Mahmoud Al-Sahlawi as his vice president and Khalaf al-Mana’i as the finance minister (1) , contrary to what was written in some academic studies (2) . The committee was expanded to also include Hussein Jafar and Abdelwahab Fakhro from Qtel (given that Qtel provided satellite services in the country), Adnan al-Sharif and Atif Dilqamoni, who was charged with administrative affairs. This committee began to meet on a daily basis in a house near the old transportation administration build- ing in Fereej Kulaib in Doha. The meetings used to last from the morn- ing to the evening (3) . Legal Path to Al Jazeera’s Founding On 8 February 1996, a law was decreed in Doha, establishing the Qatar Public Satellite Channel Corporation, which was formally published in newspapers on 19 March 1996 (4) . In its first article, the law establishes: “a public, independent organisation, legally known as the ‘Qatar Public Satellite Channel Corporation, with an independent budget and headquartered in the city of Doha, and with permission to establish branches or offices, or to employ correspondents within and beyond Qatar, and to be run by commercial practices”. The third article established a Board of Directors who were to be appointed by the Emir for a time period and compensation determined by him. This law also spelled out the Board’s powers (5) . After this law, Emiri declaration num-
vember 2006). (1) Hussein Jafar, personal interview, Ibid.
(2) See for example, Louay Y. Bahry, “The New Arab Media Phenomenon: Qatar’s Al-Ja- zeera”, Middle East Policy ”, Vol. VIII, No. 2, (June 2001), pp. 89–90. Bahry’s mistake was also relayed in Abdulkarim Ziani’s PhD thesis “La Chaîne Al-Jazira et la Guerre Contre l’Irak: Couverture Médiatique et Traitement de l’Information”, (Grenoble 3 University, France, 2007), p. 32.
(3) Hussein Jafar, personal interview, Ibid.
(4) See the text of this law at https://bit.ly/372h3ca.
(5) In 2001, the name “Qatar Public Satellite Channel Corporation” was replaced with “Al Ja- zeera Satellite Channel”, in accordance with Law 21, which was decreed in the same year. The First Article of the law addressed changes to the original Law 1, which established the channel
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