A note from Al Qaeda

We got a shock as one of our translators read our newspaper to us on the way to work Tuesday (6/19). On page 3, in a small item -- printed white on black for emphasis -- was a notice that the top editor and the reporter on security issues has received threats which had been judged credible and were under investigation by national security officials.

Local terrorists allied with Al Qaeda had threatened kidnapping and torture in an email and phone threat to the editor, according to the newspaper.

We figured the chances for a normal day at work had been shot and we were right.

The reporter's mother was at the newspaper, a little upset. She'd found out about the danger from the newspaper. The national editor -- for whom the reporter works directly -- had been unaware the article was going in. The publisher and top editor called for a staff-wide meeting -- a rare event in African newsrooms. And our boss immediately called a driver and headed to the newspaper.

We were concerned that the presence of westerners at the paper --when the terrorists have targeted them -- would endanger our co-workers. We also worried that we had learned about the threats from an article and not earlier. We also wondered how real the threat was or if it was real. Civil war between Islamist extremists and moderates in the 1990s had prompted the assassination of dozens of journalists, but there have been no threats since then until this one.

The top newspaper officials maintain they are being prudent, following security force suggestions they publicize the threats, but say they are not overly concerned. They believe that the terrorists were enraged by articles declaring that suicide is a sin in Islam so that Muslim suicide bombers -- like the one who hit Algiers April 11 -- were sinners. This kind of argument cost them volunteers, the editor said. Don't worry. He showed us the email letter he received. Our translators had a hard time wrestling the Arabic -- not very articulate and filled with mystical references and current events -- into English. When they were done, it mostly sounded to me like the crank and kook letters that come into all newsrooms.