The pro-Israel organisation Stand For Peace has been ordered to pay £140,000 in damages to Mohamed Ali Harrath, the founder of Islam Channel, after it wrongfully labelled him a “convicted terrorist.”
Middle East Eye reports that Stand For Peace, which describes itself as a “Jewish-Muslim interfaith organisation,” has targeted several prominent Muslim figures and organisations over the last few years on its website.
But Judge David Eady said a wrongful allegation of terrorism would attract a large payout “since few if any allegations could be more serious.” He said: “Here, as almost always, they carry the imputation that the person so accused is prepared to take part in or to encourage indiscriminate murder.”
As a result, Harrath’s reputation had been damaged and he’d suffered “embarrassment and hurt feelings and for the purpose of vindicating his reputation.”
Harrath sued Stand for Peace in the High Court last year for defamation because it ran a story in late 2014 calling him a “convicted terrorist,” a claim he always maintained was false and libelous.
Stand for Peace relied on two principal sources for its claim: a blog in French on a website and a Red Notice Interpol alert about Harrath. It claimed that Harrath was sentenced in absentia to 56 years imprisonment by a Tunisian court for being a member of a terrorist organisation and for terror-related offences.
Harrath was politically active in Tunisia in the 1980s and 1990s and was a member of the Tunisian Islamic Front. As a dissident under the Ben Ali regime, he says he was tortured and imprisoned in the 1980s and 1990s, before fleeing to London in 1995 as a refugee.
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Stand for Peace and its owner, Samuel Westrop, are reported to have no assets and therefore cannot pay costs or damages.
