Author:
Publication: BBC News
Date: December 12, 2000
Not content with stealing
Nike's name, trademark pirates are using it to glorify America's most wanted
international fugitive, Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden.
T-shirts have shown up
in Afghanistan and in neighbouring Pakistan that feature the US sportswear
company's logo alongside a drawing of an AK-47 assault rifle.
The shirts are covered
in quotes which proclaim Osama bin Laden as: "The great mujahid (holy warrior)
of Islam."
A slogan also says "Jihad
is our mission," using the Islamic term for holy war.
Unsurprisingly Nike is
not impressed.
"We find it highly offensive,"
said spokesman Kirk Stewart after viewing a photograph of one of the shirts.
FBI's most wanted
In the United States
Osama bin Laden features on the FBI's 10 most wanted list.
He is accused of masterminding
the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in East Africa that killed 224 people,
including 12 US diplomats.
He is also a suspect
in the October suicide bombing of a US destroyer in Yemen that killed 17
American sailors.
But in some parts of
Pakistan's deeply conservative and tribal north-west, and in neighbouring
Afghanistan, where bin Laden hides out, he remains a popular figure.
Some admirers name their
sons after him.
Local hero
Osama bin Laden merchandise
is widely available and the T-shirts sell in Pakistan for 100 rupees, about
$2.
Also on sale for a few
cents apiece are posters featuring a calendar and a picture of a helicopter
with the slogan: "Look out United States, Osama is coming."
One retailer, Zarshad
Khan, said the shirts were manufactured in Faisalabad, in Pakistan's Punjab
province, and two dozen of them arrived at his factory in Peshawar carrying
the Nike logo.
Others, in different
colours, have been spotted in Afghan markets.
In Pakistan, copyright
laws are rarely enforced and the markets and bazaars throughout the country
are filled with products bearing counterfeit brand names.
Nike's spokesman said
that the Pakistani authorities had been notified.
