Saturday June 21, 2003
The Guardian
George Galloway yesterday demanded
a government inquiry after documents alleging that he took more than $10m
(£6.3m) from Saddam Hussein were exposed as forgeries.
The suspended Labour MP claimed he was the victim of a conspiracy and
rejected an apology from the Christian Science Monitor, threatening to extend
his legal action to British newspapers, including the Sun, which repeated the
Boston-based title's accusations.
Mr Galloway, who is expected to issue a writ next week against the Daily
Telegraph over further allegations - based on separate Baghdad documents - that
he received £375,000 a year from UN oil-for-food deals, said he had been smeared
because of his opposition to the invasion of Iraq. "I want to know who forged
these documents. I am calling on the prime minister, as head of the co-occupying
power in Iraq, to investigate how this conspiracy came about," the prominent
anti-war campaigner said.
Paul Van Slambrouck, editor of the internationally circulated Monitor,
published an apology on its website after ink tests found two of the "oldest"
documents, dated 1992 and 1993, on which the paper based its incendiary
allegations in April were in fact written a few months ago.
"At the time we published these documents, we felt they were newsworthy and
appeared credible, although we did explicitly state in our article that we could
not guarantee their authenticity," he said.
"It is important to set the record straight. We are convinced the documents
are bogus. We apologise to Mr Galloway and to our readers."
The Monitor said the documents were supposedly recovered by a Republican
Guard general from the house of Qusay Saddam Hussein, one of Saddam's two sons,
authorising six payments to Mr Galloway totalling more than $10m for - according
to one of the documents - his "courageous and daring stands against the enemies
of Iraq, like Blair."
General Salah Abdel Rasool was later unmasked by the Mail on Sunday after he
tried to sell the newspaper a third set of documents purportedly showing Mr
Galloway was paid $4m between 1999 and 2002. The documents were found to be
fake.
The Daily Telegraph turned down the documents used by the Monitor. The paper
did publish its own allegations about Mr Galloway several days earlier, based on
files retrieved from Baghdad's bombed-out foreign ministry by staff reporter
David Blair.
According to well-placed sources on the Telegraph, Blair, who visited Baghdad
last spring on a trip organised by Mr Galloway, had been asked by the newspaper
to look for documents on contacts between Saddam and anti-war governments such
as France and Germany rather than the MP.
A letter in one of the files written by Mr Galloway, nominating Jordanian
businessman Fawaz Zureikat as his representative in Baghdad, is acknowledged as
genuine. But the MP insists that others, alleging he received more than £375,000
a year and at one point asked for it to be increased, are forged or faked.
If the case reaches court, the Telegraph is expected to mount a qualified
privilege defence, arguing that it does not need to prove he received the money
but had a responsibility to publish the serious allegations, and that it gave Mr
Galloway an opportunity to put his side of the story.
The Telegraph's editor, Charles Moore, yesterday said: "Our story was based
on a different set of documents found in a different set of circumstances.
"There is a game of bluff going on here with him [Mr Galloway] but we have to
work on the assumption that he will eventually sue, and no one likes the trouble
of a court case - but we are very confident," said Mr Moore.
Mr Galloway's lawyer said the writ would be issued next week or, at the very
latest, the week after.
The MP said: "The Telegraph documents are equally fake and I believe they
will meet the same fate as the Monitor ones."
Mr Galloway is fighting to stay in the Labour party after being suspended
following a television interview in which he branded Tony Blair and President
George Bush "wolves" over the invasion.
