Galloway investigation builds

May 14 - Galloway may be about to learn that bluster doesn't always work. From May 13:

George Galloway MP pledged to fly to Washington yesterday and confront the US Senate inquiry which has published evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime allegedly allocated him the profit from oil contracts.

[Â…]

During a day of highly charged sparring, statements shot back and forth between Mr Galloway and the Senate.

Sen Norm Coleman, the Republican chairman of the sub-committee, said he was welcome to appear before it on Tuesday: "The hearing will begin promptly at 9.30am and there will be a witness chair and microphone available." Mr Galloway's spokesman quoted him as saying: "Book the flights, let's go, let's give them both barrels."

He quickly added: "That's guns, not oil."

The committee rejected Mr Galloway's accusation that his attempts to contact it before publication of the report had been rebuffed, despite him writing "repeatedly".

A spokesman said he did not attempt to make contact by any method "including but not limited to telephone, fax, e-mail, letter, Morse code or carrier pigeon".
Mr Galloway later retracted his claims, telling Sky News: "Well, let's accept that I did not ask them to appear in front of them."

In further news, The Senate Committee has charged that GallowayÂ’s Miriam Appeal was used to launder OFF money, and although Galloway says nothing improper was found in the fund, the investigation into the fund was actually inconclusive because "proper accounts were not available".

When the allegations about the oil transactions were first aired in The Daily Telegraph in 2003, Mr Galloway said he would open up the organisation's books.

But in a report last year, after a 12-month inquiry, the Charity Commission said: "[We] have been unable to obtain all the books and records of the appeal."
Mr Galloway told the commission that the documentation had been sent to Amman in Jordan and to Baghdad in 2001 when his associate, Fawaz Zureikat, became chairman of the appeal.

Mr Zureikat is named in the senate report as someone who facilitated the alleged oil transactions on behalf of Mr Galloway and the Mariam Appeal - named after Mariam Hamza, a four-year-old leukaemia patient brought to Britain for treatment. (Emphasis added)

This is an older item from the Daily Telegraph which details the appeal on the libel suit brought by Galloway:

Explaining why the court was willing to hear the appeal, Lord Justice Tuckey said that a gap was opening between the English courts and the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg over the extent to which newspapers were allowed to report documents that would otherwise be defamatory.

The English courts had allowed newspapers the defence of qualified privilege provided they went no further than reportage - neutral reporting of allegations without adopting them as true.

But, in 2001, the Strasbourg court ruled in favour of a reporter who had been ordered to pay libel damages after he reported that a fellow journalist had accused forestry wardens in Luxembourg of being corruptible.

The human rights judges said: "A general requirement for journalists systematically and formally to distance themselves from the content of a quotation that might insult or provoke others or damage their reputation is not reconcilable with the press's role of providing information on current events, opinions and ideas."

In another case referred to by Lord Justice Tuckey yesterday, the Strasbourg judges remarked that "journalists cannot be expected to act with total objectivity and must be allowed some degree of exaggeration or even provocation".

On the strength of these and other cases, Lord Justice Tuckey gave Mr Price permission to argue that it was not fatal to a newspaper's claim of qualified privilege for it to adopt as true the allegations contained in a document it was publishing. He said the newspaper could also argue the defence of fair comment, though it was not clear if this would add anything.

So it is the case that is being argued, not the amount awarded.

The Daily Telegraph also refutes GallowayÂ’s argument that the allegations by the Senate Committee have already been refuted by his successful defamation case against the Daily Telegraph by pointing out that the allegations are different:

The sub-committee concentrated on showing that Mr Galloway allegedly received four oil allocations between 2001 and 2003. As evidence, it quoted documents from the Iraqi ministry of oil and interviews with Iraqi officials. The report claims that the allocations were taken up but it does not contain evidence that Mr Galloway personally received the profits. The Daily Telegraph reports were based on documents found in the Iraqi foreign ministry shortly after the fall of Baghdad. The key document, a memo from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam, was dated Jan 3 2000 and it purported to be an account of a meeting Mr Galloway allegedly had with an Iraqi intelligence officer on Boxing Day 1999.

Q: Weren't The Daily Telegraph allegations shown in court to be false?

A: Definitely not. Mr Galloway sued The Daily Telegraph for libel, and won, but the hearing did not settle the question of whether Mr Galloway actually took Saddam's money. The Daily Telegraph relied upon the so-called Reynolds defence, which allows newspapers to publish defamatory material in some circumstances, and the case revolved around whether the paper acted responsibly. In his judgment Mr Justice Eady said: "There has been no plea of justification in this case, and accordingly it has not been part of my function to rule directly upon the truth or otherwise of the underlying allegations [against Mr Galloway]."

The article also notes that forensic testing has proven that the documents the Daily Telegraph reporter found in the Iraq foreign ministry were authenticated.

Posted by: Debbye at 10:40 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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