A UK-based Arabic newspaper has apologised to the prime minister of Qatar after it admitted printing three "wholly untrue" articles about him secretly visiting Israel, the Guardian has reported.
Some details:
The daily Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat made the apology to Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani on July 21 at the high court in London after admitting it should not have published the articles in the summer of 2006 following the relating to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
The first article alleged that Sheikh Hamad – who also acts as Qatar's foreign minister – had travelled to the Arab foreign ministers' conference in Beirut in August 2006 via Israel and that while there he had held four hours of discussions with the Israeli cabinet.
The piece also alleged that Sheikh Hamad had told the Israelis that public statements he had made about being ready to cut off relations with them if a collective Arab decision was taken to do so were "intended merely to silence Qatar's critics and were therefore not to be believed".
Sheikh Hamad's solicitor, Cameron Doley of London law firm Carter-Ruck, told Mr Justice Eady at the high court that the second article, published eight days after the first, repeated the allegations and suggested that the prime minister's public denial of the claims was a "deplorable lie". The third article, written personally by the newspaper's editor-in-chief, once again repeated the allegations and said Sheik Hamad had briefed the Israelis on the Arab position.
The court heard that the three articles were not only disputed by Sheikh Hamad but also by the Israeli government, which had given on the record confirmations that the supposed meeting never took place. Aidan Eardley, counsel for Asharq al-Awsat, told the court that the newspaper apologised for the "embarrassment caused by the offending articles".
