Galloway v Telegraph Group Ltd
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr Justice Eady |
| Judgment Date | 02 December 2004 |
| Neutral Citation | [2004] EWHC 2786 (QB) |
| Docket Number | Case No: HQ03X02026 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
| Date | 02 December 2004 |
[2004] EWHC 2786 (QB)
The Honourable Mr Justice Eady
Case No: HQ03X02026
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Richard Rampton QC and Heather Rogers (instructed by Davenport Lyons) for the Claimant
James Price QC and Matthew Nicklin (instructed by Dechert) for the Defendant
Hearing dates: 15 th, 16 th, 17 th and 19 th November 2004
Approved Judgment
I direct that pursuant to CPR PD 39A para 6.1 no official shorthand note shall be taken of this Judgment and that copies of this version as handed down may be treated as authentic.
Mr Justice Eady
Introduction: The parties and the articles sued upon
1. The Claimant in these proceedings is Mr George Galloway who has been since 1992 the Member of Parliament for the Glasgow Kelvin Constituency. Prior to that, he had been the Member for Glasgow Hillhead from 1987. Having been an active member of the Labour Party from 1967 (when he was aged 13), he was eventually expelled on 23 rd October 2003 for allegedly “bringing the Labour Party into disrepute”. Thereafter he became a founding member of a new political movement known as RESPECT, which is an acronym for “Respect, equality, socialism, peace, environment, community and trade unionism”. Its foundation conference held on 25 th January 2004 was attended by some 1,500 activists. The movement has its origins in the widespread opposition to the military action against Iraq in 2003. It has among its objectives those of challenging New Labour, bringing an end to the hostilities in Iraq and the severing of the “special relationship” with the current government of the United States.
2. Over the years Mr Galloway has attracted a good deal of public and media attention, mainly in the context of his activities and public statements over Iraq and the Middle East more generally. In these defamation proceedings, he sues the Telegraph Group Limited over articles appearing in The Daily Telegraph on 22 nd and 23 rd April 2003, just over a month after the invasion of Iraq by coalition forces and at a time when British and American troops were still heavily engaged in fighting. Those articles were said to be based upon documents found in badly damaged government offices in Baghdad. The first article published was on the front page under the heading “Galloway in Saddam's pay, say secret Iraqi documents”. Underneath appeared three bullet point sub-headings as follows:
• “Labour MP ‘received at least £375,000 a year’”
• “Cash came from oil for food programme”
• “Papers could have been forged, he says”
3. The article is attributed to Mr David Blair “in Baghdad”. The whole of the article is complained of in the particulars of claim. For present purposes, however, the flavour is sufficiently conveyed by the introductory paragraphs:
“GEORGE GALLOWAY, the Labour backbencher received money from Saddam Hussein's regime, taking a slice of oil earnings worth at least £375,000 a year, according to Iraqi intelligence documents found by The Daily Telegraph in Baghdad.
A confidential memorandum sent to Saddam by his spy chief said that Mr Galloway asked an agent of the Mukhabarat secret service for a greater cut of Iraq's exports under the oil for food programme.
He also said that Mr Galloway was profiting from food contracts and sought ‘exceptional’ business deals”.
4. Complaint is also made of an article appearing on page 3 of the same issue which has the headings “The go-between” and “Loyal Ba'athist ‘supplied Saddam with weapons’”. Again, the article is attributed to Mr Blair in Baghdad. It is introduced by the following two paragraphs:
“GEORGE Galloway's Jordanian intermediary has a family history of loyalty to Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party, according to his Iraqi intelligence profile.
Fawaz Abdullah Zureikat, 53, would clearly be an ideal choice to conduct any business dealings with the Iraqi regime.
His Mukhabarat secret service profile, attached to the intelligence chief's memorandum to Saddam's office on Mr Galloway, refers to him warmly as a ‘sympathiser with Iraq’”.
5. The article continues with a brief description of Mr Zureikat's background and business activities. It also refers to him as Mr Galloway's “representative in 2000” and to his company having been mentioned (in one of the documents found) “as a front for Mr Galloway's business dealings in Iraq”.
6. On page four of the same issue alongside a photograph of Mr Galloway, sitting smiling with Saddam Hussein, there appears an article attributed to Anton La Guardia, Diplomatic Editor. It is headed “Oil for food” and “Billions poured through holes in sanctions”. It is introduced by the following paragraphs:
“FOR years, Saddam Hussein abused the United Nations oil—for-food programme to fund Iraq's own illegal activities and reward the regime's favoured friends.
The embargo may have been designed to ‘contain’ Saddam, but several loopholes allowed him to earn billions of pounds in illegal revenues through oil sales.
The papers found in Baghdad suggest that George Galloway, through his associates, was granted two kinds of deal.
The first was the right to buy Iraq's oil, under the oil-for-food programme, at concessionary prices and sell it on at a profit. The second was to sell food and perhaps other civilian supplies to Iraq”.
7. The fourth and final article selected for complaint in the issue of 22 nd April 2003 consisted of a leader headed “Saddam's little helper”, which was the only leader published in The Daily Telegraph that day. It will require close consideration in due course, but the flavour may be gathered from the first three paragraphs:
“It doesn't get much worse than this. George Galloway is Britain's most active and visible peace campaigner. The Labour MP for Glasgow Kelvin did not just oppose the recent campaign against Saddam Hussein; he lobbied equally aggressively against the first Gulf war, and —during the years in between – for an end to sanctions. Yesterday, The Daily Telegraph's correspondent in Baghdad, David Blair, unearthed papers detailing alleged payments from Saddam's intelligence service to Mr Galloway through a Jordanian intermediary.
There is a word for taking money from enemy regimes: treason. What makes this allegation especially worrying, however, is that the documents suggest that the money has been coming out of Iraq's oil-for-food programme. In other words, the alleged payments did not come from some personal bank account of Saddam's, but out of the revenue intended to pay for food and medicines for Iraqi civilians: the very people whom Mr Galloway has been so fond of invoking.
Speaking from abroad yesterday, Mr Galloway was reduced to suggesting that the whole thing was a Daily Telegraph forgery, but the files could hardly be more specific. One memo comments: ‘His projects and future plans for the benefit of the country need financial support to become a motive for him to do more work, and because of the sensitivity of getting money directly from Iraq it is necessary to grant him oil contracts and special commercial opportunities to provide him with a financial income under commercial cover without being connected to him directly’”.
8. In the particulars of claim the Claimant attributes four natural and ordinary meanings to the articles complained of from the 22 nd April issue. No distinction is drawn between the articles for this purpose:
(i) “That the Claimant was in the pay of Saddam Hussein and had secretly received at least £375,000 a year from Saddam Hussein's regime;
(ii) That the Claimant had made very substantial secret profits from Saddam Hussein and his regime, firstly by receiving money from the ‘Oil for Food’ programme (the Claimant's share being 10–15 cents per barrel on three million barrels of oil every six months) and secondly by receiving a percentage of the profit on a number of food contracts the Claimant had obtained from the Iraqi Ministry of Trade;
(iii) That, not satisfied with the very substantial personal profits referred to above, the Claimant had, at a meeting on 26 th December 1999, asked an Iraqi intelligence agent for even more money for himself;
(iv) That the Claimant used the Mariam Appeal as a front to conceal his secret commercial dealings with the Iraqi intelligence service, through which commercial dealings he sought to obtain very substantial sums of money for himself”.
9. The story was followed up by more articles the next day. On the front page there was a large photograph of the Claimant alongside a poster of Saddam Hussein. Above this, alongside one another, there were three “bullet point” headlines in the following terms:
• “Telegraph reveals damning new evidence on Labour MP.
• Bluster, two homes and the unanswered questions.
• Tory party donor is named as key partner in oil contracts.”
There is then a bolder headline: “ Memo from Saddam: We can't afford to pay Galloway more”.
10. The front page article is again attributed to Mr Blair in Baghdad and the key allegations may perhaps be gathered from the following extracts:
“SADDAM HUSSEIN rejected a request from George Galloway for more money, saying that the Labour backbencher's ‘exceptional’ demands were not affordable, according to an official document found by The Daily Telegraph in Baghdad.
The letter from Saddam's most senior aide was sent in response to Mr Galloway's reported demand for additional funds. This was outlined in a memorandum from the Iraqi intelligence chief disclosed in The Daily Telegraph yesterday.
Mr Galloway denies receiving any money from the regime…
Saddam was rejecting two specific requests allegedly made by Mr Galloway, as recorded in the intelligence chief's memorandum.
The first was for a greater share of the profits from oil exports. The...
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