This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
It is requested that an image or photograph be
included in this article to
improve its quality. Please replace this template with a more specific
media request template where possible.
The Free Image Search Tool or Openverse Creative Commons Search may be able to locate suitable images on Flickr and other web sites. |
Hello,
I have been contacted by Kendall Freeman, a law firm in the UK, regarding this article. They say they are acting on behalf of Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz. They take serious exception to significant parts of this article. Apparently we have gotten some facts wrong, probably derived from news sources which have since been corrected. We need to follow suit and correct this article as well.
I will try to find a way to scan their complaint and put it online for editors to review, but in the meantime, some specific points to research include:
1.1 Sheikh Mahfouz claims to have no association with al-Qaeda at all, nor has he even been under investigation by Saudi authorties for this. Neither the UN, EU, US, nor any other government has ever indicated that he is involved with supporting terrorism.
1.2 It is denied that any audit of NCB exists which uncovered transfers to charities linked to terrorism. In 28 October 2001, the Chicago Tribune quoted an NCB official saying "I can tell you absolutely, categorically there was no such audit..."
1.3 Sheikh Mahfouz has never been placed under house arrest by the Saudi Government.
1.4 Another article of ours, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States claims that Mahfouz is the brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden. This is denied.
1.5 Regarding this allegation of him being brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden, leading publications have printed corrections... Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Fortune Magazine, L.A., Times, etc.
1.6 The stuff about BCCI needs to be investigated more carefully. BCCI as an organization got in a lot of trouble, but not Mahfouz personally.
1.7 Sheikh Mahfouz has never had any ownership interest in Delta Oil.
1.8 We are asked to report accurately on the recent settlements between The Mail on Sunday and Pluto Press/Michael Griffen. I think this was a libel case in the U.K.
Jimbo Wales 17:30, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)
This refers to 1.8:
Pluto's apology is here: [2]
More references: [3], [4], [5]. Secretlondon 19:34, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Wow. This calls for some serious detective work. Here's what I've found.
Since a lot of the alleged wrongdoing occurred in Saudi Arabia (or other contries not known for their sunshine laws), it's difficult to get hard-and-fast facts. Khalid's knee-jerk litigation makes it even less likely that good articles will be published. (There are similar problems when researching Scientology.) Here's what I know.
Also from Forbes, this:
and later in the article:
Khalid claims that if the charity ever funded terrorists, he wasn't aware of it.
Khalid again pleads ignorance, through his lawyers, here:
And Forbes reports:
I wouldn't say Khalid stayed out of trouble in the scandal. I'd say he narrowly escaped a jail sentence.
So was there an official audit? Who knows? (How official are these things in Saudi Arabia?) But they clearly deserved an audit, the government was clearly involved in cleaning up after Khalid's financial malfeasance.
So put it all together, and what do you have? They guy is probably a life-long terrorist financier who has funnelled money to bin Laden since the 70s, drove the bank BCCI into the ground while financing more terrorism, did the same with his new bank NCB, was arrested by the Saudi authorities, gave his sister to bin Laden as a wife, set up a charity through his son that fund terrorism even further, and browbeat everyone who brings this up into silence through libel suits. But on the other hand, he could be just an innocent banker with bad luck and a lot of libellers. There's plenty of room for doubt, and he's got all the lawyers that $1.7 billion can buy. So what do we do?
Quadell (talk) 19:56, Jul 8, 2004 (UTC)
I've removed the disputed items pending further investigation. -- Tim Starling 01:53, Jul 9, 2004 (UTC)
I'm not wading into editing the article itself -- I'm sure some far more knowledgable people than I are in here -- but just from an editorial point of view, I would change the section heading "Connections to terrorism" to "Allegations of connections to terrorism". Also, I think I would change"
...to....
I don't intend to watch this page, so if anyone wants to discuss my remarks with me, please ping my talk page.
Jmabel 04:19, Jul 9, 2004 (UTC)
I'm just another editor who doesn't know much about the subject but does want to see an article that simultaneously
All being well achieving 1) will achieve 2) despite Quadell's apparent concerns to the contrary.
Specific comments following the re-write:
Those sound like good, solid ideas. By the way, I sincerely hope (1) will acheive (2), for Wikipedia's sake. I think the article, as it stands, is factual. It looks neutral to me, but it can always be improved. And I hope it gets more and more complete as time goes on. Quadell (talk) 18:31, Jul 9, 2004 (UTC)
Quadell - you need to tighten up your sources - most seem to be from Forbes - has Forbes issued a retraction? The link to an American Freedom News site isn't - it's to a Pakistani newspaper. We need to find actual facts here - and links to sources that haven't been retracted, and that are credible.
As the lawyers are based in the UK I wonder whether this would be a libel trial under UK law? UK libel law is different from US libel law - there was a case years ago regarding a website that got sued because it was accessible in the UK (I think) - we need to check the details. Secretlondon 01:26, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Our article on Slander and libel points out that commonwealth libel doesn't require malice - "Other systems, such as that of England and Wales require only that the statements be false and defamatory.". There is caselaw in Australia Gutnick v Dow Jones regarding the juristiction of internet libel. This is written by a Scottish solicitor regarding juristiction in internet libel. It does seem that Wikipedia could get sued in the UK courts - and UK libel laws are seen to be plaintiff friendly. It may also make horrible case law.
I think we need to work out the following:
Even if we decide to drop this I think we need advice on online legal juristiction. It's not clearcut that Wikipedia is only under the juristiction of US law. Of course - IANAL - just a researcher. Secretlondon 02:00, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)
We probably need to consider Godfrey vs Demon Internet as well in which an academic sued a UK ISP for disseminating a newsgroup with defamatory contest. The comment was written by an American but "published" by a UK ISP. Secretlondon 02:14, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Gutnik v. Dow Jones contains the following: "Under the draft Hague Convention (The Draft Convention on Jurisdiction and Foreign Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters, proposed by the Hague Conference on Private International law, adopted by the special commission on 30 October 1999. See Law of Defamation and the Internet (doctoral dissertation by Dr Matt Collins of the Victorian Bar to be published by OUP in October 2001 Chapter 24.) , a plaintiff will be able to recover the whole of the damages suffered by reason of defamatory Internet publication by suing in the courts of the State in which either the defendant (Article 3) or the plaintiff (Article 10.14) is habitually resident[63]." (point 74 from [6]).
The US has a "single publication rule" but this does not seem to be the norm. Secretlondon 02:25, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)
This article from The Economist also makes interesting reading. "However, the outcome of the Australian case may not be as damaging as these companies fear. For one thing, it was not much of a surprise. Settled law in most countries has long allowed defamation suits to be brought against publishers wherever their publication is circulated, irrespective of where they based their operations or did their printing. For example, Britain, where libel laws have long favoured the plaintiff, has always been a favourite forum for such suits, even against foreign newspapers with minimal circulations in Britain. Similar cases in the United States have allowed plaintiffs to sue locally, though no American state libel laws are as restrictive of press freedoms as British laws." (Economist December 10th, 2002)
Libel laws in Britain are very strict. If A writes about B, and this harms B in some way, then even if A has the best intentions in the world, B can demand that A retract the statement and issue a correction if A's statement is false. If A refuses, B can sue A. And if B can show that the statement was both harmful and untrue. I have offered a few personal comments on this dispute on my user page. Quadell (talk) 14:22, Jul 12, 2004 (UTC)
Guardian September 26, 2001 talks about the allegations that Muwafaq has connections to terrorism. It points out that this is ancedotal. Secretlondon 03:02, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Name 6: AL-QADI 1: YASIN 2: n/a 3: n/a 4: n/a 5: n/a. a.k.a: (1) KADI, Shaykh, Yassin, Abdullah (2) KAHDI, Yasin Other Information: Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Al-Qa'ida Listed on: 12/10/2001.
Regarding the Interpal info, I'm confused. Is Mahfouz tied to Interpal in some way? Or was this example included as a contrast? Quadell (talk) 20:35, Jul 13, 2004 (UTC)
Should this article get a NPOV dispute label? Or an accuracy dispute label? At any rate, the following issues still need to be ironed out.
So far as I can see, those are the only controversies left on the page. Am I leaving something out? Quadell (talk) 20:56, Jul 13, 2004 (UTC)
Hello-- I am very surprised to see that Kendall Freeman had no comment on the Arbusto
relationship, as articles published elsewhere on the net have been careful to say the
relationship has not been proven. Can we take this failure to deny as a tacit admission?
How can he be the son of Salim Ahmed bin Mahfouz? If he was he'd be Khalid bin Salim.
His father's name was Mohammed.
"Khalid bin Mahfouz inherited many assets from the Saudi Binladen Group when the group's director, Salem bin Laden, died in a plane crash..." Why did he inherit? Rich Farmbrough 09:12 18 August 2006 (GMT).
With regards to the Irish citizenship, I'm a bit worried about the sentences about the Haughey and Reynolds administrations being controversial. Unless someone has specifically alleged that bin Mahfouz's citizenship was illegitimate, it would seem to be original research to suggest illegitimacy, even if the paragraph article goes on to deny it.
There are some terms that may not be of encyclopedic tone, such as:
The "Modern History Project" seems to be user-generated content, as can be seen on its front page, and seems to be open to conspiracy theories.
Ideally, the wikilink to libel tourism should be the result of citing an article specifically alleging that bin Mahfouz engages in libel tourism, rather than seeming to be the result of original research. Andjam 14:31, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
Is there no reference to the Ehrenfeld libel suit in this article because of legal fears, or just inertia? It is extensively covered in the Rachel Ehrenfeld and Funding Evil articles. Grover cleveland ( talk) 05:25, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
Any family ties between bin Mahfouz and Bin Laden has been proven wrong, therefore I don't see the point of keeping this false rumor on this article, it only makes things more confusing, and Wikipedia's intent is not to list all the fake rumors that feed the reputation of rich folks. I am removing it, please argue here if you think it should be reinserted in the article:
Alleged familial relationship with Osama bin Laden:In United States Senate testimony in 1998, Central Intelligence Agency Director James Woolsey stated (wrongly, and later retracted) that bin Mahfouz's sister is a wife of Osama bin Laden, making the two brothers-in-law. Bin Mahfouz has consistently denied this. Many publications, including The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Fortune, the Washington Post, and USA Today, reported that the two were brothers-in-law. Each publication has since issued a retraction, sometimes after lengthy litigation. citation needed
In the libel trial against him, Woolsey testified that bin Mahfouz had been misidentified. Woolsey later stated, "I don't know what to say other than there was some confusion, but I never meant to refer to Bin Mahfouz's sister." [1]
Best, -- Importemps ( talk) 14:59, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
References
This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
It is requested that an image or photograph be
included in this article to
improve its quality. Please replace this template with a more specific
media request template where possible.
The Free Image Search Tool or Openverse Creative Commons Search may be able to locate suitable images on Flickr and other web sites. |
Hello,
I have been contacted by Kendall Freeman, a law firm in the UK, regarding this article. They say they are acting on behalf of Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz. They take serious exception to significant parts of this article. Apparently we have gotten some facts wrong, probably derived from news sources which have since been corrected. We need to follow suit and correct this article as well.
I will try to find a way to scan their complaint and put it online for editors to review, but in the meantime, some specific points to research include:
1.1 Sheikh Mahfouz claims to have no association with al-Qaeda at all, nor has he even been under investigation by Saudi authorties for this. Neither the UN, EU, US, nor any other government has ever indicated that he is involved with supporting terrorism.
1.2 It is denied that any audit of NCB exists which uncovered transfers to charities linked to terrorism. In 28 October 2001, the Chicago Tribune quoted an NCB official saying "I can tell you absolutely, categorically there was no such audit..."
1.3 Sheikh Mahfouz has never been placed under house arrest by the Saudi Government.
1.4 Another article of ours, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States claims that Mahfouz is the brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden. This is denied.
1.5 Regarding this allegation of him being brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden, leading publications have printed corrections... Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Fortune Magazine, L.A., Times, etc.
1.6 The stuff about BCCI needs to be investigated more carefully. BCCI as an organization got in a lot of trouble, but not Mahfouz personally.
1.7 Sheikh Mahfouz has never had any ownership interest in Delta Oil.
1.8 We are asked to report accurately on the recent settlements between The Mail on Sunday and Pluto Press/Michael Griffen. I think this was a libel case in the U.K.
Jimbo Wales 17:30, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)
This refers to 1.8:
Pluto's apology is here: [2]
More references: [3], [4], [5]. Secretlondon 19:34, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Wow. This calls for some serious detective work. Here's what I've found.
Since a lot of the alleged wrongdoing occurred in Saudi Arabia (or other contries not known for their sunshine laws), it's difficult to get hard-and-fast facts. Khalid's knee-jerk litigation makes it even less likely that good articles will be published. (There are similar problems when researching Scientology.) Here's what I know.
Also from Forbes, this:
and later in the article:
Khalid claims that if the charity ever funded terrorists, he wasn't aware of it.
Khalid again pleads ignorance, through his lawyers, here:
And Forbes reports:
I wouldn't say Khalid stayed out of trouble in the scandal. I'd say he narrowly escaped a jail sentence.
So was there an official audit? Who knows? (How official are these things in Saudi Arabia?) But they clearly deserved an audit, the government was clearly involved in cleaning up after Khalid's financial malfeasance.
So put it all together, and what do you have? They guy is probably a life-long terrorist financier who has funnelled money to bin Laden since the 70s, drove the bank BCCI into the ground while financing more terrorism, did the same with his new bank NCB, was arrested by the Saudi authorities, gave his sister to bin Laden as a wife, set up a charity through his son that fund terrorism even further, and browbeat everyone who brings this up into silence through libel suits. But on the other hand, he could be just an innocent banker with bad luck and a lot of libellers. There's plenty of room for doubt, and he's got all the lawyers that $1.7 billion can buy. So what do we do?
Quadell (talk) 19:56, Jul 8, 2004 (UTC)
I've removed the disputed items pending further investigation. -- Tim Starling 01:53, Jul 9, 2004 (UTC)
I'm not wading into editing the article itself -- I'm sure some far more knowledgable people than I are in here -- but just from an editorial point of view, I would change the section heading "Connections to terrorism" to "Allegations of connections to terrorism". Also, I think I would change"
...to....
I don't intend to watch this page, so if anyone wants to discuss my remarks with me, please ping my talk page.
Jmabel 04:19, Jul 9, 2004 (UTC)
I'm just another editor who doesn't know much about the subject but does want to see an article that simultaneously
All being well achieving 1) will achieve 2) despite Quadell's apparent concerns to the contrary.
Specific comments following the re-write:
Those sound like good, solid ideas. By the way, I sincerely hope (1) will acheive (2), for Wikipedia's sake. I think the article, as it stands, is factual. It looks neutral to me, but it can always be improved. And I hope it gets more and more complete as time goes on. Quadell (talk) 18:31, Jul 9, 2004 (UTC)
Quadell - you need to tighten up your sources - most seem to be from Forbes - has Forbes issued a retraction? The link to an American Freedom News site isn't - it's to a Pakistani newspaper. We need to find actual facts here - and links to sources that haven't been retracted, and that are credible.
As the lawyers are based in the UK I wonder whether this would be a libel trial under UK law? UK libel law is different from US libel law - there was a case years ago regarding a website that got sued because it was accessible in the UK (I think) - we need to check the details. Secretlondon 01:26, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Our article on Slander and libel points out that commonwealth libel doesn't require malice - "Other systems, such as that of England and Wales require only that the statements be false and defamatory.". There is caselaw in Australia Gutnick v Dow Jones regarding the juristiction of internet libel. This is written by a Scottish solicitor regarding juristiction in internet libel. It does seem that Wikipedia could get sued in the UK courts - and UK libel laws are seen to be plaintiff friendly. It may also make horrible case law.
I think we need to work out the following:
Even if we decide to drop this I think we need advice on online legal juristiction. It's not clearcut that Wikipedia is only under the juristiction of US law. Of course - IANAL - just a researcher. Secretlondon 02:00, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)
We probably need to consider Godfrey vs Demon Internet as well in which an academic sued a UK ISP for disseminating a newsgroup with defamatory contest. The comment was written by an American but "published" by a UK ISP. Secretlondon 02:14, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Gutnik v. Dow Jones contains the following: "Under the draft Hague Convention (The Draft Convention on Jurisdiction and Foreign Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters, proposed by the Hague Conference on Private International law, adopted by the special commission on 30 October 1999. See Law of Defamation and the Internet (doctoral dissertation by Dr Matt Collins of the Victorian Bar to be published by OUP in October 2001 Chapter 24.) , a plaintiff will be able to recover the whole of the damages suffered by reason of defamatory Internet publication by suing in the courts of the State in which either the defendant (Article 3) or the plaintiff (Article 10.14) is habitually resident[63]." (point 74 from [6]).
The US has a "single publication rule" but this does not seem to be the norm. Secretlondon 02:25, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)
This article from The Economist also makes interesting reading. "However, the outcome of the Australian case may not be as damaging as these companies fear. For one thing, it was not much of a surprise. Settled law in most countries has long allowed defamation suits to be brought against publishers wherever their publication is circulated, irrespective of where they based their operations or did their printing. For example, Britain, where libel laws have long favoured the plaintiff, has always been a favourite forum for such suits, even against foreign newspapers with minimal circulations in Britain. Similar cases in the United States have allowed plaintiffs to sue locally, though no American state libel laws are as restrictive of press freedoms as British laws." (Economist December 10th, 2002)
Libel laws in Britain are very strict. If A writes about B, and this harms B in some way, then even if A has the best intentions in the world, B can demand that A retract the statement and issue a correction if A's statement is false. If A refuses, B can sue A. And if B can show that the statement was both harmful and untrue. I have offered a few personal comments on this dispute on my user page. Quadell (talk) 14:22, Jul 12, 2004 (UTC)
Guardian September 26, 2001 talks about the allegations that Muwafaq has connections to terrorism. It points out that this is ancedotal. Secretlondon 03:02, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Name 6: AL-QADI 1: YASIN 2: n/a 3: n/a 4: n/a 5: n/a. a.k.a: (1) KADI, Shaykh, Yassin, Abdullah (2) KAHDI, Yasin Other Information: Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Al-Qa'ida Listed on: 12/10/2001.
Regarding the Interpal info, I'm confused. Is Mahfouz tied to Interpal in some way? Or was this example included as a contrast? Quadell (talk) 20:35, Jul 13, 2004 (UTC)
Should this article get a NPOV dispute label? Or an accuracy dispute label? At any rate, the following issues still need to be ironed out.
So far as I can see, those are the only controversies left on the page. Am I leaving something out? Quadell (talk) 20:56, Jul 13, 2004 (UTC)
Hello-- I am very surprised to see that Kendall Freeman had no comment on the Arbusto
relationship, as articles published elsewhere on the net have been careful to say the
relationship has not been proven. Can we take this failure to deny as a tacit admission?
How can he be the son of Salim Ahmed bin Mahfouz? If he was he'd be Khalid bin Salim.
His father's name was Mohammed.
"Khalid bin Mahfouz inherited many assets from the Saudi Binladen Group when the group's director, Salem bin Laden, died in a plane crash..." Why did he inherit? Rich Farmbrough 09:12 18 August 2006 (GMT).
With regards to the Irish citizenship, I'm a bit worried about the sentences about the Haughey and Reynolds administrations being controversial. Unless someone has specifically alleged that bin Mahfouz's citizenship was illegitimate, it would seem to be original research to suggest illegitimacy, even if the paragraph article goes on to deny it.
There are some terms that may not be of encyclopedic tone, such as:
The "Modern History Project" seems to be user-generated content, as can be seen on its front page, and seems to be open to conspiracy theories.
Ideally, the wikilink to libel tourism should be the result of citing an article specifically alleging that bin Mahfouz engages in libel tourism, rather than seeming to be the result of original research. Andjam 14:31, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
Is there no reference to the Ehrenfeld libel suit in this article because of legal fears, or just inertia? It is extensively covered in the Rachel Ehrenfeld and Funding Evil articles. Grover cleveland ( talk) 05:25, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
Any family ties between bin Mahfouz and Bin Laden has been proven wrong, therefore I don't see the point of keeping this false rumor on this article, it only makes things more confusing, and Wikipedia's intent is not to list all the fake rumors that feed the reputation of rich folks. I am removing it, please argue here if you think it should be reinserted in the article:
Alleged familial relationship with Osama bin Laden:In United States Senate testimony in 1998, Central Intelligence Agency Director James Woolsey stated (wrongly, and later retracted) that bin Mahfouz's sister is a wife of Osama bin Laden, making the two brothers-in-law. Bin Mahfouz has consistently denied this. Many publications, including The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Fortune, the Washington Post, and USA Today, reported that the two were brothers-in-law. Each publication has since issued a retraction, sometimes after lengthy litigation. citation needed
In the libel trial against him, Woolsey testified that bin Mahfouz had been misidentified. Woolsey later stated, "I don't know what to say other than there was some confusion, but I never meant to refer to Bin Mahfouz's sister." [1]
Best, -- Importemps ( talk) 14:59, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
References