Allouni hit fame with exclusive reporting from Afghanistan during the US-led war and is the only reporter who interviewed Laden.

CAIRO, March 14, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – Spain decided Monday, March 14, to release Tayseer Allouni, a star reporter for Al-Jazeera news channel, and place him under house arrest, a moved hailed by his supporters as a victorious outcome of an international campaign.

“We were just told that an administrative decree was issued, saying that Allouni would be released within two hours,” Haitham Al-Manna, head of the International Committee for the Defense of Allouni, told IslamOnline.net over phone from Paris.

The release order is expected to be carried out late on Monday night or early Tuesday, March 15.

Al-Manna said Allouni, who suffers several health problems, including heart ailments and a chronic back condition, would be placed under house arrest in the southern Spain city of Grenada while awaiting his trial.

Allouni, a Spaniard of Syrian origin, will have to report to police daily and will not be allowed to leave his home.

First arrested in September 2003, he was later released on bail on health grounds only to be re-arrested and jailed in November.

Allouni is one of 41 people charged by Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon with links to or membership of Al-Qaeda.

The veteran reporter, who hit fame with exclusive reporting from Afghanistan during the US-led war on Taliban, denies all charges, blaming the US for pressuring Spain to arrest him.

Allouni is the only world reporter who interviewed Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in October 2003.

Victory

Al-Manna lauded the new development as a victory for all those who have acted in Allouni’s defense.

“This Spanish government’s decision came out of pressures exercised at three levels,” he said in Arabic.

“At the official level, the Qatari government, itself under pressures from the public opinion, worked hard through diplomatic efforts to work for Allouni’s release.”

Mannaa, a Paris-based veteran Syrian human rights activist, also highlighted semi-official efforts, led by the Arab League, and non-official campaigns by regional and international human rights activists, to free Allouni.

“It is a battle on Allouni, in which he won so far,” he said, relishing in success.

The incarceration of the veteran reporter has sparked outrage among Arab and foreign human rights groups, journalists and colleagues.

Many see the controversial prosecution of Allouni as nothing less than an attack on the freedom of the press.

Innocent

Mannaa said he has no doubts about the innocence of Allouni, a position echoed by Arab and international human rights activists.

“We all know that the arrest of Allouni comes in the context of American pressures on Al-Jazeera in order to force it to divert from its policy which is perceived to be harmful to American hegemony which it tries to exercise on the hearts and minds of millions of viewers,” said the freetayseer.com, one of the Web sites dedicated to rally support for the reporter’s release.

Al-Jazeera has recently launched an intensive campaign, giving airtime to events that are held in support of Allouni.

Mannaa visited Allouni in prison on March 12, slamming the deplorable conditions of his detention.

He said the jailed reporter was denied health case despite his serious heart conditions.

Mannaa accused investigators of mixing up names and people in Allouni’s case by wrongly translating the tapped phone calls Allouni made in a Syrian dialect.