Saddam libel victory for British MP

LONDON - One of Britain's most outspoken anti-war politicians, MP George Galloway, won a comprehensive victory in the High Court yesterday in his libel trial against the Daily Telegraph over reports that he was in the secret pay of Saddam Hussein.

The former Labour MP was awarded £150,000 ($400,000) in libel damages by the High Court and later claimed the newspaper had been given a "judicial caning".

He was also granted costs against the Telegraph, which faces a bill of more than £1.2 million.

Mr Justice Eady denied the paper permission to appeal, although its lawyers are expected to seek the right directly from the Court of Appeal over liability and the "excessive" scale of the damages.

Galloway, an anti-war campaigner who was ejected from Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party for urging British soldiers not to fight in Iraq said he was angry he had been forced to seek legal remedy.

"I have had to risk total and utter ruin in order to bring this case. If I had lost it, I would be bankrupt, my house would be taken away from me, my job would be lost."

Turning on the Government and its media supporters, Galloway said he would use the House of Commons to air the issues raised in the trial.

He added: "I am glad and somewhat humbled to discover there is at least one corner of the English field which remains uncorrupted and independent, and that corner is in this courtroom."

Mr Justice Eady told the court the newspaper had conveyed to "reasonable and fair-minded readers" seriously defamatory claims that Galloway was secretly receiving £375,000 a year from Hussein.

The newspaper also suggested he had diverted money from the oil-for-food programme, depriving the Iraqi people of food and medicines.

The newspaper's claim that its coverage was no more than "neutral reportage" of important documents found in post-war Baghdad was untenable.

Journalists had also failed to give Galloway sufficient opportunity to respond to the allegations, made in a series of articles in April last year. The judge described the Telegraph's Neil Darbyshire, acting editor at the time, as an "engaging and frank witness", but said he was deluding himself if he thought the coverage was neutral.

Lawyers warned yesterday that Galloway's win seriously weakened a newly created defence that papers had come to rely on when printing allegations about the famous.

The 10-point public figure defence first emerged when former Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds sued the Sunday Times for defamation in 1999.

In that case, law lords ruled that a newspaper need not have to prove the truth of an allegation provided the journalism was responsible and in the public interest.

Many journalists hoped this defence would allow them to pursue stories that would only normally be capable of substantiation by using the kind of resources available to professional investigation agencies such as the police.

But the judgment, said media lawyers, showed the Reynolds case could be relied on only in very rare cases.

A parliamentary investigation into Galloway's links with Baghdad was suspended during the libel trial.

- INDEPENDENT