Al-Jazeera decides not to air French killings video

Added by Erik West on March 27, 2012

Al-Jazeera news channel said on Tuesday it has decided not to air a video shot by an Islamist extremist of shootings in southwest France that it had received by mail.

“In accordance with Al-Jazeera’s code of ethics, given the video does not add any information that is not already in the public domain, its news channels will not be broadcasting any of its contents,” the Doha-based network said.

Al-Jazeera, which earned initial fame after airing recordings of Al-Qaeda’s late chief Osama bin Laden, said it has declined “numerous requests from media outlets for copies of the video.”

French police said Monday they had copies of the videos, shot by Mohamed Merah during a series of killings that left seven dead, that had been sent on a USB memory stick to Al-Jazeera’s office in Paris.

Merah, a 23-year-old Frenchman of Algerian descent, had previously boasted of filming his killings and witnesses had told police that he appeared to be wearing a video camera in a chest harness.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in mid-campaign for re-election, urged television networks Tuesday not to broadcast the video.