In an English High Court Judgment made public on 8 June 2005 following a Court hearing on 3 May 2005, a judge found that the author Rachel Ehrenfeld and the publisher Bonus Books Inc had made defamatory statements about Sheikh Khalid Bin Mahfouz and his sons, Abdulrahman Bin Mahfouz and Sultan Bin Mahfouz. Under the terms of the English Defamation Act 1996, the Court awarded £10,000 damages to be paid to each of the claimants by the defendants, declared the allegations made by the defendants to be false, and also ordered them to pay interim costs of £30,000. It also continued an injunction preventing the defendants from repeating similar defamatory allegations about the claimants in England.
Rachel Ehrenfeld and Bonus Books Inc had alleged, amongst other things, that the claimants were funders of terrorism in a book written by Rachel Ehrenfeld and published by Bonus Books Inc and also published globally via the internet.
The judge noted in his Judgment that the “nature of the allegations which were made in the book…are of the most serious and defamatory kind." He added that it would have been a “complete defence to a libel action in this jurisdiction [England] to prove, on the balance of probabilities, that the defamatory allegations were substantially true. The claimants have indicated that they are quite prepared to meet any such defence on its merits. Unsurprisingly, no one has ever put forward such a defence or any material which would be capable of substantiating a plea of justification."
As indicated, the defendants did not attempt to defend the proceedings and the judge stated that “the defendants have had every opportunity to defend these proceedings by means of a plea of justification if they thought appropriate. All they have been able to advance, it is said, is material of a flimsy and unreliable nature, and the claimants have taken the trouble to demonstrate its lack of merit.”
Rachel Ehrenfeld has commenced proceedings in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York against Sheikh Khalid Bin Mahfouz. She is seeking a judgment from the US Court that (i) the English judgment cannot be enforced in the US, and (ii) the US Court rules that the allegations about Shiekh Khalid Bin Mahfouz contained in her book are not defamatory under US law. Sheikh Khalid Bin Mahfouz is vigorously defending this action and has filed a motion to dismiss the case.
The judge also considered Rachel Ehrenfeld’s US action and noted her allegations that Sheikh Khalid Bin Mahfouz was abusing the English legal process and hiding behind English libel law to hide the truth of his acts. The judge’s response was that these statements were “tendentious and something of a misrepresentation of the true position. The claimants are not hiding behind anything and are perfectly willing to meet these defendants, as others, head on as to the merits of the claims made against them.”
In response to Rachel Ehrenfeld’s accusations of forum shopping, the judge said that the claimants have referred “to their significant connections within the United Kingdom…that their reputations here are important to them and it is not a question, as the first defendant has claimed in the past, of their “forum shopping”.”
