The man who killed seven people in France last week–and was killed himself during a shootout in Toulouse, France–mailed a video of the killings to Al Jazeera before his death. French President Nicholas Sarkozy reportedly pleaded with the network not to air the videos, though the channel had already made up its mind regarding its decision.
In a statement, Al Jazeera said that it would not televise the video or any excerpt from it, and would not make it available to anyone that requested a copy.
“The Paris bureau received a video from an anonymous source [on Monday] entitled “Al-Qaeda attaque la France” (Al-Qaeda attacks France) that appears to show the recent killings in Toulouse and Montauban. Given its contents, we immediately passed the video on to the French police as we were duty bound to do and they are conducting their investigation. In accordance with al-Jazeera’s code of ethics, given the video does not add any information that is not already in the public domain, its news channels will not be broadcasting any of its contents.”
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