Khalid bin Mahfouz, who some considered to be a funder of terrorism, and who objected sufficiently to American academics publishing evidence which they said supported this contention to avail himself of the services of Mr Justice Eady, has died.
As a result, it is now possible to say that Khalid bin Mahfouz was indeed a funder of terrorism. It is not possible, as a matter of law, to libel the dead.
Here is one of his victims, Rachel Ehrenfeld, in Index on Censorship:
As the only American author who stood up to bin Mahfouz’s campaign to silence US writers and publishers, I would like to note that the Saudi billionaire didn’t win his many libel lawsuits in the UK on merit, as the Saudi newspapers and even the New York Times obituary suggested. Nor was it due to his near-unlimited financial resources. Rather, he used England’s plaintiff-friendly libel laws to intimidate most into submission.
Bin Mahfouz sued numerous writers and publishers — mostly Americans — because he did not like their criticism. He made libel tourism a multimillion-dollar industry for the British bar, and London the “libel capital” of the world. Bin Mahfouz succeeded using libel tourism as a weapon to intimidate the Western media not only from reporting not only on his activities, but even on his death.
Mahfouz’s death may well have left the international law firm, Akin Gump, sad to lose this wealthy and highly litigious client. Likewise, the English bar might also be upset, especially other counsel who represented Mahfouz.
Mr Justice Eady will surely miss Mahfouz. Eady’s judgments in cases brought by Mahfouz made him (in)famous for allowing libel tourism to be used as a weapon to silence critics of Saudi Arabia the world over. Even the UN Human Rights Commission last year warned Britain that its libel tourism industry has become a tool to suppress the media’s free speech rights and that it endangered national security.
The serial libel tourist Khalid bin Mahfouz is dead. But the war he helped finance to silence and co-opt the Western media, together with pernicious British libel tourism practices, are alive and well. Unfortunately, the US government did nothing to stop his activities on either front when he was alive.
But the US Congress now has the opportunity to reverse Mahfouz’s legacy.
A law to protect Americans’ free speech is a legacy Mahfouz never intended. In May 2008, New York State was the first to pass the Libel Terrorism Protection Act, protecting New Yorkers from the likes of bin Mahfouz. Illinois and Florida passed similar laws and in California, the governor is about to sign the anti-libel tourism law.
Moreover, as a direct result of vbin Mahfouz’s libel tourism, the bi-partisan Free Speech Protection Act 2009 is now pending in Congress. Sponsored by Senators Arlen Specter, Joseph Lieberman, Charles Schumer and Ron Wyden, the bill is widely supported by major writers and publishers organizations in the US.