In UK, Publisher Pulps Book to Avoid Lawsuit

In late July, U.K. publisher Cambridge University Press announced that it had agreed to destroy all unsold copies of Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World by J. Millard Burr and Robert O. Collins after Saudi billionaire Sheikh Khalid Bin Mahfouz threatened a libel lawsuit against the publisher.

Bin Mahfouz threatened the suit against Cambridge University Press because he contended that Alms for Jihad made "certain defamatory allegations" about him in connection with the funding of terrorism, according to a statement from Cambridge University Press. Under terms of the settlement, in late July, Cambridge U. issued a public apology; agreed to destroy unsold copies of the book; said it "has undertaken not to publish those allegations or any similar allegations in the future," agreed to pay Bin Mahfouz "substantial damages and to make a contribution to his legal costs," both of which Bin Mahfouz is donating to UNICEF; and, according to the Cambridge (England) Evening News, wrote to 200 libraries worldwide requesting that they take Alms for Jihad off their shelves.

To date, Bin Mahfouz has already successfully pursued libel suits against three other books: Reaping the Whirlwind: The Taliban Movement in Afghanistan (Pluto Press) by Michael Griffen; Forbidden Truth: U.S. - Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy and the Failed Hunt for Bin Laden (Thunder's Mouth Press) by Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie; and Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed -- and How to Stop It (Bonus Books) by U.S. author Rachel Ehrenfeld, director of the nonprofit, New York-based American Center for Democracy, as reported by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Though libel laws make it far easier to pursue libel cases in the U.K. than in the U.S. -- the burden of proof lies with the defendant, not the plaintiff -- Bin Mahfouz's libel suits in the U.K. have some concerned over how the libel suits could impact free speech in the U.S.

In the Ehrenfeld case, Bin Mahfouz sued the author for libel in England, but Ehrenfeld "refused to acknowledge a British court's jurisdiction over a book published" in the U.S., she wrote in an August 8 New York Post op-ed. Ultimately, the British court ruled against her by default and ordered Ehrenfeld to apologize, pay some $225,000 in damages, and pulp Funding Evil, the Weekly Standard reported.

In the Post op-ed, Ehrenfeld stressed: "I still refuse to acknowledge the British Court and its ruling.... The data in both Alms for Jihad and Funding Evil is all well-documented by the media and the U.S. Congress, courts, Treasury Department, and other official statements."

Ehrenfeld is suing Bin Mahfouz in a New York federal court, "seeking a declaration that his English default judgment is unenforceable in the U.S." Lawyer Harvey Silverglate told the Post that the case is "one of the most important First Amendment cases in the past 25 years."--David Grogan