“…on June 10, 1999, Al-Jazeera, the iconoclastic satellite television station located in the Kingdom’s [Saudi Arabia’s] tiny neighbor, Qatar, lived up to its growing reputation for revolutionizing television in the Arab world by airing a ninety-minute documentary on bin Laden…The documentary aired on a Thursday evening, the beginning of the Muslim weekend, to ensure a maximum audience. ‘The streets in Riyadh [Saudi Arabia] were deserted,’ a resident of the capital recalled. ‘Everyone was watching Al-Jazeera.’…That reestablished him as alive and human.”
– Jonathan Randal, Osama, Pages 84-85