correspondent in Jerusalem. In December 2005, the BBC told Broadcast magazine that Guerin had spent two years longer in the Jerusalem posting than the normal three-year rotation usual for its correspondents. Former Director General of the BBC Greg Dyke wrote: "I have no doubt that the decision by the BBC to pull their Middle East correspondent Orla Guerin out of the region and send her to South Africa was part of the normal rotation of BBC news correspondents around the world. However, it was pretty bad timing to announce it within days of Director General Mark Thompson's visit to Israel where he had a meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon". She became the BBC's Africa correspondent, based in Johannesburg, in January 2006. After this, Guerin was the BBC's correspondent based in Islamabad, Pakistan. In October 2015, former BBC chairman Lord Grade wrote to James Harding, the Head of BBC News, criticising Guerin's Middle East reporting. In the letter, which was published in The Jewish Chronicle, Grade faulted her reporting for assuming "equivalence" between Israel and the Palestinians. According to Grade: "it was improper of the correspondent to claim that 'there's no sign of involvement by militant groups', before immediately showing footage of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) banners at the home of a 19-year-old terrorist who carried out a deadly knife attack at Lion's Gate in Jerusalem on October 3". On 23 February 2018, Guerin published an investigative report titled "The shadow over Egypt", where she reported the alleged forced disappearance of Egyptian Nationals, including a young female called Zubeida, whose mother claimed was kidnapped by security forces in April 2017. On 26 February 2018 a live interview was broadcast on Egyptian ON TV network, where Zubeida and her husband were interviewed by Amr Adib, a prominent pro-regime reporter. The interview revealed that Zubeida had been estranged from her mother since April 2017, got married and had just had a baby just two weeks prior to the BBC report. However, on 27 February 2018, Zubeida's mother stated in a live phone-in interview with the Istanbul-based opposition Mekameleen TV station that she stood with all her previous claims and implied that Zubeida was under duress to perform the interview. On 28 February 2018, reports emerged that Zubeida's mother was arrested by the Egyptian security forces. In 2019, Guerin was the BBC correspondent in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, during the 2019