Who killed my grandfather?
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 16 April 2022
⏱️ 62 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Beirut, 1974. It is the height of the Cold War. A prominent Yemeni politician is shot dead in his car. Some say, had he lived, Yemen would be a different country today. The killer was never caught, the assassination never investigated.
Political assassinations in the Middle East are almost always unsolved, and reliable evidence can be extremely hard to find. The lack of accountability in these cases is often seen as the reason for the pervasiveness of assassinations in the region. In Yemen, power struggles over the last 60 years have left a long list of murdered political figures. One particular case, the unsolved murder of Yemen’s former foreign minister in 1974, sent shockwaves across the country, and was covered widely in the region and then in the West. Mohamed Noman was a liberal and progressive politician who was building a different path for Yemen, away from authoritarian rule. His death at the early age of 41 had arguably paved the way for decades of military rule in Yemen.
In this documentary, his granddaughter, Mai Noman, sets off on a mission to investigate who could have been behind his murder, almost 50 years after his death.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | 1974 Beirut, Lebanon |
| 0:05.0 | It's around 9 o'clock in the evening. |
| 0:09.0 | A car drives up to a busy traffic light in the residential area of Al-Zorif. |
| 0:14.0 | The light changes to red. The car stops. |
| 0:18.0 | Another car edges towards the intersection and pulls up right next to the first car. |
| 0:24.0 | A man takes out a gun and aims. |
| 0:28.0 | He fires bullets at the driver of the first car, hitting his hands and stomach before he quickly ducks down. |
| 0:36.0 | He lives, but the shooter is not too bothered. It's the passenger he's after. |
| 0:42.0 | The gunshots keep coming. This time in the direction of the passenger. |
| 0:47.0 | They hit his head and chest. |
| 0:52.0 | The shooter takes off quickly and the car disappears into the night. |
| 0:57.0 | Shortly afterwards at the hospital, the passenger is pronounced dead. |
| 1:02.0 | News of his murder spreads around the world. |
| 1:06.0 | The Mertielo was originally from Yemen, a sadad Muhammad Naman. |
| 1:11.0 | I bet you are more in the loss of a great politician. |
| 1:14.0 | I think if Muhammad had lived another 20-30 years, Yemen would have been a totally different country. |
| 1:21.0 | The assassination of Muhammad Naman, North Yemen's former foreign minister almost 50 years ago, was never solved. |
| 1:29.0 | And his family never got justice. |
| 1:32.0 | That man was my grandfather. And I want to find out who killed him. |
| 1:40.0 | I'm May Naman, a BBC journalist. |
| 1:44.0 | I call Yemen my home, but for the last decade, the UK has been my base. |
| 1:50.0 | From here, I've covered all the major developments in the Middle East, the hope of the Arab Spring, the tightening grip of autocracy that followed, |
... |
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