Jihad Blogger

• Prize
• Photographer
  Hazel Thompson, United Kingdom
• Date of Photograph
  online
• Website
  http://www.hazelthompson.com

Portrait of Malika El Aroud.
Jihad Blogger, Brussels, April 2008

By her computer in her living room at her home in Brussels.

She is a passionate believer in bin Laden's jihad and devotes her time to running a Web site promoting it.
Gaining a big following on her website she has become a popular figure to female Islamists.

Malika is the widow of Abdessater Dahmane, who On September 9, 2001, assassinated Ahmed Shah Massoud, the legendary leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in Afghanistan.

• Biography
  HAZEL THOMPSON BIOGRAPHY: Hazel Thompson (D.O.B 1978) is a British multi award winning photojournalist based in London. After beginning her photographic career in 1997 with a local newspaper in South London, Hazel now works freelance on assignments worldwide for leading international publications such as the New York Times, the Observer Magazine, Le Monde 2, Politiken, and many others. Hazel?s passion is to photograph social and humanitarian subjects; injustice towards women and children, as well identity within religion, being amongst her central themes. Working closely with NGOs she often tackles sensitive and sometimes controversial subjects. In 2005 Hazel was a key part in the Global campaign & report on ?Kids Behind Bars? (as seen on ITN & CNN) where, posing undercover as an aid worker, she was able to capture exclusive images of children illegally imprisoned inside Filipino jails. Most recently her essay on the UK?s teenage runaways- ?Home & Away? evolved from a piece for the Observer Magazine into a three part news series for channel FIVE news, where hazel reported and presented the story on camera in addition to her still images being used to illustrate the issue. Hazel was also selected by The British Council to represent the best of British Photojournalism as an arts ambassador to Uzbekistan. This relationship evolved into a more recent commission for Hazel to document the role of women in Qatar and Bahrain as part of a international project called ?My Father?s House?, an exhibition that will tour the region for the next three years.