One of the richest men in the world today won £175,000 libel damages over a claim that he had been hunting his daughter down so she could be stoned to death.
Judge Richard Parkes QC said at London’s High Court that it was one of those rare cases where the lawyers’ customary hyperbole - that it was difficult to imagine more serious allegations - might perhaps be justified.
The sum was awarded to billionaire international businessman Mohammed Hussein Al-Amoudi against Elias Kifle, publisher and editor-in-chief of the online news site Ethiopian Review.
Ethiopian-born Mr Al-Amoudi, who has homesin central London and Surrey, said he was horrified and angered by the “wholly untrue” article which was freely available and read by several thousand people in the UK on two internet sites on various dates between January and August 2010 and was still available on a restricted basis.
The judge said it alleged that: :: Mr Al-Amoudi had “disgracefully and callously” married off his 13-year-old daughter Sarah to an elderly and disabled senior member of the Saudi royal family as a gift.
:: That there were reasonable grounds to suspect that he had knowingly financed international terrorism.
:: That he was probably responsible for the notorious March 2004 revenge murder in Iraq of his daughter’s supposed long-term lover and the mutilation, burning, parading and hanging of his body.
:: That he was and had been hunting his daughter and supposed grand-daughter across London in order to ensure their execution in Saudi Arabia by flogging or stoning, and callously caused his daughter to fear for their lives.
Far from apologising, added the judge, Mr Kifle had repeated the libels and abused 65-year-old Mr Al-Amoudi and his lawyers.
He had answered their complaint by saying `Here is my formal statement: Screw yourself’ and had since said that Mr Al-Amoudi - who gave evidence of his implacable opposition to terrorism - was a “scumbag bloodsucker” and “funding al Qaida”.
Mr Al-Amoudi, who has seven daughters and a son, had told the court that a father would understand how much - and for how long - the allegations hurt.
He said his relationship with Sarah, who was unmarried, was the kind of normal one any father had.
She had just completed a business administration degree in the UK, was a normal student and did not cover her hair or face.
Assessing damages, which have a ceiling in libel of about £240,000, the judge said that vindication was the single most important consideration for Mr Al-Amoudi.
He added: “The claimant is not, I judge, a man who wears his heart on his sleeve.
”But his distress as he described the effect of the article on himself and on his family was evident to me, and the more so because, as it seemed to me, he was doing his best to preserve his composure.”
Mr Al-Amoudi, who was in the top 50 of Forbes magazine’s 2009 rich list, obtained judgment by default against Mr Kifle in January this year. Mr Kifle was not present or represented at the hearing to assess damages.
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July 23, 2011 - The Ministry of Mines yesterday awarded the Calub and Hilala natural gas fields and eight exploration blocks found in the Ogaden basin to a Chinese oil and gas company, PetroTrans Company, according to the Ethiopian Reporter.
