JUNE 13, 2000 Yosri Fouda, Al-Jazeera’s award-winning investigative correspondent and London bureau chief, was presented with the Kamal Adham Award for Outstanding Professional Performance at tonight’s annual awards dinner.

In making the award, Adham Center Director S. Abdallah Schleifer noted that this award is rarely given: “This will be only the third award of its kind in twelve years.” He said later that it was given to Fouda for his work in particular as an investigative journalist, writer, producer, and host of the award-winning show “Top Secret.”

Fouda graduated from the Adham Center in 1992, and immediately started teaching intensive editing courses tailored for professionals. He was the first Egyptian to be selected by the German foundation Fredreich Nauman to head a training workshop series for Egypt TV's presenters, producers, directors, camera operators and editors.

Fouda joined the first team which established the BBC World Service TV in Arabic in 1994 as senior roving reporter. For political reasons, the BBC Arabic TV lasted only two years but by then Fouda had acquired vast field experience having covered the war in Bosnia, the peace process in the Middle East and various conflicts in Africa. He moved on to the Associated Press TV headquarter in London, where in 1996 he co-founded the first and only Middle East desk of its kind, providing Arab TV channels with tailored news reports and syndicated TV wires. At the same time he helped build the infrastructure of the London-based Arab News Network (ANN).

Fouda joined the first team of Al-Jazeera Satellite Channel as UK and Western Europe Correspondent. A year later he had already secured an independent production office for in London for Al-Jazeera, of which he is now the bureau chief. This office currently puts up four live business bulletins, extensive political coverage of Western Europe, the weekly inter-active chat show “More than One Opinion” and the monthly investigative documentary series of “Top Secret,” which Fouda researches, edits and presents.

Al-Jazeera won its first official recognition when the very first program of “Top Secret” came back with the prize at the 1998 Cairo Radio & TV Production Festival. A more recent program from this series made headlines across the Arab world when Fouda managed against all odds to board a Boeing 767 simulator to prove the sceintific invalidity of the suicide theory in the last October Egyptair crash.

Yosri Fouda reporting from Bosnia