Ahmad Mansour

Ahmad El-Sayed Mansour is an Egyptian journalist, broadcaster, writer and trainer at the Al Jazeera Media Institute. He presents ‘Witness to the Age’ and ‘Without Borders’ on Al Jazeera and has combined field reporting, political interviewing, writing and media training.

He was born in Kafr El-Dawwar in Egypt’s Beheira Governorate in 1962, where his father worked for the Kafr El-Dawwar Spinning and Weaving Company. When he was four, the family returned to his parents’ home village of Minya Samnoud in Dakahlia Governorate. At the kuttab, Sheikh Jaafar Al-Murshedy taught him to read and write and guided him in memorising ten parts of the Qur’an. Early memorisation fostered his love of Arabic and Qur’anic stories and led to a wider passion for history, books and novels. He saved his limited pocket money to buy books. At thirteen, he visited the Cairo International Book Fair for the first time with only three Egyptian pounds; the volumes he bought formed the beginning of a personal library that now contains thousands. From childhood, he dreamed of becoming one of the authors whose work others would read.

His leadership ability appeared early. Fellow pupils elected him President of the Student Union at Minya Samnoud Preparatory and Secondary School throughout his studies, from the first year of preparatory school to the second year of secondary school. During the same period, he managed the school radio throughout each academic year.

He graduated from secondary school with distinction. Teachers encouraged him to study literature, both to develop his writing and to support his ambition of working in journalism. At Mansoura University’s Faculty of Arts, his wide reading helped him form strong relationships with professors, many of whom had been seconded from Cairo University to the newly established faculty; he belonged to its second cohort. While studying, he began corresponding with newspapers and magazines and writing news reports and articles. His knowledge later led to work with Dar Al-Wafa for Printing and Publishing, which developed into a recognised publishing house. He evaluated manuscripts, selected books and wrote publishers’ introductions before becoming Director of Publications and Publishing. Three years of responsibility for author relations gave him substantial professional experience.

Journalism remained his principal passion and ambition. He looked outside Egypt for an opportunity to learn the profession properly and work beyond government and party restrictions. Several offers failed to meet his aspirations, but at the beginning of 1987 he was asked to cover the Afghan war for the Kuwaiti magazine Al-Mujtama while Afghanistan was under Soviet occupation. He regarded the assignment as an exceptional chance to establish himself as a journalist and accepted it immediately. In Pakistan, he found few Arab reporters covering the war except on occasional visits. After studying the field for two months, he chose to work independently, contributing to Al-Mujtama and other newspapers and magazines. His reports and interviews with Afghan leaders appeared on Al-Mujtama’s covers and on the front pages of the Emirati newspaper Al-Ittihad.

After three years of field reporting and hundreds of published articles, Abdullah Al-Ali Al-Mutawa, then Chairman of Al-Mujtama, and its Editor-in-Chief, Dr Ismail Al-Shatti—later a Kuwaiti minister and Deputy Prime Minister—invited him to move to Kuwait as Managing Editor rather than as an ordinary staff writer. At twenty-seven, he would become the youngest managing editor of a Gulf newspaper or weekly political-news magazine. Although he initially declined the attractive offer, negotiations continued for six months. Al-Mutawa eventually visited Pakistan and persuaded him to accept. Mansour spent two weeks in Kuwait in June 1990 meeting Al-Shatti, the chairman and board members, then returned to Pakistan to conclude his work and professional commitments before taking up the new post.

He arrived at Kuwait Airport at dawn on 2 August 1990 amid tension and reports of a possible Iraqi invasion. Few passengers left the airport with him. At his hotel in central Kuwait City, he sensed that the situation was unstable; an hour later, artillery fire began. He went outside to investigate and found Iraqi forces in the centre of the city as disorder spread around them.

Back at the hotel, he contacted Dr Ismail Al-Shatti, who asked him to come to Al-Mujtama’s offices. Two days later, Al-Shatti offered him a choice between leaving Kuwait and remaining with its people, who had decided to stay. With the situation still uncertain, Mansour chose to remain and regard the experience as another chapter in his journalism. For nearly two months, he lost contact with his family. A single, intermittently functioning satellite telephone provided the only connection. He stood with the people of Kuwait as one of them and helped edit an underground newspaper urging residents to remain in the country and resist the occupation.

As the Iraqi army’s conduct became increasingly violent, members of the Kuwaiti resistance established a clandestine newspaper called Al-Murabitun and asked Mansour to edit it. Six issues circulated inside Kuwait. Possession of a copy became dangerous, and Iraqi forces began arresting readers and searching for the newspaper’s offices, editor and printing site. Those responsible for Al-Murabitun therefore asked him to leave urgently for London, where arrangements had been made to publish it as a weekly. He travelled through Iraq to the United Arab Emirates, where he held residency, and from there to London.

Al-Murabitun continued publishing from London until Kuwait’s liberation. Mansour then returned to Kuwait and resumed his plan to develop Al-Mujtama. During his years as Managing Editor, it became one of the Arab world’s leading magazines and circulated widely across the Gulf and beyond. He wrote both its editorials and a weekly column entitled “Without Borders”, which later became an Al Jazeera programme, in addition to investigations, interviews and analysis. He recruited dozens of thinkers and writers from around the world, including many from the West, and established a correspondent network spanning more than forty countries. Distribution reached 120 countries. Mansour felt that he had realised his ambition to make Al-Mujtama an Arab counterpart to Time and Newsweek, grounded in an Arab and Islamic perspective.

His coverage during the Bosnian War became a defining moment in his reporting career. He entered besieged Sarajevo through a tunnel dug beneath the airport and spent an entire month with its residents in severe winter weather, without electricity or basic necessities. He interviewed President Alija Izetbegović and his deputy Ejup Ganić and documented the city’s suffering in Al-Mujtama. He later published the material as “Under the Barrage of Fire in Sarajevo”.

After his success at Al-Mujtama, he decided to move from print to the wider audience and broader possibilities of television journalism. His friend Asaad Taha told him that a television news channel was preparing to broadcast from Qatar and hoped to join its team. Mansour followed the project with interest. During a business trip to London in November 1996, a friend told him that Al Jazeera had begun broadcasting and described its distinctive approach to news. They watched a bulletin together, and the channel gave him the impetus to pursue television.

He returned from London to Kuwait with Al Jazeera in mind and proposed two programmes: “Without Borders”, the title of his weekly Al-Mujtama column, and “Witness to the Age”, an idea that had begun to form during his interviews with Afghan leaders while covering the war.

Mansour did not expect Al Jazeera to respond quickly, but at the beginning of February 1997 the management invited him to an interview in Doha. Following a lengthy meeting with Director-General Mohammed Jassim Al-Ali and Vice-Chairman Mahmoud Al-Sahlawi, his appointment was approved. At his own request, he would first complete at least six months of training so that he could study every aspect of television journalism in depth before preparing his programmes.

After the meeting, he returned to Kuwait to resign. Board Chairman Abdullah Ali Al-Mutawa initially refused to accept the resignation and offered to address any financial or administrative concern if Mansour remained. Mansour held Al-Mutawa, from whom he had learned a great deal, in high regard. After a long discussion and mediation, the chairman accepted the decision and held a large farewell ceremony in Mansour’s honour.

He began work at Al Jazeera on 5 May 1997 as a newsroom journalist, learning from experienced television professionals including Sami Haddad, Jamil Azar and Ahmed Al Sheikh. Three weeks later, Director-General Mohammed Jassim Al-Ali asked him to conduct a practice interview for “Today’s Interview” with Khaled Meshaal, head of Hamas’s political bureau, who was visiting Doha. Management was sufficiently impressed to broadcast the training interview on 4 June 1997, marking Mansour’s first appearance on Al Jazeera.

He was then assigned to present “Sharia and Life” for six months before launching the two programmes he had proposed, “Without Borders” and “Witness to the Age”. The success of “Sharia and Life” and its high audience ratings led management to extend his tenure for another year, during which he began recording episodes of “Witness to the Age”.

He transformed “Sharia and Life” from a conventional religious programme focused on jurisprudential rulings into a contemporary discussion of life through Islam’s wider perspective. Episodes addressed economics, politics, ethics, conduct and relations between Muslims and others. His guests brought together scholars of Islam and Sharia with specialists in medicine, economics and other fields.

One episode brought together the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, and Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi in dialogue. In another widely discussed programme for adults, Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi—may God have mercy on him—addressed marital relations under Islamic law. He saw no embarrassment in discussing the subject with viewers because it concerned matters of religion.

After he began presenting “Sharia and Life”, he prepared to launch “Without Borders” and “Witness to the Age”. Because the latter was recorded and examined major stages of modern history, preparation began a full year before transmission. Among those interviewed in advance were Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder and leader of Hamas; Lieutenant General Saad al-Din al-Shazly, former Chief of Staff of the Egyptian Armed Forces and architect of the October War plan; Prince Talal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud; and Lieutenant General Mashhour Haditha al-Jazi, former Chief of Staff of the Jordanian Armed Forces and a commander at the Battle of Karama, in which the Jordanian army and Palestinian fedayeen defeated the Israeli forces.

Al Jazeera launched “Without Borders” and “Witness to the Age” simultaneously in the first week of February 1999. “Witness to the Age” aired on Sundays, while “Without Borders” aired on Wednesdays. The latter questioned serving presidents, ministers and political leaders live; the former examined modern Arab history with former presidents, ministers and leaders who had helped shape events or witnessed them.

He edited and published the testimony of several guests as books. “Witness to the Age” consequently became an important historical reference on Arab countries and many of their rulers and governments.

“Without Borders” conducted live interviews with decision-makers, politicians and thinkers, including hundreds of Arab and international leaders. Mansour continued presenting his programmes for nearly a quarter of a century, broadly corresponding to Al Jazeera’s history at the time documented by the source edition. His television interviews totalled more than 2,500 hours.

The April 2004 Battle of Fallujah was a decisive episode in the American occupation of Iraq. For special coverage marking one year since the invasion, Al Jazeera assigned senior presenters across the country: Mansour to Fallujah, Mohammed Krishan to Baghdad and Abdul Qadir Ayyad to southern Iraq. US forces surrounded Fallujah the night before Mansour and his team were due to arrive. They nevertheless broke through the cordon and became the only television crew inside the besieged city. For more than a week, they broadcast live day and night, making Al Jazeera the principal source of images and information from Fallujah for television channels around the world.

Al Jazeera’s coverage of the Battle of Fallujah provoked strong criticism from United States officials. General Mark Kimmitt, then Deputy Commander of US forces in Iraq, repeatedly attacked Mansour by name at press conferences, while State Department spokesman Richard Boucher criticised him during an April 2004 briefing held as Qatar’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Hamad bin Jassim, visited Washington. The Daily Mirror later published documents reporting that US President George W. Bush had considered striking Al Jazeera’s headquarters in Qatar. Mansour’s Fallujah reporting remains a significant episode in both his own career and Al Jazeera’s record of war coverage.

His willingness to address contentious subjects brought many difficulties, including an assault in Cairo during Egypt’s 2005 parliamentary elections.

He prepared a series of interviews with leaders of Egypt’s principal political parties, including the ruling National Democratic Party. An interview with its Assistant Secretary-General, Minister Kamal Al-Shazly, was arranged for 2 November 2005, but Al-Shazly withdrew at the last moment and stopped returning calls. Mansour contacted the party’s Secretary-General, Minister Safwat Al-Sharif, who promised to examine the matter but also ceased responding. Mansour then explained the dispute to viewers during the live introduction to “Without Borders” and sharply criticised those involved. On 9 November 2005, while he was waiting for a guest outside Al Jazeera’s office, two large men approached and severely assaulted him. They said that the attack was a message from Muammar Gaddafi before fleeing as bystanders looked on in shock.

Minutes after the assault, Mansour appeared live on air with visible injuries. He submitted an urgent report to the Minister of Interior and told viewers what had happened. The Public Prosecution investigated, but the inquiry produced no result at the time.

In late 2011, several months after the Libyan revolution, a Libyan security official told him that the two men who had attacked him in Egypt were intelligence agents. They had been detained and had confessed to that assault and other crimes. He travelled to Tripoli and met them at the office of the Undersecretary of Defence. They described the plan, identified the Libyan officers involved and said that the intended blow to his head was meant either to kill him or cause permanent injury. According to their account, he had been selected because an attack on a prominent Al Jazeera presenter would attract attention and send a wider message.

Mansour took a prominent part in Egypt’s 25 January Revolution, acting not only as a media figure but as a citizen concerned for his country. The source edition records that he had a sharp dispute with Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi after the Mohamed Mahmoud events, in which thousands of revolutionaries were killed or wounded. Mansour said he had gathered evidence implicating the Military Intelligence Service, then headed by Al-Sisi, and its military arm. According to the account, this anger later contributed to his being accused in a case concerning the torture of a person in Tahrir Square. He described the charges as fabricated and intended to destroy his reputation. After a conviction in absentia and an Interpol pursuit, he was arrested in Berlin in 2015 following Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’s visit to Germany.

Mansour presented the German authorities with an Interpol document stating reservations about an international pursuit and asking member states not to act because the organisation’s second protocol applied to convictions in political or religious cases. The German authorities nevertheless detained him. The case dominated Arab, German and wider Western news coverage and led bulletins in Germany and elsewhere, including on Al Jazeera.

Dozens of reports and articles appeared during his detention. German authorities released him without conditions or investigation on 22 June 2015. Renate Künast, former leader of Germany’s Green Party and then Chair of the German Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee, received him in her parliamentary office. She told him that his case had prompted Germany to tighten extradition law to protect wanted people, particularly political figures placed on lists by authoritarian regimes.

Before joining Al Jazeera, he had published more than ten books and over two thousand articles and investigative reports. After moving to the channel, he wrote a weekly column for the Qatari newspaper Al-Watan, which later became a daily article for more than ten years. His work also appeared in Arab publications including Al-Watan, Egypt’s Al-Shorouk and Al-Osboa, Oman’s Al-Shabiba and Morocco’s Al-Massae. In total, he published more than six thousand articles.

He has published more than twenty books. Among the best known are accounts of war reporting: “Under the Barrage of Fire in Afghanistan”, “Under the Barrage of Fire in Sarajevo”, “The Story of the Fall of Baghdad”, “The Battle of Fallujah: America’s Defeat in Iraq”, “America’s Crimes in Iraq” and “The Culture of Chaos”. Several of his books have been translated into other languages.

He shares his professional experience by training journalists, media practitioners and broadcasters at Al Jazeera Media Institute, where he has delivered dozens of courses over more than fifteen years. He has also prepared an integrated curriculum in television journalism and presenting and, at the time documented by the source edition, was developing a book and television programme on Al Jazeera’s professional school and its pioneering experience in television journalism.