New Films on Mohamed underway for BBC World News, US and worldwide release

BBC WORLD NEWS is to broadcast a new documentary on Mohammed Abu Muailek, the young Palestinian fighter-turned-dissident who spent two and a half years in a Gaza jail awaiting a possible death sentence,  and on film-maker Paul Martin’s own arrest.  It will include Abu Muailek’s own version of events, now that he has been released from his captivity.  It is expected to be broadcast in January 2012.

A film ROCKET MAN UNDER FIRE was shown four times by BBC WORLD NEWS in June 2010.  It was carried another four times in December as one of the channel’s films of the year.

In addition, an hour-long documentary is being made.   The film, being produced for American television and then available worldwide, will tell the amazing story of the friendship between Mohamed and an Israeli, and the efforts made to save Abu Muailek from imprisonment.  Brought together via their shared interest in computer technology and meeting only via Internet, the friends’ relationship helped change Mohamed’s life, converting him from a militant to a peace advocate inside the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. That led to his arrest in April 2009.

It will also show how Mohamed’s elder brother Yasser and British film-maker Paul Martin struggled to prevent Mohamed’s execution on apparently spurious charges of collaborating with the enemy.