I think the Swazi News is trying a little too hard to stand up its story that al Qaeda terrorists are in hiding in Swaziland.
This week the Swazi News claimed that Abdullah el-Faisal, who has been in the international news this week after being expelled from the United Kingdom once visited Swaziland.
But in its story published this week it gives no details of when el-Faisal was supposed to have been in Swaziland, nor does the newspaper give any evidence to back up his claim that he was ever in the kingdom.
The story in the Swazi News, an independent newspaper in Swaziland, followed one week after the newspaper claimed that 10 ‘Asians’ were in hiding in Swaziland, that they were members of an al Qaeda cell and that they were dangerous and might blow up the kingdom’s only airport at Matsapha. The newspaper reported all of this without one shred of evidence.
It also offered no evidence that el-Faisal was actually in Swaziland but it still felt able to say his entry to the kingdom, ‘clearly exposes our spongy intelligence and immigration screening procedures because the deported cleric has been on the global terrorists watch list that is normally circulated around the world by security agencies’.
The Swazi News’ editor, Thulani Twala, writing in his own newspaper on Saturday (9 January 2010) claimed ‘real terrorism is creeping into our social fabric’ but the Government of Swaziland ‘seems to be the only one that seeks to be in denial than to properly deal with the problem’. Again, where’s the proof?
If the Swazi News really believes there are al Qaeda terrorists in Swaziland can it please give us some evidence. The best Twala could come up with in his article this week was, ‘We just reported what we had heard.’
Heard? Which bar was his reporter propping up at the time?
