Al Jazeera reporter

What do the U.S. army and the Arab TV station Al Jazeera have in common?

Well both organisations have employees accused of leading double lives helping al-Qaeda.

Ever since its creation Al Jazeera has made waves. This week it was accused by the Iraqi Governing Council of giving credibility to terrorists. But that's all on the screen.

Now off screen their star reporter, Tayseer Alouni, is said to have been an al-Qaeda agent.

Peter Marshall investigated.

PETER MARSHALL:
Through two wars, Tayseer Alouni was the face of Arab television. But now a European Union judge is saying he really had two masters - not only Al-Jazeera the TV channel, but Al-Qaeda, the terrorists.

The tourists who come to Granada in southern Spain, marvel at the Alhambra. It dates back to the last era of the Moors, the Islamic occupation. Today the Islamists of Al-Qaeda dream of reconquering the kingdom. It is from here that a Spanish judge said they planned the attacks of September 11th. And he says, they were assisted by the journalist Tayseer Allouni.

As Al-Jazeera's star reporter, Tayseer Alouni is famous in the Arab world. But here in Granada he's known personally. This is where he lived and worked for 18 years, and it's where he was arrested.

Now he stands accused of carrying funds and messages for the Al-Qaeda network, and possibly even for Bin Laden himself. He's also said to have given vital support to individual terrorists, helping them negotiate the likes of Spain's immigration laws, in short he gave them cover. After all, the theory goes, his own cover was almost immaculate.

ABDALHASIB CASTINEIRA:
Granada Islamic Centre
Especially in that he is a star, he is well known, and well reported. His coverage of the wars of Afghanistan and Iraq were very, very popular. People will call each other to say, Tayseer is on the screen. Because he had a human touch to his reports.

PETER MARSHALL:
Down in the city of Granada, there's an Arab and Muslim population of no more than 7-8,000. Tayseer Allouni, born in Syria, had become a Spanish citizen and was working for a locally-based news agency. The allegation is, that this meant he was uniquely placed for Al-Qaeda.

CARLOS ECHEVERRIA:
Adviser to Spanish Police
Because his activity was so important, that let him to travel to everywhere in a very rapid way. At the same time, the belonging to the Arab and Muslim community and so on, left him to have access to a number of places and groups.

PETER MARSHALL:
By the time he became Al-Jazeera's correspondent in Kabul in 2000, Alouni and his contacts were being watched. Behind the scenes, Judge Balthazar Garzon was inquiring into Spanish-based Islamist terrorists cells. A politician who's followed the case said the judge concluded that Tayseer Allouni's links were more than journalistic.

GUSTAVO DE ARISTEGI:
Spanish Foreign Affairs Spokesman
That is not a professional link. It is more a personal kind of friendship, family links to these people. I think these are all signs that indicate that this person is very closely linked to radical groups. People that think they have a mission in life. That mission is to fight against, what they consider corrupt regimes, anti-Islamic, apostate regimes. And of course, their major allies, which is basically the West.

PETER MARSHALL:
In November 2001, Spanish police rounded up what they say was a major Al- Qaeda cell. People who held a summit meeting with Mohammed Attar weeks before he led the September 11th attacks. At the time, Tayseer Alouni was thousands of miles away in Kabul. But the prosecutors say phone taps showed he'd used his job as cover for carrying thousands of dollars between the Spanish cell and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Those who know Tayseer Alouni are sceptical. They believe there's an innocent explanation.

ABDALHASIB CASTINEIRA:
The Arabs are known to be generous people. Those who do well in the West, and have a heart and have some sort of decency and fear of God, it is quite common they will use charity, that they will spend money on people in need.

PETER MARSHALL:
The argument is that charity went to terrorists though?

ABDALHASIB CASTINEIRA:
Well they have to prove that. When it is proved, then we will believe it.

PETER MARSHALL:
It was in Afghanistan, that the reporter became a star. After September 11th, he got the first interview with Bin Laden. He was also there throughout the US bombing, and invasion. Because they don't want to antagonise the Spanish judge, Al-Jazeera are weary of commenting of Allouni's arrest, but they suggest his successes may have counted against him.

ADNAN SHARIF:
Manager Al Jazeera
I know he is a good correspondent. But if you say he is helping Al-Qaeda, this impression might have been created out of his good work in making some scoops, being a journalist. I know that they feel Tayseer Alouni was threatened sometimes by the Taliban.

PETER MARSHALL:
Back in Spain, they say Tayseer Allouni's journalism may well have been honest, but that doesn't mean a thing.

GUSTAVO DE ARISTEGI:
If he appears in front of a camera, reporting, he has to try to be as objective and unbiased as possible. But of course, his personal views or links to terrorists do not necessarily have to be reflected in his reporting. I wouldn't make of this the most important issue.

PETER MARSHALL:
So, the theory runs, he could be a very good journalist, and a very dangerous terrorist. This duality, East/West, pros and cons, is a feature of the whole affair.

The Muslim world tends to view Spain as a contradiction, with conflicting faces. On the one hand they saw the government here welcome the Iranians for a state visit after President Bush placed Iran on his axis of evil. The government here has also given similar backing to Syria, and Prime Minister Aznar has recently returned from a trip to Gaddafi's Libya. On the other hand though, they watched how Spain stood shoulder to shoulder with America and Britain in the war with Iraq. And now there's this very public and controversial prosecution of a modern Arab icon.

In the village outside Granada, Fatima Alouni, the journalist's wife, says she's concerned for her husband's health, he has a heart condition. But she has no doubts about his innocence.

FATIMA ALOUNI:
Everybody who knows my husband, knows that he cannot be a terrorist. It is impossible.

PETER MARSHALL:
She fears his reporting has made Tayseer Alouni an innocent target of the war on terrorism. She says the Americans want him silenced.

FATIMA ALOUNI:
Because of his sincerity, because he tried to meet the reality of what has happened, they tried to kill him three times at least. In Afghanistan, in Baghdad two times, one in the bureau of Al-Jazeera and the other time in the hotel Palestine.

PETER MARSHALL:
She's referring to the shelling at the end of the battle for Baghdad. A number of journalists including one from Al-Jazeera were killed. Tayseer Alouni was distraught.

TAYSEER ALOUNI:
We received condolences from everybody here¿ for the martyr Tarek Ayyoub

PETER MARSHALL:
Among Arabs and Muslims, there's now a feeling that the Americans want to silence Al-Jazeera - and Alouni's arrest is Spain's contribution.

ABDALHASIB CASTINEIRA:
They have a very clear strategy of casting psychological panic among the Arabs, and frightening them, not to make any movements of money, not to make any statement of support, and not to affirm their own identity, and their own interests in a political scenario.

PETER MARSHALL:
Maybe that's the effect, but you have no proof that that is a plan and America's behind it?

ABDALHASIB CASTINEIRA:
Well, it's their own statement. It is their own statement at the beginning of the aftermath of September 11th. It has been stated many times that they will wage a war on all fronts.

PETER MARSHALL:
The Spanish Government insist they've no war on any Arab media. What's more, there's a personal endorsement for Al- Jazeera.

GUSTAVO DE ARISTEGI:
I, myself, participate in many debates with Al-Jazeera and I give them interviews and try to support their reporting when they come to Spain, and I tell my colleagues, in the political life or in the academic world, to listen to them, and to give them interviews. Because they're an independent network.

PETER MARSHALL:
Before he returned to Spain a few weeks ago, the first time since the September 11th attacks, Tayseer Alouni checked on fresh reports that he was under investigation. He told friends he'd got assurances at the highest level that he was no longer a suspect. Then he was arrested. Judge Garzon had got his man.

CARLOS ECHEVERRIA:
If he attacks, if you want, the media, and a very important branch of the media, like Al-Jazeera, is because he has arrived to the conclusion that this person, I am not talking about Al-Jazeera as an institution, but this person has developed a number of dangerous connections with people, and with institutions.

PETER MARSHALL:
So Judge Garzon better have this right?

CARLOS ECHEVERRIA:
If he is wrong it is a terrible mistake for the anti-terrorist struggle against Al-Qaeda and similar movements in general. Because, if you want not only the radical Islamists, but also the Arab and Islamic war in general, will have some ammunition in order to say the West, Spain, the US, the West, is always attacking our culture and our feeling of the region.

PETER MARSHALL:
Even before the evidence is produced, and any trial will be months away, that's a grievance that is already being aired.

This transcript was produced from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight. It has been checked against the programme as broadcast, however Newsnight can accept no responsibility for any factual inaccuracies. We will be happy to correct serious errors.