After Morocco’s Protest: Sky News Arabia fires its Washington-based Algerian correspondent Reda Bouchefra
Sources from the United Arab Emirates’ Sky News Channel confirmed that the channel’s management fired, Friday morning, its correspondent in Washington, the Algerian Reda Bouchefra, after Morocco protested the nature of his “provocative” questions that are not in line with the channel’s editorial line.
Official sources from within the channel confirmed to the Moroccan newspaper that the controversy raised by its correspondent in Washington, Algerian Reda Bouchefra, and the nature of his “provocative” questions, which are not in line with the editorial line of the channel, nor with the state funding it (the United Arab Emirates), which supports the Moroccan side of the Sahara, were a direct cause of the expulsion of the correspondent, who “deviated from the nature of his work.”
The same source confirmed that the channel received, on Thursday, a letter of protest from the Moroccan authorities regarding the nature of what it described as “provocations” carried out by the Sky News Arabia correspondent in the United Arab Emirates in Washington, when he posed questions related to the UN resolution on the Sahara to the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Morocco to the United Nations, Omar Hilale, yesterday, Thursday at the press conference held by Hilale following the Security Council vote on UN Resolution 2654 to extend the mission of MINURSO in the Sahara.
During the press conference that followed the UN Security Council resolution on the Sahara, on Thursday, Omar Hilale, Morocco’s permanent representative to the UN, was asked many questions by the Algerian journalist and correspondent of Sky News Arabia. These questions centered on “the accusations that Morocco has been leveling against Algeria alone in the case of supporting the Polisario Front,” as well as on “the fact that the Front is a founding member of the African Union and that many countries recognize it, not only Algeria,” to which the Moroccan ambassador responded by saying that “Algeria is the only country that created the Polisario, with its arms and diplomatic support. During the current year alone, it allocated $6 million to the Polisario (pressure groups) for the sake of the Polisario,” “It is Algeria that created the polisario, and it is Algeria that finances and defends it,” he said.
The Moroccan ambassador appeared angry at the questions of a channel belonging to a state that supports the Moroccan identity of the Sahara and has a consulate in the city of Laayoune, which was translated by the Moroccan authorities with a protest against the channel belonging to the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, which led to the official expulsion of its correspondent in Washington this morning.
