Rached Ghannouchi v Middle East Online Ltd
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Master Dagnall |
| Judgment Date | 23 July 2020 |
| Neutral Citation | [2020] EWHC 1992 (QB) |
| Date | 23 July 2020 |
| Docket Number | Case No: QB-2019-004284 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
[2020] EWHC 1992 (QB)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Master Dagnall
Case No: QB-2019-004284
Jacob Dean (instructed by Carter-Ruck) for the Claimant
Jonathan Barnes (instructed by Lewis Silkin LLP) for the Defendants
Hearing dates: 10 June 2020
Introduction
This is my Judgment assessing damages for defamation of the Claimant by the Defendants by the publication of an Article (“the Article”) in their “Middle East Online” online newspaper (“the Newspaper”) from 5 July 2019 until the Article was taken down in about April 2020. The Claimant brought this Claim on 2 December 2019 asserting that the Article had a number of seriously defamatory meanings (“the Defamatory Meanings”) in relation to him. By an Order of 24 April 2020 (“the April Order”), Mr Justice Nicklin granted a Default Judgment against the Defendants in the absence of their having filed or served any Defence, and on the Defendants giving various undertakings (“the Undertakings”), including both (i) not to further publish or cause or authorise to be published the Article or its contents and (ii) to publish a composite summary of both that judgement and this judgment, and ordered that damages (and in due course costs) were and are to be assessed by a Master and paid by the Defendants. It is the assessment of damages which is the subject of this judgment.
I was provided with and fully considered a Bundle of relevant documents (including not only the Particulars of Claim but also witness statements from both the Claimant and the Second Defendant) and written Skeleton Arguments from Mr Dean, counsel for the Claimant, and Mr Barnes, counsel for the Defendant.
I have also conducted a remote video Teams Hearing under the provisions of Civil Procedure Rules Practice Direction 51Y (in the present circumstances of the COVID pandemic) and heard full oral submissions from both counsel. The remote hearing was publicised on the Courts Listing website as was the fact that provision would be made for attendance at it by any members of the public (including the press) who wished to do so. In fact, I provided for a number of individuals to attend the hearing upon my being notified of their email addresses by the solicitors for the parties. Subsequently when considering my judgment I became concerned as to a particular point arising as to the meanings which the Article had been accepted to bear, and I sought and obtained further written submissions from Mr Dean and Mr Barnes as to that point.
I am satisfied that the procedure adopted has enabled the court to conduct a public hearing consistent with the requirements of open justice, and has enabled the parties to deploy their full cases and to be properly heard. I have considered all the material and submissions before me, and if I do not deal with any particular matter or submission expressly in this judgment then that is due simply to considerations of space and time.
The Parties and the Newspaper
It is common ground that: the Claimant is a national of Tunisia and the leader of the political party in Tunisia called “Ennahdha” and is currently speaker of the Tunisian Parliament; and he lived in exile in England from 1992 to 2011, when he returned to Tunisia after the ousting of the former President.
The First Defendant is a company incorporated in England & Wales and which publishes the Newspaper. The Second Defendant is the editor of the Newspaper and the sole director of the First Defendant. The Newspaper is published online only. The Claimant's case that the Newspaper is a “serious” (as opposed to a sensationalist) press publication has not been challenged and I accept it.
The Article, the Defamatory Meanings, and History of the Claim
On 5 July 2019 onwards, the Defendants published the Article in the Newspaper, making it available to anyone who chose to access it on the internet. The Article was written in Arabic but was, of course, readable by anyone proficient in Arabic and, potentially, by others who used a means of translation (whether through a human, or electronic such as by Google online) or engaged in their own translation. The author of the Article was Farouq Yousef, and the Claimant's case that he is a well-known political commentator has not been challenged, and I accept it.
The Article has been referred to me in full by both the Claimant and the Defendants, is set out in full in the Particulars of Claim, and there has been no request for it to be dealt with in private. I therefore now reproduce it in its English translation as follows:
“ “Ennahdha” in the country of grapes and olives
It is not inconceivable for Tunisia to turn into Gaza if Ghannouchi assumes its leadership.
Farouq Yousef
Friday 5 July 2019
[There then appeared a photograph of the Claimant]
The leader of the Tunisian Hamas
Terrorism has been linked with religious groups and organisations. That is no longer speculative. Everything that the world has witnessed in recent years of terrorist operations, these groups and organisations planned and carried out.
Let's say, for argument's sake, that a religious organisation claims to renounce violence and the killing of civilians. It would not dare announce such a position by taking a firm stance that criminalizes groups that adopt violence as a means of terrorising and subjugating society to their rules.
In fact, every religious organisation wants to reach the same objectives that terrorist groups seek to achieve through violence. That conclusion does not require a search for evidence to be acceptable.
For the Muslim Brotherhood or the Lebanese Hezbollah to seek to deny terrorism accusations, this can be expected without the need to believe it. In all cases of murder, the courts do not consider the murderer's confession of his crime as an indispensable element in judging him as a murderer.
If we look at the Ennahdha Party in Tunisia, as a front for the brotherhood, its behaviour, both inside and outside the government, stands at the heart of the storm that leads to change through violence. And though it persists in the midst of a democratic process, it does not believe in democracy when it comes to others.
It would be a scary event if the Ennahdha Party was not overwhelmingly defeated in any election, be it presidential, parliamentary or municipal. This is because they expect that the party will remove its temporary mask to show its true face.
And because religious organisations establish hidden relationships amongst themselves, owing to their common goals, it is not inconceivable that the Ennahdha Party is familiar with the group that carried out the recent bombings at the beginning of the tourist season.
Ennahdha does not want Tunisia to be a tourism country. For them, tourism is true corruption. But stealing state funds and people's votes, receiving money from a foreign state and conspiring to overthrow the civil state in all its forms, in its views are not corruption.
The Ennahdawis, as are the brotherhood in their various denominations, depend on the establishment of a poor and rent-seeking state, whose people rely on aid provided by the countries that adopt the brotherhood's ideology.
The Ennahdha Party is similar to Hamas in that sense.
Therefore, it is not inconceivable for Tunisia to turn into Gaza if Ghannouchi assumes its leadership. What a miserable fate.
This is not an exaggeration, because the man who relies on “Qatar” to finance his movement and has not yet been held accountable is capable of transforming Tunisia into a desert roamed by the terrorists who are then exported around the Arab world in a travel campaign, similar to the one that went to Syria in the days of Ennahdha Party rule.
Tunisia can be imagined under Ghannouchi's rule as a country that does not plant olives, figs, grapes, oranges, or produce wine or olive oil, and where thousands of its hotels by the sea do not receive millions of tourists coming from different parts of the world with their various cultures.
That Tunisia will not be happy with its civilizational history, with its poets, philosophers, writers, musicians and activist women. It would become a Tunisia that harbours terrorists coming from everywhere. There are countries that dream of turning Tunisia into a terminal for the export of terrorists.
All these factors lead me to the conclusion that the Ennahdha Party, which claims to have nothing to do with violence, is through its plans and ambitions one of its staunchest advocates.
Ennahdha is not worried about the terrorism that strikes Tunisia, because it will ensure that terrorism does not strike Tunisia if the whole country becomes a terrorism incubator.
There is no place for Tahir Haddad, Mahmoud al-Messadi and Abul Qasim Chebbi in a Tunisia led by Ennahdha.”
The Defendants had not sought to contact the Claimant prior to publication of the Article. On 19 July 2019 the Claimant's solicitors wrote to complain to the Defendants asserting defamation and requesting removal of the Article and seeking other remedies. Following a number of chasing letters in August and an absence of any response or any removal of the Article, the Claim Form was issued on 2 December 2019 and served with full Particulars of Claim.
In Paragraphs 8 and 9 of the Particulars of Claim it was and is stated that the Article meant and would be understood to mean (“the Defamatory Meanings”) that:
i) (by their natural and ordinary meaning) the Claimant:
1. had knowingly permitted the corrupt receipt by his party, Ennahdha, of money from the state of Qatar, thereby facilitating Qatar to exert improper influence over Tunisian politics; and
2. falsely pretends to believe in democracy, but leads a party which is a front for a terrorist...
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