Music: Saudi opposition song used as signature tune for Movement for Islamic Reforms radio programmes
SAAD AL-FAQIH, spokesman of Reform: It is a very simple setup, the main basic elements of a radio station. FAQIH: It is through this 4 by 4 metres room that we are fighting the Saudi empire.
EEDLE (off camera): You do all this from this home-made soundbooth?FAQIH: It is quite a disappointing shape.
EEDLE: It proves that we are in the era of low-cost global media.
FAQIH: Exactly. But because we have facts, because we are enabling ordinary persons to speak, because people are really coming forward, we are really challenging this huge empire.
ENGINEER (Arabic): Still four minutes to go!
FAQIH: Really, are there? You mean the signature tune.
FAQIH: You had better take the shot from the other side.
EEDLE: I was just going to get you sitting down and closing the door.
FAQIH (Arabic): Welcome, brothers on this Tuesday evening. As promised, our discussion tonight is about Mr Jumaa al-Jumaa and the investment companies whose accounts were frozen and some of their executives arrested.
FAQIH (English): They confiscated the money, and the person Jumaa al-Jumaa was outside the country. So they brought him from outside the country and imprisonded him.
SHANBARI: Dr Saad speak in English now. He try to translate.
FAQIH: The lawyer had a meeting with the ministry of Interior. Now, look at that. As commercial problem, arranged or discussed by the ministry of interior, which gives you an evidence that Prince Nayef (Saudi interior minister) is running everything in the country. Now he orders
FADE UNDER
FAQIH V/O: MIRA, Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia, campaigns for a comprehensive political change in Arabia. We do not call it Saudi Arabia because we do not accept the name, Saudi. Comprehensive change in Saudi Arabia means converting the current absolute monarchy into a system where you have power sharing, you have accountability, you have transparency, you have an independent judiciary in addition to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly.
SHANBARI: This guy, I just called him, and he asked to change his voice. So we have this machine to change the voice. It could be a police officer, it could be a businessman, it could be anyone.
EEDLE: Saad, do you know anything about who this person is?
FAQIH: No. He claims to have links to the intelligence. But we have no way to substantiate that.
FADE UNDERFAQIH V/O: We as peaceful reformers, as people who believe in peaceful change, we rely almost t otally on the role of communication. We believe that the regime currently survives on what we call the legitimacy of secrecy and deception. Once you break this barrier of secrecy and deception and expose the regime in its reality, and enable people to communicate with each other, remove this monopoly of opinion, this monopoly of communication, then you do not need an army to change Arabia.
FADE UP Reform radio sig. Tune
JAMAL KHASHOGGI, MEDIA ADVISER TO SAUDI AMBASSADOR: What I am saying about the website, even though Saad put a disclaimer at the beginning of the website asking his sympathisers and supporters not to put any incitement of violent materials but it attracts people with violent minds. That gives me a message, that there is a meeting of minds here. Like you in your home, if every night mafia-type people come to your home, even if you say they are uninvited, I did not call them to my home, there has got to be something wrong with you to invite those kinds of materials.
KHASHOGGI: OK, this is the kind friends who hang around in his website. Somebody is putting a picture of 9/11 hijackers. Somebody else is saying, may God reward you, you have reminded me of a day that made me very happy. He is referring to 9/11. This is the kind of friends he hang around with.
KHASHOGGI: Again, a message from Osama bin Laden
OSAMA BIN LADEN voice (Arabic): Thanks be to God
KHASHOGGI: This is Osama speaking.
KHASHOGGI: If he does really want to clean his site from those kind of fanaticism, he would have to work day and night and I think there would be very little left.
KHASHOGGI: This is all al Qaeda material. This is not reform material. This is al Qaeda material.
EEDLE: But is the government concern about him purely what is published on the website and said on his radio and television broadcasts?
KHASHOGGI: Look, it is not helpful when the government and the people of Saudi Arabia are being faced and challenged by radical, violent, militant groups who are using blind terrorism against civiians, whether Saudis or non-Saudis, who are trying to destroy the economy to give a hand to those people by by justification, support it is not good for the country. It is not a patriotic action.
EEDLE: So what is the government doing about the radio and TV. Has it taken any action to have it closed down? Because Saad al-Faqih accuses the Saudi government of putting political pressure on satellite providers to deny him access, and he has also in the past accused the government of actually physically jamming the radio signal.
KHASHOGGI: Again, because it is not helping. It is not good for reform in SA to have such incitements. Not because he is such a good reformer. There are reformers who are active openly in Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately some of them were imprisoned, but they are respected. It is part of the price any reform movement has to pay. But they are doing that in Saudi Arabia. They have the courage to do that in their country, direct to their leadership.
FAQIH V/O: The first heavy impact of violence in our
FAQIH: campaign was September 11. September 11 was a very powerful incident and you can never avoid commenting on it. You can never avoid giving it attention. To be honest, before September 11 we were going with a very successful social and economic discussion through the available means before the radio station, through the Internet. People were very much aware of our campaign regarding unemployment, poverty, social disintegration, economic problems, corruption and other things. Suddenly September 11 came. Now, what are you going to do? You cannot go on. Nobody will give you attention. And you cannot ignore September 11 becazuse it is the talk of everybody, including children and old people and everybody. So in one side it was almost like pulling the carpet. We have to stop our programme in terms of discussing reform. But on the other side, because we are one of the best at understanding, as we claim, the phenomenon of violence and the phenomenon of Bin Laden, phenomonon of this hostility towards America, we thought that we can exploit this chance to the maximum and convert this problem into a benefit.
EEDLE: Do you feel that the anger of young Saudis against the regime is still so high that in fact for you to condemn this violence would alienate an important part of the constituency for the Movement?
Faqih: This could be a reason. But the main reason is that I take it as a principle, I hate slogans. I believe in action, and we always say that our work, our powerful peaceful work, is probabaly the reason for reducing violence. What the regime is doing in cracking down on jihadis is actually increasing violence with the way it approaches the problem of violence while keeping every reason to motivate people to believe in force, when they throw people in jail, prevent freedom of expression, prevent freedom of assembly. Even liberal reformers are in jail now for just writing a small petition. So how would you expect people to avoid violence. What we are doing through our powerful and effective and penetrating peaceful approach, we are actually absorbing or channelling or discharging this huge anger and directing it in peaceful activity.
EEDLE: Do you have any time for anything else, Saad, or does it consume your whole life? Do you take breaks?
FAQIH: Yes I do. Occasionally I take my family to the countryside. I cannot leave Britain. I do not have a passport. But every three or four months (better framing) I disappear for two days.
EEDLE: Whats your favourite spot?
FAQIH: I like Wales. I like mid-Wales. Quite wild.
EEDLE: People are quite friendly? Do you dress Arab or Western?
FAQIH: No, No
ABDULLAH (off camera, Arabic): Theres shooting in Hayy al-Rasif in Riyadh.
FAQIH (Arabic): Yes, its me. Im Dr Saad.
FAQIH (Arabic): Where exactly? Where?
FAQIH (English): This man is FAQIH (Arabic): Where exactly in Riyadh? Hayy al-Rasif?
SOUND OF SHOOTING OVER PHONE
FAQIH (English): Shooting, shooting.
FAQIH (Arabic): We have received news from eyewitnesses more details will come soon that a red GMC and a Caprice were chased by security patrols. When they were surrounded, they fired an RPG at one of the patrols. Then they disappeared.
SHANBARI: We just received a call about what happened in Riyadh right now. They have four injured and one killed from the police.
FAQIH: Gods peace and mercy be on you.
MUSIC: Reform radio sig. Tune plays in studio
ANNOUNCER (Arabic): Reuters quotes Saudi security sources as saying that an exchange of fire has taken place in the King Fahd suburb of Riyadh this evening. There are no details of casualties on either side.
FAQIH (Arabic): Yes but the area is still full of police and closed off?
ABDULLAH (Arabic): Peace be on you. Do you have any more details?
EEDLE (English): And al-Jazeera, how did they get the story as far as you know?
FAQIH: I dont know, maybe VOICE off camera (Arabic): The French agency.
FAQIH (Arabic): The French agency?
FAQIH (English): France Presse.
MOBILE PHONE RINGS
EEDLE: Did they call you to check, al-Jazeera?
FAQIH: No. For the last three months under a request by the Saudis they have boycott us. We are under boycott from Jazeera at the request of the Saudis.
FAQIH: We would dare to bring bin Laden and anger America. But we would not dare to bring you and anger Al Saud.
FAQIH: After a few months we succeeded in launching our first TV station, around April 2003. Although the station was blocked and removed, at least we were able to tell people about our radio broadcast. Our struggle to put up a TV station went on. Until now a total of five times where we succeeded in launching a TV station on TV and it is somehow blocked by political, commercial or even technical interference by the regime.
TOMAS LOVSIN, Technical Director, ASCO V/O (ASCO staff asked not to appear on camera): We are located in Ascos playout transmission centre, from where the actual transmission takes place of Islah TV, among other television channels as well Currently we are uplinking four channels on various satellites.
EEDLE V/O: Describe what happened when you saw interference with the Islah TV signal.
LOVSIN V/O: Well as usual we get a warning, or an alarm when that happens. Our staff then checks what is actually happening, because you cannot be 100pct sure that we are dealing with jamming. It could be anything, it could be weather conditions or whatever. So we use different equipment to check it. For example on spectrascopes. So for example for one satellite you look at the uplink frequency of that satellite, and if you can see two carrier waves at the same time at the same frequency on the same satellite, then you know for 100 pct that you are dealing with a third party interfering with your signal, basically, we are dealing with jamming.
EEDLE V/O: So that was what you saw with Islah TV?
LOVSIN V/O: Exactly.
EEDLE V/O: What happened exactly?
LOVSIN V/O: The video and audio disappeared, just got black, that;s it. And you lose the signal also.
EEDLE V/O: How long did it last, can you remember?
LOVSIN V/O: Variously. For the beginning, it lasted almost a day. But then we switched to another frequency, so we got around this problem. We switched from one frequency to another, so those who were jamming got a little bit confused, and afterwards it lasted for half an hour to two hours, lets say.
FAQIH V/O: Finally, after a long struggle, we are back on air.
FAQIH: We are now on two channels on Hotbird, and we intentionally wanted to appear on two channels, on two different bouquets, so that if they jam we will have one as a backup. And this time we have secured a very strong contract obliging the supplying company to provide alternative in case one of the channels is jammed. And also we secured an ultimate protection of the satellite owner, which was not the case before. Hopefully this time we are not exposed to political or behind scenes pressure.
FAQIH: If you come with me now, you can see
FAQIH: This is our logo. The logo has the globe with our name, Al Islah, which means reform with one of the letters converted into a magnifying lens on Arabia, so our mission in this TV channel is to make what is going on in Arabia transparent.
FAQIH: Our TV channel is not real TV, not real picture. There is a lot of text on the screen, and this text is probably powerful enough to conduct our programme back home. Unfortunately we do not have the facilities to have a real continuous picture, so we believe that useful text on the screen is enough.
FAQIH: This segment where we have crawling news is extremely powerful. Indeed, I was told that this small two centimetre segment was the reason for the jamming, because we bring real hot news which the regime always keen to keep them secret.
EEDLE: Give me some examples of stories youve broken recently.
FAQIH: The disease of Prince Sultan. We were the first people to speak about Prince Sultan having cancer. We were the first people to specify the hospital he is going to be admitted to. We were the first people to speak about complications after the surgery.
FAQIH: The Saudis have said it frankly to the British that if you succeed in stopping the radio or the TV, we dont care what al-Faqih does after that, even give him asylum. So their aim is to stop our activity by any means. But because they cannot stop the TV relying on the law, they want to fabricate anything against me. And the current attempt is to link me to this alleged assassination attempt on Abdullah.
FAQIH: It is quite versatile and easy. I mean, anybody in the team can do it.
FAQIH: As much as technology is making it easy for oppressive regimes to spy on their opponents, and to use technology to torture them and corner them and put them in jail, it is also an extremely useful tool to magnify your ability to defeat the oppressors. I do not need a huge team to run this studio. Anybody of the team can do this job.
EEDLE: And you are here on your own at the moment.
FAQIH: Yes. It does not need a huge expertise. In a few minutes you will learn this programme .All what you need is the facts. All it needs is good intention, sincere intention so that people like you and like your project.
EEDLE V/O: There have been suggestions in the media from Saudi officials that link Dr Faqih with an alleged assassination plot against Crown Prince Abdullah.
NAWAF OBAID, Saudi security consultant: That is actually being pursued very much. This is becoming the central focus point of any case thats being built up against Saad al-Faqih and his associates he was obviously not the only one involved in this. The British government, to its credit, is very actively pursuing that, as are the Americans and other countries that had an indirect role in this scheme. Now, Saad al-Faqihs position here was more of a coordinator. He coordinated between the Libyans and between the people in Saudi Arabia who were supposedly going to carry out this attack. He took the names from an associate of his who actually lives in London and passed on the information. So not only was he a faciliator but he was a coordinator of such an attack, that was basically aimed at decapitating the Kingdom of its senior leadership. If thats not terrorism, then I dont know what terrorism means.
MUSIC: Reform radio sig. tune
FAQIH: Another list of names Another list of names.EEDLE: With their phone numbers?
FAQIH: No, the people who send by fax, they dont send their numbers. Those that use the text machine, they do.
FAQIH: Now this person is very clear He has sent his own ID card what they call it hafizat al-nufus, civil record, to prove that this is a real person.
FAQIH: Now here is another way of getting those names, this is the main way actually, we rely on this way actually in receiving the names and numbers and details.
FAQIH: So the list has made people braver than before. It has proved to people that they have brothers and supporters everywhere and they are ready to come together, so you are not alone. There are thousands and thousands of people who are like you, not only having your greifs and problems but they are actually ready to sacrifice for the things they believe in. That is the main point. Now next stage would be insteaed of sending the names to us to put on the screen, real people should come together and do something, whether it is a vigil or a demonstration or a strike or something like that.
MUSIC: Reform radio sig. Tune
FADE MUSIC UNDER
EEDLE: Youve been doing this for 10 years, Saad, from London, although something could happen tomorrow, you could be doing this for another 10 years or 20 years.
FAQIH: Although I am optimistic that this will not be happening for 10 years, because there has been a logorithmic increase in our activity, especially since we started the TV station, although I am optimistic that it will not take more than a few months, by the maximum two years, even without our activity, probably by problems inside the regime itself, although I am optimistic about all this, I think I am ready psychologically to go for another 20 years.
EEDLE: You must be very tired after three hours on air.
FAQIH: Well, Im used as a surgeon sitting on the table for 7 hours sometimes. I remember one operation once I needed 11 hours.
EEDLE: What was the operation?
FAQIH: Vascular operation, delicate vascular operation. Because also I come from a sort of underground organisation, we have intense discussions. I am used to long discussions. I remember one discussion once we had seven continuous hours of discussions. I am always a troublemaker. I am always the one who holds one side of the panel against another panel.
FAQIH (Arabic): Im going to wash for prayers.
FADE UP MUSIC: Reform radio sig. tune
FADE DOWN MUSIC
SAAD AL-FAQIH, spokesman of Reform: It is a very simple setup, the main basic elements of a radio station. FAQIH: It is through this 4 by 4 metres room that we are fighting the Saudi empire.
EEDLE (off camera): You do all this from this home-made soundbooth?FAQIH: It is quite a disappointing shape.
EEDLE: It proves that we are in the era of low-cost global media.
FAQIH: Exactly. But because we have facts, because we are enabling ordinary persons to speak, because people are really coming forward, we are really challenging this huge empire.
ENGINEER (Arabic): Still four minutes to go!
FAQIH: Really, are there? You mean the signature tune.
FAQIH: You had better take the shot from the other side.
EEDLE: I was just going to get you sitting down and closing the door.
FAQIH (Arabic): Welcome, brothers on this Tuesday evening. As promised, our discussion tonight is about Mr Jumaa al-Jumaa and the investment companies whose accounts were frozen and some of their executives arrested.
FAQIH (English): They confiscated the money, and the person Jumaa al-Jumaa was outside the country. So they brought him from outside the country and imprisonded him.
SHANBARI: Dr Saad speak in English now. He try to translate.
FAQIH: The lawyer had a meeting with the ministry of Interior. Now, look at that. As commercial problem, arranged or discussed by the ministry of interior, which gives you an evidence that Prince Nayef (Saudi interior minister) is running everything in the country. Now he orders
FADE UNDER
FAQIH V/O: MIRA, Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia, campaigns for a comprehensive political change in Arabia. We do not call it Saudi Arabia because we do not accept the name, Saudi. Comprehensive change in Saudi Arabia means converting the current absolute monarchy into a system where you have power sharing, you have accountability, you have transparency, you have an independent judiciary in addition to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly.
SHANBARI: This guy, I just called him, and he asked to change his voice. So we have this machine to change the voice. It could be a police officer, it could be a businessman, it could be anyone.
EEDLE: Saad, do you know anything about who this person is?
FAQIH: No. He claims to have links to the intelligence. But we have no way to substantiate that.
FADE UNDERFAQIH V/O: We as peaceful reformers, as people who believe in peaceful change, we rely almost t otally on the role of communication. We believe that the regime currently survives on what we call the legitimacy of secrecy and deception. Once you break this barrier of secrecy and deception and expose the regime in its reality, and enable people to communicate with each other, remove this monopoly of opinion, this monopoly of communication, then you do not need an army to change Arabia.
FADE UP Reform radio sig. Tune
JAMAL KHASHOGGI, MEDIA ADVISER TO SAUDI AMBASSADOR: What I am saying about the website, even though Saad put a disclaimer at the beginning of the website asking his sympathisers and supporters not to put any incitement of violent materials but it attracts people with violent minds. That gives me a message, that there is a meeting of minds here. Like you in your home, if every night mafia-type people come to your home, even if you say they are uninvited, I did not call them to my home, there has got to be something wrong with you to invite those kinds of materials.
KHASHOGGI: OK, this is the kind friends who hang around in his website. Somebody is putting a picture of 9/11 hijackers. Somebody else is saying, may God reward you, you have reminded me of a day that made me very happy. He is referring to 9/11. This is the kind of friends he hang around with.
KHASHOGGI: Again, a message from Osama bin Laden
OSAMA BIN LADEN voice (Arabic): Thanks be to God
KHASHOGGI: This is Osama speaking.
KHASHOGGI: If he does really want to clean his site from those kind of fanaticism, he would have to work day and night and I think there would be very little left.
KHASHOGGI: This is all al Qaeda material. This is not reform material. This is al Qaeda material.
EEDLE: But is the government concern about him purely what is published on the website and said on his radio and television broadcasts?
KHASHOGGI: Look, it is not helpful when the government and the people of Saudi Arabia are being faced and challenged by radical, violent, militant groups who are using blind terrorism against civiians, whether Saudis or non-Saudis, who are trying to destroy the economy to give a hand to those people by by justification, support it is not good for the country. It is not a patriotic action.
EEDLE: So what is the government doing about the radio and TV. Has it taken any action to have it closed down? Because Saad al-Faqih accuses the Saudi government of putting political pressure on satellite providers to deny him access, and he has also in the past accused the government of actually physically jamming the radio signal.
KHASHOGGI: Again, because it is not helping. It is not good for reform in SA to have such incitements. Not because he is such a good reformer. There are reformers who are active openly in Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately some of them were imprisoned, but they are respected. It is part of the price any reform movement has to pay. But they are doing that in Saudi Arabia. They have the courage to do that in their country, direct to their leadership.
FAQIH V/O: The first heavy impact of violence in our
FAQIH: campaign was September 11. September 11 was a very powerful incident and you can never avoid commenting on it. You can never avoid giving it attention. To be honest, before September 11 we were going with a very successful social and economic discussion through the available means before the radio station, through the Internet. People were very much aware of our campaign regarding unemployment, poverty, social disintegration, economic problems, corruption and other things. Suddenly September 11 came. Now, what are you going to do? You cannot go on. Nobody will give you attention. And you cannot ignore September 11 becazuse it is the talk of everybody, including children and old people and everybody. So in one side it was almost like pulling the carpet. We have to stop our programme in terms of discussing reform. But on the other side, because we are one of the best at understanding, as we claim, the phenomenon of violence and the phenomenon of Bin Laden, phenomonon of this hostility towards America, we thought that we can exploit this chance to the maximum and convert this problem into a benefit.
EEDLE: Do you feel that the anger of young Saudis against the regime is still so high that in fact for you to condemn this violence would alienate an important part of the constituency for the Movement?
Faqih: This could be a reason. But the main reason is that I take it as a principle, I hate slogans. I believe in action, and we always say that our work, our powerful peaceful work, is probabaly the reason for reducing violence. What the regime is doing in cracking down on jihadis is actually increasing violence with the way it approaches the problem of violence while keeping every reason to motivate people to believe in force, when they throw people in jail, prevent freedom of expression, prevent freedom of assembly. Even liberal reformers are in jail now for just writing a small petition. So how would you expect people to avoid violence. What we are doing through our powerful and effective and penetrating peaceful approach, we are actually absorbing or channelling or discharging this huge anger and directing it in peaceful activity.
EEDLE: Do you have any time for anything else, Saad, or does it consume your whole life? Do you take breaks?
FAQIH: Yes I do. Occasionally I take my family to the countryside. I cannot leave Britain. I do not have a passport. But every three or four months (better framing) I disappear for two days.
EEDLE: Whats your favourite spot?
FAQIH: I like Wales. I like mid-Wales. Quite wild.
EEDLE: People are quite friendly? Do you dress Arab or Western?
FAQIH: No, No
ABDULLAH (off camera, Arabic): Theres shooting in Hayy al-Rasif in Riyadh.
FAQIH (Arabic): Yes, its me. Im Dr Saad.
FAQIH (Arabic): Where exactly? Where?
FAQIH (English): This man is FAQIH (Arabic): Where exactly in Riyadh? Hayy al-Rasif?
SOUND OF SHOOTING OVER PHONE
FAQIH (English): Shooting, shooting.
FAQIH (Arabic): We have received news from eyewitnesses more details will come soon that a red GMC and a Caprice were chased by security patrols. When they were surrounded, they fired an RPG at one of the patrols. Then they disappeared.
SHANBARI: We just received a call about what happened in Riyadh right now. They have four injured and one killed from the police.
FAQIH: Gods peace and mercy be on you.
MUSIC: Reform radio sig. Tune plays in studio
ANNOUNCER (Arabic): Reuters quotes Saudi security sources as saying that an exchange of fire has taken place in the King Fahd suburb of Riyadh this evening. There are no details of casualties on either side.
FAQIH (Arabic): Yes but the area is still full of police and closed off?
ABDULLAH (Arabic): Peace be on you. Do you have any more details?
EEDLE (English): And al-Jazeera, how did they get the story as far as you know?
FAQIH: I dont know, maybe VOICE off camera (Arabic): The French agency.
FAQIH (Arabic): The French agency?
FAQIH (English): France Presse.
MOBILE PHONE RINGS
EEDLE: Did they call you to check, al-Jazeera?
FAQIH: No. For the last three months under a request by the Saudis they have boycott us. We are under boycott from Jazeera at the request of the Saudis.
FAQIH: We would dare to bring bin Laden and anger America. But we would not dare to bring you and anger Al Saud.
FAQIH: After a few months we succeeded in launching our first TV station, around April 2003. Although the station was blocked and removed, at least we were able to tell people about our radio broadcast. Our struggle to put up a TV station went on. Until now a total of five times where we succeeded in launching a TV station on TV and it is somehow blocked by political, commercial or even technical interference by the regime.
TOMAS LOVSIN, Technical Director, ASCO V/O (ASCO staff asked not to appear on camera): We are located in Ascos playout transmission centre, from where the actual transmission takes place of Islah TV, among other television channels as well Currently we are uplinking four channels on various satellites.
EEDLE V/O: Describe what happened when you saw interference with the Islah TV signal.
LOVSIN V/O: Well as usual we get a warning, or an alarm when that happens. Our staff then checks what is actually happening, because you cannot be 100pct sure that we are dealing with jamming. It could be anything, it could be weather conditions or whatever. So we use different equipment to check it. For example on spectrascopes. So for example for one satellite you look at the uplink frequency of that satellite, and if you can see two carrier waves at the same time at the same frequency on the same satellite, then you know for 100 pct that you are dealing with a third party interfering with your signal, basically, we are dealing with jamming.
EEDLE V/O: So that was what you saw with Islah TV?
LOVSIN V/O: Exactly.
EEDLE V/O: What happened exactly?
LOVSIN V/O: The video and audio disappeared, just got black, that;s it. And you lose the signal also.
EEDLE V/O: How long did it last, can you remember?
LOVSIN V/O: Variously. For the beginning, it lasted almost a day. But then we switched to another frequency, so we got around this problem. We switched from one frequency to another, so those who were jamming got a little bit confused, and afterwards it lasted for half an hour to two hours, lets say.
FAQIH V/O: Finally, after a long struggle, we are back on air.
FAQIH: We are now on two channels on Hotbird, and we intentionally wanted to appear on two channels, on two different bouquets, so that if they jam we will have one as a backup. And this time we have secured a very strong contract obliging the supplying company to provide alternative in case one of the channels is jammed. And also we secured an ultimate protection of the satellite owner, which was not the case before. Hopefully this time we are not exposed to political or behind scenes pressure.
FAQIH: If you come with me now, you can see
FAQIH: This is our logo. The logo has the globe with our name, Al Islah, which means reform with one of the letters converted into a magnifying lens on Arabia, so our mission in this TV channel is to make what is going on in Arabia transparent.
FAQIH: Our TV channel is not real TV, not real picture. There is a lot of text on the screen, and this text is probably powerful enough to conduct our programme back home. Unfortunately we do not have the facilities to have a real continuous picture, so we believe that useful text on the screen is enough.
FAQIH: This segment where we have crawling news is extremely powerful. Indeed, I was told that this small two centimetre segment was the reason for the jamming, because we bring real hot news which the regime always keen to keep them secret.
EEDLE: Give me some examples of stories youve broken recently.
FAQIH: The disease of Prince Sultan. We were the first people to speak about Prince Sultan having cancer. We were the first people to specify the hospital he is going to be admitted to. We were the first people to speak about complications after the surgery.
FAQIH: The Saudis have said it frankly to the British that if you succeed in stopping the radio or the TV, we dont care what al-Faqih does after that, even give him asylum. So their aim is to stop our activity by any means. But because they cannot stop the TV relying on the law, they want to fabricate anything against me. And the current attempt is to link me to this alleged assassination attempt on Abdullah.
FAQIH: It is quite versatile and easy. I mean, anybody in the team can do it.
FAQIH: As much as technology is making it easy for oppressive regimes to spy on their opponents, and to use technology to torture them and corner them and put them in jail, it is also an extremely useful tool to magnify your ability to defeat the oppressors. I do not need a huge team to run this studio. Anybody of the team can do this job.
EEDLE: And you are here on your own at the moment.
FAQIH: Yes. It does not need a huge expertise. In a few minutes you will learn this programme .All what you need is the facts. All it needs is good intention, sincere intention so that people like you and like your project.
EEDLE V/O: There have been suggestions in the media from Saudi officials that link Dr Faqih with an alleged assassination plot against Crown Prince Abdullah.
NAWAF OBAID, Saudi security consultant: That is actually being pursued very much. This is becoming the central focus point of any case thats being built up against Saad al-Faqih and his associates he was obviously not the only one involved in this. The British government, to its credit, is very actively pursuing that, as are the Americans and other countries that had an indirect role in this scheme. Now, Saad al-Faqihs position here was more of a coordinator. He coordinated between the Libyans and between the people in Saudi Arabia who were supposedly going to carry out this attack. He took the names from an associate of his who actually lives in London and passed on the information. So not only was he a faciliator but he was a coordinator of such an attack, that was basically aimed at decapitating the Kingdom of its senior leadership. If thats not terrorism, then I dont know what terrorism means.
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FAQIH: Another list of names Another list of names.EEDLE: With their phone numbers?
FAQIH: No, the people who send by fax, they dont send their numbers. Those that use the text machine, they do.
FAQIH: Now this person is very clear He has sent his own ID card what they call it hafizat al-nufus, civil record, to prove that this is a real person.
FAQIH: Now here is another way of getting those names, this is the main way actually, we rely on this way actually in receiving the names and numbers and details.
FAQIH: So the list has made people braver than before. It has proved to people that they have brothers and supporters everywhere and they are ready to come together, so you are not alone. There are thousands and thousands of people who are like you, not only having your greifs and problems but they are actually ready to sacrifice for the things they believe in. That is the main point. Now next stage would be insteaed of sending the names to us to put on the screen, real people should come together and do something, whether it is a vigil or a demonstration or a strike or something like that.
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EEDLE: Youve been doing this for 10 years, Saad, from London, although something could happen tomorrow, you could be doing this for another 10 years or 20 years.
FAQIH: Although I am optimistic that this will not be happening for 10 years, because there has been a logorithmic increase in our activity, especially since we started the TV station, although I am optimistic that it will not take more than a few months, by the maximum two years, even without our activity, probably by problems inside the regime itself, although I am optimistic about all this, I think I am ready psychologically to go for another 20 years.
EEDLE: You must be very tired after three hours on air.
FAQIH: Well, Im used as a surgeon sitting on the table for 7 hours sometimes. I remember one operation once I needed 11 hours.
EEDLE: What was the operation?
FAQIH: Vascular operation, delicate vascular operation. Because also I come from a sort of underground organisation, we have intense discussions. I am used to long discussions. I remember one discussion once we had seven continuous hours of discussions. I am always a troublemaker. I am always the one who holds one side of the panel against another panel.
FAQIH (Arabic): Im going to wash for prayers.
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