CNN documentary accuses Qatar of hosting, funding terrorism

CAIRO – 20 June 2017: A documentary clip prepared by CNN showed Qatar’s involvement in funding and harboring several extremists and terrorist groups.

The report highlighted the suspicious relation between Qatar and Taliban, revealing that the peninsular country has the only diplomatic bureau of Taliban in the region.

Qatar had intermediated in a prisoners’ swap between the U.S. and Taliban that freed an American soldier seized during the war on Afghanistan in exchange for five Taliban detainees who were jailed in Guantanamo Bay prison. The freed Taliban members were flown to Qatar where they remained in custody.

The CNN report used this incident to prove Qatar’s strange relation with America and extreme groups in the same time.

The video included a footage showing a masked militant, believed to be in Syria, expressing his gratitude for Qatari donors for new weapons supply, which came through a fund raising campaign called “Madad Ahl al-Sham” that aimed basically at delivering humanitarian relief to Syrians.

Nusra Front, an affiliated terrorist group of al-Qaeda, has called its supporters to participate in the campaign, stirring shadows on the real objective of the campaign.

A number of American anti-terrorism experts appeared in the clip asserting that Qatar is now the largest financier of militants in the Middle East.

The report accused Qatar of hosting three figures who were designated by the U.S. as terrorist, namely Wajdi Ghoneim, Saad bin Saad Al Kaabi and Abdul Rahman Bin Umair Al Nuaimi.

Following the current Qatari crisis, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE labeled 59 individuals and 12 organizations with ties to Qatar on their terrorism watch list. The aforementioned figures were included in this list.

The Qatari crisis was escalated when Egypt and a coalition of Arab states in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) announced a coordinated diplomatic break with Qatar, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. The Arab countries, in dispute with Qatar, accused the peninsular country of funding Islamist terrorists, in part, via the Doha-based Al-Jazeera satellite channel.