Posted on 31-3-2004
British Afraid To Publish
by David Leigh, March 31, 2004, The Guardian
A book investigating links between rich Saudis and US politicians
has been
suppressed by the giant publishing firm Random House because,
it says, of
growing "libel tourism" by wealthy foreigners, and
exorbitant legal
"success fees". Libel lawyers are stifling free speech,
the deputy
chairman of Random House, Simon Master, said yesterday.
The UK publication of House of Bush, House of Saud, by the American
writer
Craig Unger, has been cancelled because Secker and Warburg,
a Random House
subsidiary, says it can no longer afford such risks. The book
focuses in
part on the activities of a Jeddah-based Saudi billionaire,
Khalid bin
Mahfouz, who has been engaged in a war of words in the US, where
there
have been public accusations by officials linking him and others
to
funding received by Osama bin Laden. Unger collates links between
Mr Bin
Mahfouz and Islamist fundamentalists. But the new dimension
of his
research is that he also analyses the Texas business links between
the
Bush circle and the families of Mr Bin Mahfouz and other rich
Saudis.
Unger's thesis is that the eagerness of US politicians to tap
into Saudi
money over the years may have compromised Mr Bush's determination
to fight
terrorism: "Never before has an American president been
so closely tied to
a foreign power that harbours and supports our country's mortal
enemies."
How far Unger's thesis is credible is something that the US
reading public
will be able to decide for themselves. The book is becoming
a bestseller
in US election year. In Britain, however, the deputy chairman
of Random
House denied that the decision to suppress it was "pusillanimity
or
unnecessary self-censorship". Simon Masters said UK libel
laws were
ludicrous and had been made worse by a recent judgment won by
a wealthy
Saudi wrongly accused of terrorist funding links, in which the
defence of
public interest had been thrown out. "Forum shopping"
by wealthy
foreigners attracted to Britain's draconian libel laws was made
worse, he
said, by "the willingness of some law firms to take cases
on a no-win
no-fee basis. The firms who take on such clients will if successful,
present hugely inflated bills, the costs of which can be awarded
against
the defendant in addition to any damages".
Reputation
He called this system disgraceful. A libel fight was immensely
time-consuming and potentially hugely expensive - "vastly
more than the
publisher could hope to earn from the book". The UK libel
system, he said
is "stifling legitimate freedom of speech".
Mr Mahfouz's UK lawyers, Kendall Freeman, said yesterday that
their client
"has had no choice in the past but to issue libel proceedings
to protect
his reputation in this country". They added: "We do
not comment on the
particular fee arrangements we have with our clients."
Mr Bin Mahfouz, who inherited his vast wealth from his banker
father, has
issued a sheaf of UK libel writs to successfully obtain retractions
and
damages for them. He says that he and his family abhor terrorism,
and were
horrified by the September 11 attacks. The links with Texas
politicians
began in the 1970s, according to Unger. He says a businessman,
Jim Bath,
acted as local partner both for Mr Bin Mahfouz, and his close
friend Salem
bin Laden. Both young men were heirs to family fortunes. Mr
Bin Laden was
also the eldest brother of Osama bin Laden, who was many years
later to
turn into the world's most reviled terrorist.
In 1977 Mr Bin Mahfouz with Mr Bath and John Connally, [former
treasury
secretary] bought the Main Bank of Houston. In 1982, according
to the
author, Mr Bin Mahfouz and his brothers, with the Texas Commerce
Bank,
developed a Houston skyscraper. The bank was the family firm
of James
Baker, the former White House chief of staff. In 1987, he says
a Saudi
associate of Mr Bin Mahfouz, Abdullah Taha Bakhsh, helped the
young George
Bush and his struggling oil firm, Harken Energy, by buying 17%
of its
stock. More help for Mr Bush came in 1990, when the prime minister
of
Bahrain, Khalifa bin Salan al-Khalifa, awarded offshore drilling
rights
there to Harken. The Bahrain premier was a shareholder in a
controversial
bank, BCCI, along with Mr Bin Mahfouz, who owned 30%. The final
link
asserted by Unger came in 1995 when, he says, Mr Bin Mahfouz's
two sons
invested $30m (£16m) in the Carlyle Group, a firm linked
to the Bush
family.
What Unger describes in his book is the kind of exploitation
of oil-rich
Saudis which has often been linked to US and British politicians
in the
last 30 years.
Mr Bin Mahfouz points out that he neither personally funded
Harken nor
paid anybody else to do so. On the other alleged business links,
his
lawyers, Kendall Freeman, say he "does not propose to comment".
But what
gives the book a controversial edge is the linking of this phenomenon
with
the financing of terrorism. Unger accuses Mr Bin Mahfouz of
making
donations to Osama bin Laden.
Mr Bin Mahfouz has an answer to this: he says Osama's brother,
Salem,
asked him in 1988 to hand over $270,000 (£150,000) to
Osama's cause. He
believed it was going to Afghanistan. At that time, as he accurately
says,
this was entirely in line with US foreign policy. "This
donation was to
assist the US-sponsored resistance to the Soviet occupation
of Afghanistan
and was never intended nor, to the best of Sheikh Khalid's knowledge,
ever
used to fund any 'extension' of that resistance movement in
other
countries."
Similarly, Mr Bin Mahfouz has an answer to Unger's repetition
of the
charge, based on more recent allegations by US Treasury officials,
that
officials of Muwafaq, an international Islamic charity launched
in 1991 by
Mr Bin Mahfouz, went on to funnel money to al-Qaida. He was
unaware of
this, he says, and has appointed lawyers to investigate Muwafaq.
As far as his own National Commercial Bank (NCB) is concerned,
Mr Bin
Mahfouz's lawyer says: "Like upper management at any other
major banking
institution, Khalid Bin Mahfouz was not, of course, aware of
every wire
transfer moving through the bank. Had he known of any transfers
that were
going to fund al-Qaida or terrorism, he would not have permitted
them. At
no time did Khalid Bin Mahfouz have any knowledge or reason
to believe
that members of the Saudi royal family were transferring funds
to Muslim
charities that were sending funds to al-Qaida."
Another of Unger's points is that Saleh Idris, the owner of
the alleged
al-Qaida Sudan pharmaceutical factory bombed by the US in 1998,
was an
associate of Mr Bin Mahfouz, being deputy manager of the NCB.
Mr Bin Mahfouz's response is: "The Clinton administration
initially
claimed that the plant was financed by Bin Laden based upon
the mistaken
assumption that it was owned by a Sudanese government corporation.
This
was withdrawn after it was discovered that it was privately
owned by Mr
Idris. The administration then accused Mr Idris of association
with
terrorism and froze his assets. But the US declined to defend
this claim
in a legal action brought by Mr Idris and released his assets.
The
international press has been virtually uniform in its conclusion
that the
bombing of the El-Shifa plant was a mistake."
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