East correspondent, was kidnapped in Beirut in March 1985.