Today marks the ignominious first anniversary of the hacking of Qatar News Agency’s website by some misguided neighbours of Qatar as a prelude to the imposition of their unjust siege on the country on June 5, 2017.
On this day last year Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt shared the odious distinction of plotting against Qatar by planting fake news attributed to its leadership in its official state media outlet – Qatar News Agency (QNA).
QNA’s website was hacked in the early hours of May 24, 2017, by individuals in the UAE, as later revealed by international intelligence agencies – a criminal act that will go down in the annals of the region’s history as one of the darkest chapters.
The siege countries gained nothing except global opprobrium and ridicule by their reckless action, which has ruined relations between the GCC countries and sparked an intractable political crisis leading to the destruction of Gulf unity, violation of rights, tension and most importantly, severance of family ties and erosion of trust between the brotherly states of the region, which until then had been known all over the world for peaceful co-existence and good neighbourliness in the crises-fraught Middle East.
The siege countries’ attempts to blackmail Qatar by accusing it of supporting terrorism have not succeeded.
The fact that the international agencies co-operated with Qatar to prove the hacking crime committed by the UAE, which could not deny it, shows the lack of support globally for their illegal actions.
The hacking of the QNA website is a disgrace to those who planned and carried it out with active official support of a neighbouring country, whose involvement in the scandalous crime was revealed by Qatari and foreign investigators.
Without doubt, hacking any website of any agency in any country is an attack on its national security and a flagrant violation of the privacy of its institutions.
It is a crime for which the perpetrators should be held accountable by international law and the laws governing cybersecurity.
In Qatar’s case, the hacking of the QNA website was not only a cyber-crime but a political criminal act as well, as it was premeditated and a pretext to impose an unjust siege on the country, and harm all its inhabitants – men, women, children and even animals.
As the year unfolded, it became clear that the main aim of the siege countries was to break Qatar’s will and usurp its sovereignty.
Towards this end, the siege counties tried every trick in the book – threats, abuse, vitriol, bullying, fake news, unfounded charges, propaganda and according to some reports, even black magic. However, they have failed miserably in their attempts. They have underestimated Qatar’s strength and resilience.
The global support for Qatar and the steadfastness with which it has faced the manufactured crisis has disproved the siege countries’ baseless allegations.
