Tayseer Allouni

He interviewed Osama bin Laden following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, and was controversially convicted on terrorism-related charges in Spain in 2005.

After becoming a Spanish citizen in 1988 he held a number of jobs in Spain, including teaching Arabic and working in the municipality taxation office of the city of Ceuta.

Highlights of his career include On Monday September 26, 2005, a Spanish court found Alluni guilty of collaboration with al-Qaida, sentencing the Syrian-born, naturalized Spaniard to seven years in jail.

[4] Allouni, who insisted on his innocence throughout Europe's biggest al-Qaida trial, interviewed the group's leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan weeks after the September 11 attacks in the United States.

[5] Accused of acting as a financial courier to the group while in Afghanistan, Alluni, who had faced a maximum nine-year term,[citation needed] said in testimony he was only doing his job as a journalist.