Jihad Sheilas

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

'Jihad Sheilas' weren't duped, says ABC

Story from: news.com

So apparently ABC says they didnt trick the ladies. Whats your thoughts on this?

FOR as long as ABC journalists Mary Ann Jolley and Renata Gombac have been working on Jihad Sheilas, tension has been mounting within the corridors of the national broadcaster.

Another ABC journalist, investigative reporter Sally Neighbour, had been working on securing the story of Australian women and radical Islam for the program she was working for, Four Corners.

But it was Jolley and Gombac who persuaded Raisah bint Alan Douglas and Rabiah Hutchinson to be interviewed on camera.

Jolley works for Foreign Correspondent and Gombac for the ABC's stand-alone investigative unit, which produces stories for programs across the news and current affairs division. They spent about six months working on this project, with a senior producer, Deb Masters, brought in at a later stage as executive producer.

Inside the ABC, the program's detractors say it has taken too long to make and has cost too much.

However, the ABC's head of national programs, Alan Sunderland, would not be drawn on the ABC's internal politics.

Alan Sunderland, who has managed the program for the news division, said when Jolley and Gombac told him they had secured interviews with the women, several options for telling the story were discussed, ranging from Four Corners through to Foreign Correspondent and The 7.30 Report to Australian Story and a one-off news special. It is understood Australian Story had no involvement at any stage in the project.

However, Alan Sunderland insists once the filming had started, the women were not given the impression it was for Australian Story. Based on the tone of the story and the type of material gathered, it was decided to commission a news special, he says. After initially co-operating, one and then both women withdrew their support.

Alan Sunderland rejects the accusation they were tricked into telling their story by a promise it would be on Australian Story, a subject-led format that has no narrator and allows subjects to tell their story at length.

"I am comfortable they have behaved with integrity," he said of Gombac and Jolley.

"The program was always going to be about two women who had not told their stories on television before.

"They understood they were doing it as a documentary-style program. They were told it would be fair and not necessarily sympathetic and they knew they would have no editorial control."

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Bali survivor slams Islam matriarch

Link to story here Thanks to news.com.au

A SURVIVOR of the first Bali bombing said the "star" of last night's ABC documentary Jihad Sheilas would be hunted down after her hardline comments about the victims.

Peter Hughes said Rabiah Hutchinson, the so-called matriarch of radical Islam in Australia, was uninformed and utterly insensitive.

"It's like going back to that moment when the suicide bomber was standing next to me," said Mr Hughes, who nearly died after the October 2002 attack in which 202 people, including 88 Australians, were killed.

Mr Hughes warned there would be some people in the community who would hunt down Ms Hutchinson, who, fearing exactly that, attempted to have the show stopped on the grounds it misrepresented the views of herself and friend Raisah bint Alan Douglas.

In the hour-long documentary, Ms Hutchinson, who was married to the former Australian leader of Jemaah Islamiah, the terror group responsible for the bombing, was asked about the attack.

"Do I feel for the people that died? Not as much as I feel for those 200 Afghani people that gave me and my children shelter," Ms Hutchinson said.

"Why? Because they weren't holidaying in someone's country, sometimes engaging in child pornography or pedophilia or drug-taking."

John Harrison, who lost his daughter Nicole in the bombing, said Ms Hutchinson's comments followed the news that the Bali bombers had been granted another appeal. "I hope to Christ that someone belonging to her, like a son or a daughter, gets killed somewhere along the line and she suffers like we have," he said.

Ms Douglas and Ms Hutchinson have accused the documentary makers of deceitful and unethical conduct, saying they were tricked into participating.

They have told The Australian they were approached separately by an ABC crew last year. They said they were explicitly and repeatedly told the material would be used on the ABC's long-running Australian Story, a show Ms Douglas described as patriotic and sympathetic. She was told the program would focus on the women's conversion to Islam, not their alleged links to extremists.

The women, neither of whom was allowed to see the program before it went to air last night, are concerned it portrays them as traitors.

Ms Hutchinson said she had already been abused after being recognised from a promotion for the show.

They delivered a letter of protest to the ABC's Sydney headquarters on Monday. Neither Ms Hutchinson nor Ms Douglas has ever faced terrorism-related charges but both are known to the authorities for their alleged links to extremists and terrorist groups.

Ms Hutchinson also mounted a spirited defence of her religion in the program but denied having any involvement with militants.

"I would defend Islam with my life," she said. "So that makes me a filthy, dirty, subhuman terrorist that deserves anything that anybody and everybody wants to do to them. Does that mean I'm going to go and lob grenades out of the bus in Lakemba? No, it doesn't."