RISKS OF LITIGATION

Abstract

Authors and publishers who accuse prominent Saudi Arabians of providing funds to al-Qa ida are being sued for their accusations. The most active litigant has been Khaled bin Mahfouz, whom the Forbes Website describes as a citizen of Saudi Arabia worth $3 billion. In March 2005, Bin Mahfouz and his company Nimir Petroleum won a libel case in the High Court in London against the Pluto Press and author Michael Griffin for statements in Reaping the Whirlwind: Afghanistan, Al Qa ida and the Holy War , which was published in a revised edition in 2003. According to the Bin Mahfouz Website, the book wrongly alleged that “Sheikh Khalid funded bin Laden's and al-Qa ida's terrorist activities, [that he] had been dismissed from NCB [National Commercial Bank] because of the funding of terrorism, and as a result had also been stripped of his Saudi passport and confined to a military hospital by the Saudi authorities”; also that “Nimir Petroleum was owned by a funder and supporter of Osama bin Laden and al-Qa ida and was a party to negotiations with the Taliban in connection with an oil pipeline to be built across Afghanistan.” In the court proceedings, the publisher and author “accepted that there was no truth whatsoever in any of these allegations. They acknowledged that Sheikh Khalid had no connection whatsoever with Osama bin Laden or the supporting or funding of terrorist activities, left NCB only for health reasons, and was not stripped of his passport or confined to a military hospital. They also accepted that Nimir Petroleum was not owned by a funder of terrorism and was not involved in any Afghan pipeline project and has never had any dealings with the Taliban regime.” Pluto Press and Griffin agreed to destroy all copies of the book, to desist from repeating these allegations, and “to publish an apology on www.plutobooks.com, in the Bookseller magazine and in the British Institute of Middle East Studies Newsletter .” In August 2005, all signs of a connection with Griffin or the book, which they had published in two editions (2001, 2003), had vanished from the Pluto Press Website.