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Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Don't call Paris extremists 'terrorists', says BBC

The Parisian extremists who murdered 17 people in a series of attacks including the Charlie Hebdo massacre should not be called 'terrorists', a senior BBC executive has said.

Tarik Kafala, who runs BBC Arabic, said the term 'terrorist' was too 'loaded' and 'value-laden' to describe Said and Cherif Kouachi and their accomplice Amedy Coulibaly.

The Kouachi brothers shot dead 12 at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris and Coulibaly killed four at a Kosher deli after shooting dead a policewoman.

All three were eventually shot dead by French special forces after the Islamists all burst out of their hideouts two weeks ago.

Mr Kafalam runs the BBC's largest non-English language TV, radio and online news services, which have a weekly audience of 36million people.

He told The Independent: 'We try to avoid describing anyone as a terrorist or an act as being terrorist. What we try to do is to say that 'two men killed 12 people in an attack on the office of a satirical magazine'. That's enough.

'Terrorism is such a loaded word. The UN has been struggling for more than a decade to define the word and they can't. It is very difficult to.

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9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well don't these people "terrorize" others when they do what they do?

Anonymous said...

Really? This is just stupid. I think it's time for WE THE PEOPLE to quit looking cross eyed at those who won't call things what they are and just say STUPID.

And move on.

Anonymous said...

Paris cop shooting was a false flag...

Anyone with a spec of a brain would know that if you shot someone in the head at the closeness this guy did, there would be blood everywhere...

not to mention, you can see the bullet if it is even a bullet, ricochet off the concrete near the cops head...

Anonymous said...

its called terrorists in the United States but that might change if its done by a muslim

Anonymous said...

If a non muslim attacks a mosque and kill a dozen muslims I bet the muslims would call the shooter a terrorist and not an extremist.

Anonymous said...

the UN has been struggling for years to define the word - and they will continue as long as our tax dollars allow them to :(

Anonymous said...

How about lowlife murdering scumbags?

Anonymous said...

How about very unhappy, indignant people with very specific religious and political views who kill people to make a politicoreligious point?

Anonymous said...

7:15 funny...in other words Islamic terrorists.