csua.org/u/anb -> politics.guardian.co.uk/media/story/0,12123,1365628,00.html
The Guardian George Galloway, the leftwing rebel MP, won a resounding libel victory ag ainst the Daily Telegraph yesterday with a damages award of 150,000. Delivering his high court judgment, Mr Justice Eady described the Telegra ph's allegations, based on disputed Iraqi documents found after the end of the Iraq war, as "dramatic and condemnatory". In accusing Mr Galloway of being in the secret pay of Saddam Hussein, the paper had made "a rus h to judgment" in "a classic case of publishing and being damned". With Mr Galloway sitting in front of him, the judge said the MP had been seriously defamed. He was also not given a "fair or reasonable" opportun ity to comment on allegations that he secretly and traitorously received money from the Iraqi regime for his own benefit. Mr Galloway faces a further inquiry into the allegations by Sir Philip Ma wer, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, which was temporarily suspended pending the hearing of the case. A spokeswoman for Sir Philip said he had no comment to make until he had read the judgment. Mr Galloway said yesterday that "the documents are either forgeries or th ey have been doctored - but they are in any case fakes". Last night Mr Galloway announced that he will stand as a candidate for th e anti-Iraq war party Respect in the next general election. Outside the court the 50-year-old MP for Glasgow Kelvin, who was expelled from the Labour party last year, launched into a typically robust tirad e against the Telegraph. Mr Galloway told reporters the paper had been g iven "a judicial caning". He said: "All those people, the old regime of the Daily Telegraph - Lord Black, Barbara Amiel, Charles Moore - were amongst the chief trumpeters for the disastrous decision to go to war with Iraq. "In aid of their case they said many things which turned out to be wholly false, bogus, counterfeit, forged and utterly wrong. Saying he had risked everything to pursue the action, he added: "I am gla d and somewhat humbled to discover that there is at least one corner of the English field which remains uncorrupted and independent and that cor ner is in this courtroom." Mr Galloway said representatives of the Barclay brothers, who own the Tel egraph group, had approached him before the court case to try to get a d eal. He believed they would now wish they had agreed in advance to issue an apology. The Telegraph described the judgment as a "blow to the principle of freed om of expression in this country". The paper, which used the defence of qualified privilege, plans to appeal. The paper's executive editor, Neil Darbyshire, said: "We are naturally di sappointed by this judgment. If, as we understand the court to have held , English law offers no real protection to newspapers that publish docum ents which raise such important questions about the conduct of an electe d member of parliament, then freedom of expression is an illusion." The libel action case centred on a series of articles published in April 2003 which Mr Galloway's counsel described as "a massive exercise in pol itically motivated character assassination on a grand scale". The paper based its stories, run extensively over two days, on documents one of its reporters found in the offices of the Iraq foreign ministry, which had been damaged by a cruise missile. Mr Justice Eady said the stories meant that Mr Galloway had secretly rece ived 375,000 a year, diverted money from the oil-for-food programme whi ch was intended to help the Iraqi people and had probably used his anti- sanctions campaign - the Mariam Appeal - for personal enrichment. What h e had done, the paper said, was tantamount to treason. The judge dismissed the Telegraph's claim that the stories were no more t han "neutral reporting" as "quite unsustainable" and delusional. He said : "The nature, content and tone of their coverage cannot be so described ." He said that, although Mr Galloway was interviewed by telephone, he was n ot given an opportunity to read the Iraqi documents beforehand, and neit her were they read to him. Nor was he told about the allegations that he had personally profited. Du ring the case Mr Galloway said the allegations were a "deeply wounding d agger through my political heart". Describing Mr Galloway as "a tough political operator who is used to hard -hitting criticism", the judge went on: "That is not to say ... that he would be any the more unlikely to suffer distress or hurt feelings when the allegations go to the heart of his integrity and political reputatio n "Allegations of 'treason' are not part and parcel of the knocks one expec ts to take in the course of everyday political debate."
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