BBC journalists sacked after 'breakdown in trust'

The BBC has sacked two long-serving World Service journalists claiming a “total breakdown in trust” after the pair launched a series of unsuccessful employment tribunals against the broadcaster costing up to £1m (€1.5m).

Palestinian Adli Hawwari and Iraqi Dr Abdul Hadid Jiad brought 17 unsuccessful tribunal cases, 20 external appeals and “numerous” interlocutory hearings against the BBC over five years.

Yesterday the BBC said enough was enough and dismissed the two men, who were both producers with the broadcaster’s Arabic service.

A corporation spokesman said the BBC had spent up to £1m (€1.5m) in legal costs defending the cases, which ranged from the “frivolous to the ridiculous”.

He said there had been a “total breakdown in trust” and the two men had put “an untold strain on managers and the resources of the department”.

Dr Jiad, 50, joined the BBC in 1991 and launched five separate cases, the spokesman said. Mr Hawwari joined the BBC in 1987 and lodged 12 separate complaints.

The BBC said it spent 51 days in court in connection with claims made by the two men. Case files on the complaints filled “four wardrobes” in its legal department.

The spokesman said tribunal judges had rejected the pair’s claims as “frivolous” and “vexatious”.

“The BBC recognises that every employee has the right to raise individual concerns and grievances with their managers and to seek legal redress through the courts,” he said. “However, in the case of these two individuals, they have never accepted the outcome of either a BBC or court decision.

“We believe that the internal grievance procedure has been seriously abused and their actions and behaviour makes a proper working relationship impossible for the future.”

Dr Jiad and Mr Hawwari describe themselves as friends and have actively supported each others’ claims over the five years.

They have vowed to fight their dismissals, though they are not believed to have been given the right to appeal.

Dr Jiad described the World Service as “institutionally racist” and levelled the same claim at the tribunals which had heard both mens’ cases.

Mr Hawwari claimed the BBC was “exaggerating” the amount of time taken up by the cases he had launched, and claimed he had “offered to put the claims behind him” on “a number of occasions”.

Mr Hawwari is a member of the National Executive Committee of the National Union of Journalists, and several of his claims were backed by the union. Three were also supported by the Commission for Racial Equality.

Defending the men, NUJ deputy general secretary John Fray told the Guardian: “The BBC has laid itself open to accusations of the World Service being the lackeys of the Government. Is it a coincidence that two Arabic service journalists are sacked when a war over Iraq is on the horizon?”

The BBC described the NUJ’s accusations as nonsense.

The mens’ cases are not the first discrimination cases the BBC World Service has had to defend.

In April 2002 the corporation agreed an out-of-court settlement with a former journalist who claimed racial and sexual discrimination.

Sharan Sandhu said she was repeatedly passed over for promotion between 1991 and 1999 because of her colour and gender and claimed the BBC World Service was dominated by male journalists with a colonial mentality.