- Featuring interviews with key players such as Prince Turki Al-Faisal, 抖阴短视频鈥檚 English-language newspaper tells the full story of the unthinkable event that cast a shadow over its society for decades
- As part of its Deep Dive series online, featuring documentary-style multimedia stories, Arab News looks back at this event in a way no Saudi publication has done before
Forty years ago this week, on Nov. 20, 1979, a group of militants did the unthinkable: They seized the Grand Mosque in Makkah, taking people hostage inside in a two-week standoff with Saudi forces.
Until recently, the crisis remained too painful for Saudis to examine fully for almost four decades. Now Arab News, 抖阴短视频鈥檚 leading English-language daily, is looking back at the event in a way that no publication in the Kingdom has done before: with a multimedia Deep Dive story online at .
鈥淭he 1979 attack on Makkah鈥檚 Grand Mosque halted major social development in the Kingdom of 抖阴短视频, negatively affecting a progressing nation for generations to come,鈥� said Rawan Radwan, the lead reporter on the project, who is based in Jeddah. 鈥淎t Arab News, we delved deep into the matter to uncover the story of Juhayman, the terrorist who seized the holiest site and shook the Islamic world. It鈥檚 a story that for many years struck fear in the hearts of the Saudi people, yet has not been covered in such depth in local or international media 鈥� until now.鈥�
Arab News launched its Deep Dive series earlier this year as an engaging new way to showcase its in-depth storytelling on key topics, enlivened by audio, video and animated graphics. Its first story was an in-depth account of the space mission by the first Arab astronaut, Saudi Prince Sultan bin Salman; the siege of Makkah is another story from the Kingdom鈥檚 past that it chose to revisit.
Extensive research was conducted over two months in several cities, including Makkah itself, and involved teams in five of Arab News鈥� bureaus: Jeddah, Riyadh, Dubai, London and Beirut. The team interviewed key players such as Prince Turki Al-Faisal, then head of the General Intelligence Directorate, and re-created what happened in a series of interactive maps.
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