Second High Court Win in a Year for Tunisian Leader Rashid Ghannouchi

Carter-Ruck has secured a second High Court libel victory this year for Sheikh Rashid Ghannouchi, leader of Tunisian opposition party An Nahda.

In March a jury awarded Sheikh Ghannouchi £61,000 in libel damages against the London based Arabic daily Al Arab over untrue allegations linking him with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Now, German newspaper Die Zeit has been forced to accept that similar allegations published in April 2003 were entirely untrue.

In a statement in open court read to Mr Justice Gray on 14 July 2003, Die Zeit apologised to Sheikh Ghannouchi, his family and the other members of An Nahda for the distress and embarrassment its article caused. The newspaper also paid Sheikh Ghannouchi a substantial sum in damages, published an agreed apology, undertook not to repeat the offending allegations and met his legal costs.

In its original article, Die Zeit had wrongly claimed that An Nahda was suspected of seeking to use Germany as an operational area for Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. It also alleged that Sheikh Ghannouchi had, together with bin Laden, attended an "International Congress of Islamic terrorist groups" held in Pakistan in October 1999 and that Sheikh Ghannouchi and An Nahda were implicated both in a terrorist explosion that occurred in April 2002 at a synagogue in Djerba, Tunisia and in an attempted coup d'etat against the Tunisian government in 1991.

In its full apology, retracting all these allegations, Die Zeit accepted that neither Sheikh Ghannouchi nor An Nahda had, at any time, had any connection of any kind with bin Laden or with Al Qaeda. It recognised too that neither Sheikh Ghannouchi nor An Nahda had any form of involvement either in the atrocity that occurred in Djerba (which they condemned unreservedly at the time) or in any planned coup d'etat in Tunisia.

Sheikh Ghannouchi expressed his happiness that his name has been cleared so conclusively. "An Nahda and I have always condemned all forms of terrorist activity and have most certainly not engaged in any such activity. We are, and have at all times been, committed to the democratic process and to bringing about peaceful change in Tunisia," he said.

Carter-Ruck managing partner Cameron Doley acted for Sheikh Ghannouchi, assisted, as in the Al Arab case, by Kate Macmillan. The firm again represented Sheikh Ghannouchi under a Conditional Fee Agreement.

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December 2003/January 2004