Al Jazeera co-founder Shujaat Ali dies after heart attack

Shujaat Ali, a founding member of Al Jazeera’s online teams, died at age 54 following a heart attack. The incident occurred last week while he was returning home from work in his native Pakistan.

Ali is credited with creating the first animated caricatures for the web. He served as Pakistan’s first court artist, using sketches to document high-profile legal cases. He also held positions at various media organizations abroad before joining the Al Jazeera Arabic online service team.

Waqar Saeed, Ali’s son-in-law, told the Dawn newspaper that the artist had recently been collaborating with the Pakistan Air Force. Ali was buried in Qasimabad, Rawalpindi, a location chosen because his parents are interred there.

Ahmed El Amraoui, an editor at Aljazeera.com, recalled working with Ali during the site’s early development. El Amraoui said, “I had the privilege of working with Shujaat during the early days of Aljazeera.com. He was a very talented artist, but what made him stand out was how far ahead of his time he was.”

Awad Joumaa, manager of Digital Programs at Al Jazeera English, noted the uniqueness of Ali’s style within newsrooms. Joumaa stated that Ali’s cartoons were “unlike anything we were used to seeing in a news organisation… He drew everyone from Arafat to George Bush to Osama bin Laden.”

Joumaa remembered Ali’s pride in how public figures interacted with his work. “I remember the pride in his voice when he told me that presidents, prime ministers and rebel fighters passing through the newsroom would always stop to look at the wall where his cartoons hung,” Joumaa said. He added that Ali was an incredible voice in a genre where cartoons could make governments shake, similar to Palestinian artist Naji al-Ali.