Friday 19 March 2004

Galloway wins damages for Saddam slur

More lies being exposed for what they are, will the system investigate these fraudulent documents? I don't think so because it's more than likely that the system planted them in the first place as a smear-job!

A US newspaper has apologised and will pay damages to MP George Galloway over wrongful allegations that he was paid millions of pounds by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

The Christian Science Monitor accused Mr Galloway of accepting payments totalling $10m in return for promoting Saddam's interests in the west.

Mr Galloway said today's apology in London's high court was a "complete vindication" after it was revealed the documents on which the stories were based were forgeries.

Mr Galloway, who was expelled by Labour after party bosses said he incited Arabs to fight British troops in Iraq, called on the government to investigate the source of the forgeries.

"We now have in these documents evidence that a crime was committed in Baghdad against an elected British member of parliament," said Mr Galloway outside the high court. "I demand Mr Blair [launches an investigation] to find out why these documents were forged, who else was involved and what other documents were forged."

The Christian Science Monitor first apologised to Mr Galloway in June last year after it was revealed that the papers, dated between 1992 and 1993, were in fact only a few months old.

"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," said Paul Van Slambrouck, the editor of the Monitor. "It is important to set the record straight: we are convinced the documents are bogus. We apologise to Mr Galloway and to our readers."

Mr Galloway, who says he is the victim of a political smear campaign, is now demanding an inquiry into who had forged the documents.

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