June 1, 2003	Sunday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 29, 1424

PARIS: Reporters sans frontieres (RSF), the Paris-based international journalists’ rights organization, has condemned the dismissal of the Saudi newspaper Al Watan’s editor-in-chief, Jamal Khashoggi, who learned from senior officials on Tuesday that he was being fired.

His removal comes after the newspaper ran several reports and editorials openly criticizing the religious authorities, especially the mutawa (religious police).

Mr Khashoggi’s dismissal, says RSF secretary-general Robert Menard, was “an arbitrary and political decision”. “As one of the kingdom’s leading journalists,” he added, “Khashoggi is the victim of bitter rivalry between reformist and ultra-conservative currents within the Saudi establishment.”

Mr Menard said if the royal family intended to keep its promises of reform, especially regarding political liberalization, “then the old methods are no longer appropriate”.

Khashoggi is the Al Watan’s second editor-in-chief to be fired in a year. Qinan Al-Ghamdi, who was known for his incisive editorials, was forced to stand down from the same post on May 7 llast year. He had also called for political and religious reforms in his editorials.

Two months ago, the editor-in-chief of daily El Madina, Mohamed al Mokhtar al Fal, was fired at the interior minister’s behest after publishing a poem by Abdel Mohsen Mossalam on March 10 last year for exposing corruption.