Rageh Omaar

Rageh Omaar (b. July 19 1967, Mogadishu, Somalia) is a presenter on the nightly weekday documentary series Witness for Al Jazeera International. He is a Muslim, and used to be a BBC world affairs correspondent.

Career

Born in Somalia, the son of a wealthy businessman, Omaar came to Britain when he was 6. He was educated at Cheltenham College before reading Modern History at New College, Oxford. His career highlights include reporting live from war-torn Somalia and Iraq.

He began his journalistic career as a trainee for The Voice newspaper, and in 1991 he moved to Ethiopia where he freelanced as a foreign correspondent, working mainly for the BBC World Service. A year later, he returned to London to work as a producer and broadcast journalist for the BBC. He moved to South Africa after being appointed the BBC's Africa correspondent - his wife and children were based there through 2004, and his regular commuting made domestic life difficult http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,20029-2027561,00.html

During his coverage of the Iraq war, almost 90% of the population watched him on either the weekday BBC news bulletins, or on News 24. Many of his broadcasts were syndicated across the U.S., where the Washington Post labelled him the Scud Stud. He has written a book about his time as the BBC's Iraq correspondent called Revolution Day. The book deals with the effects of the Saddam Hussein regime, UN sanctions and the Iraq War on Iraqi civilians.

He is the recipient of an EMMA award for the best media correspondent.

Personal life

In 2000 he married Georgiana Rose "Nina" Montgomery-Cuninghame, the daughter of a Sir John Montgomery-Cuninghame of Corsehill, Bt. They live in Chiswick, West London, with their children Loula, 5, and Sami, 3 (ages as of February 2006)

Quotations

May 2006, Interview with The Independent: In the eyes of Rageh Omaar, Western news organisations are perpetrating a "fraud" on their viewers with their misleading coverage of the war in Iraq, the conflict in which he established himself as an internationally-recognised journalist http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article484048.ece

May 2006, BBC One's This Week: When I reported from Baghdad, I never doubted that the invasion would end in the overthrow of Sadaam Hussein. What I was sceptical about was what would follow afterwards. There was a honeymoon period, and it lasted 24 hours, during that memorable day when the statue of Sadaam Hussein was torn down. But that ended the day afterwards, and everything started unravelling from that moment on. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/this_week/5020238.stm

Works

An Islamic History of Europe. video documentary , BBC Four ^*: August 2005.

References