BRITAIN: Anti-war MP Mr George Galloway has hailed a "judicial flaying" for the Daily Telegraph after he won £150,000 in libel damages over claims he was in the pay of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Frank Millar, London Editor, reports
The Glasgow Kelvin MP, who was expelled from the Labour Party last year for comments on the Iraq war, said yesterday he was extremely angry at having been obliged to risk bankruptcy and homelessness and at being forced from public office to bring the action following a series of articles published in the newspaper in April 2003.
Mr Galloway - who was in the High Court to receive his "vindication" in the form of the award for damages and costs against the Telegraph, put at £1.2 million - later accused the newspaper of resorting to tactics involving "fabrication, forgery and counterfeit".
Telegraph Group Limited had denied libel, relying on the so- called Reynolds-defence of "qualified privilege" to argue it was responsible journalism and in the public interest to publish the contents of documents found in Baghdad on which the story was based.
However Mr Justice Eady said he was "obliged to compensate Mr Galloway in respect of the publications and the aggravated features of the defendants' subsequent conduct, and to make an award for the purposes of restoring his reputation". Declaring the allegations against Mr Galloway "seriously defamatory", the judge added: "I do not think those purposes would be achieved by any award less than £150,000."
The Telegraph's executive editor Mr Neil Darbyshire said the ruling was "a blow to the principle of freedom of expression in this country". Having been refused permission by Mr Justice Eady, he confirmed the newspaper would seek leave to appeal from the Court of Appeal against both the ruling on liability and the "excessive" award for damages.
"The Daily Telegraph published genuine documents that emanated from the highest levels of the Iraqi government and raised questions about the activities of Mr Galloway," Mr Darbyshire said. "If, as we understand the court to have held, English law offers no real protection to newspapers that publish documents which raise such important questions about the conduct of an elected MP, then freedom of expression is an illusion."
It had never been the newspaper's contention that the allegations contained in the document were true. "When we published the documents we did so believing their contents were important, should be made public and would, in due course, be investigated by the proper authorities."
The judge rejected the argument that the paper's coverage was no more than "neutral coverage" of documents discovered. He found the Telegraph had not given Mr Galloway a proper opportunity to respond to claims which Telegraph readers might have understood to mean that he had secretly received £375,000 a year from Saddam's regime; diverted monies from the oil-for-food programme; probably used fund-raising campaigns for personal enrichment, and that what he had done was tantamount to treason.