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heralds the channel's desire to recover the credibility that took 15 years to build and only six months to lose. Court, Luis Moreno Ocampo. | was the first, through Russia Today (RT), to warn against the manipulation. And again | was ridiculed by some newspapers, until Saif al-Islam Gaddafi turned up in person to wake up the journalists holed up at the Rixos Hotel and lead them to he real Bab al-Azizia square. Questioned in Arabic about such lies by channel France 24, the President of the National Transitional Council of Libya, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, chalked it up to a war stratagem and said that he was delighted to have hus accelerated the fall of Gaddafi's Jamahiriya. About the Author: Thierry Meyssan is a French intellectual and the founder and chairman of the Voltaire Network as well as the Axis for Peace Conference. His columns specialising in international relations are featured in daily newspapers and weekly magazines in Arabic, Spanish and Russian. His last two books published in English are 9/1: The Big Lie and Pentagate. He can be contacted via the Voltaire Network at http://www.voltairenet.org. What Future for Al Jazeera? The conversion of Al Jazeera into a propaganda tool or the recolonisation of Libya was not achieved without he knowledge of the Emir of Qatar but, indeed, under is leadership. The Gulf Cooperation Council was the first to call for an armed intervention in Libya, and Qatar was the first Arab country to join the Contact Group. The Emir funnelled weapons to the Libyan "rebels" before sending in his own ground troops, especially during the Battle of Tripoli. In exchange, he obtained he privilege of controlling all the oil trade on behalf of he National Transitional Council. It is too early to say whether the resignation of Wadah hanfar marks the end of his mission in Qatar, or if it Endnotes 1. See interviews with the author at http:/Awww.voltairenet.org 2. Tahboub, Dima Tareq, "The war on al-Jazeera", The Guardian, 4 October 2003, http://tinyurl.com/8xxmerp 3. Voltaire Network, "The Arab press in the firing line’, 15 September 2003, http://www.voltairenet.org/a30011 4. Voltaire Network dossier on Sami al-Hajj, http:/tinyurl.com/7plu76x 5. For example, "Al-Jazeera staged huge rally in Moscow against Bashar al-Assad”, Voltaire Network, 4 May 2011, http://www.voltairenet.org/al69722 THE STATE OF QATAR atar has been ruled as an absolute monarchy by the Al Thani family since the mid-I9th century. Formerly a British protectorate noted mainly for pearling, it became independent in 1971 and has become one of the region’s wealthiest states due to its enormous oil and natural gas revenues. The most important positions in Qatar are held by members of the Al Thani family or close confidants of the family. Since 1992, Qatar has built intimate military ties with the United States and is now the location of the US Central Command’s Forward Headquarters and its Combined Air Operations Center. Qatari Law and Human Rights In common with other Arab countries of the Persian Gulf, sponsorship laws exist in Qatar. These laws have been widely described as akin to modern-day slavery. The sponsorship system means that a worker may not enter the country without having a kafeel, or sponsor, and cannot leave without the kafeel’s permission (an exit permit must first be awarded by the kafeel). The sponsor has the right to ban the employee from entering Qatar within two to five years of his first departure. Various governmental sponsors have recently exercised their right to prevent employees from leaving the country, effectively holding them against their will for no good reason. Some individuals after re-signing have not been issued with their exit permits, denying them their basic right to leave the country. Many sponsors do not allow the transfer of one employee to another sponsor. Qatar is a destination for men and women from South Asia and Southeast Asia who migrate willingly but are subsequently trafficked into involuntary servitude as domestic workers and labourers and, to a lesser extent, into commercial sexual exploitation. The most common offence is forcing workers to accept worse contract terms than those under which they were recruited. Other offences include bonded labour, withholding of pay, restrictions on movement, arbitrary detention, and physical, mental and sexual abuse. According to the “Trafficking in Persons Report” by the US Department of State, men and women who are lured into Qatar by promises of high wages are often forced into underpaid labour. The report states that Qatari laws against forced labour are rarely enforced and that labour laws often result in the detention of victims in deportation centres, pending the completion of legal proceedings. The report places Qatar at Tier 3, as one of the countries that neither satisfies the minimum standards nor demonstrates significant efforts to come into compliance. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar) 14 * NEXUS DECEMBER 2011 - JANUARY 2012 www.nexusmagazine.com