An important message from Dr. Rachel Ehernfeld

EhrenfeldThis Sunday, January 13th at 10:30 a.m. on the steps of the New
York Public Library, 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, I urge you to attend
a bipartisan news conference by New York State Senate Deputy Majority
Leader Dean Skelos and Assemblyman Rory I. Lancman where they will
announce legislation designed to protect journalists, author and
publishers s from lawsuits filed outside the U.S. by foreign nationals
seeking to muzzle the First Amendment rights of American citizens,
particular those reporting on terrorism and its financiers.

This effort comes on the heels of a New York Court of Appeals ruling
that has stunned many in the legal, media, and publishing community. The
court held it could not protect New York author Rachel Ehrenfeld from a
British lawsuit she lost by default filed by Saudi billionaire Khalid
Salim bin Mahfouz where she was ordered to pay over $225,000 for
detailing in her book how Bin Mahfouz, and some of his family, are
allegedly tied to funding terrorist organizations. Bin Mahfouz used the
U.K. legal system to obtain more than 36 similar judgments, affecting
the U.S. media.

Dr. Ehrenfeld sought a court order to protect her Constitutional rights,
but in a ruling with First Amendment implications sending legal
shockwaves throughout newsrooms across America, as well as potentially
undermining our ability to expose terrorism's financial and logistical
support networks of our enemies, the New York Court of Appeals ruled
that it does not have jurisdiction to protect Americans – on U.S. soil –
from a foreign defamation verdict.

The two lawmakers, Ehrenfeld, and members of the bar, will warn that
without this legislation, the contents of the New York Public Library
could be subject to assault by off shore nationals seeking to silence
public debate in America. Your participation would add enormously to
this effort and underscore the gravity of the threat.

Tracking bin Laden's money flow leads back to Midland, Texas

by Wayne Madsen in  In These Times    

On September 24, President George W. Bush appeared at a press conference in the White House Rose Garden to announce a crackdown on the financial networks of terrorists and those who support them. "U.S. banks that have assets of these groups or individuals must freeze their accounts," Bush declared. "And U.S. citizens or businesses are prohibited from doing business with them."

But the president, who is now enjoying an astounding 92 percent approval rating, hasn't always practiced what he is now preaching: Bush's own businesses were once tied to financial figures in Saudi Arabia who currently support bin Laden.

In 1979, Bush's first business, Arbusto Energy, obtained financing from James Bath, a Houstonian and close family friend. One of many investors, Bath gave Bush $50,000 for a 5 percent stake in Arbusto. At the time, Bath was the sole U.S. business representative for Salem bin Laden, head of the wealthy Saudi Arabian family and a brother (one of 17) to Osama bin Laden. It has long been suspected, but never proven, that the Arbusto money came directly from Salem bin Laden. In a statement issued shortly after the September 11 attacks, the White House vehemently denied the connection, insisting that Bath invested his own money, not Salem bin Laden's, in Arbusto.

In conflicting statements, Bush at first denied ever knowing Bath, then acknowledged his stake in Arbusto and that he was aware Bath represented Saudi interests. In fact, Bath has extensive ties, both to the bin Laden family and major players in the scandal-ridden Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) who have gone on to fund Osama bin Laden. BCCI defrauded depositors of $10 billion in the '80s in what has been called the "largest bank fraud in world financial history" by former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. During the '80s, BCCI also acted as a main conduit for laundering money intended for clandestine CIA activities, ranging from financial support to the Afghan mujahedin to paying intermediaries in the Iran-Contra affair.

When Salem bin Laden died in 1988, powerful Saudi Arabian banker and BCCI principal Khalid bin Mahfouz inherited his interests in Houston. Bath ran a business for bin Mahfouz in Houston and joined a partnership with bin Mahfouz and Gaith Pharaon, BCCI's frontman in Houston's Main Bank.

The Arbusto deal wasn't the last time Bush looked to highly questionable sources to invest in his oil dealings. After several incarnations, Arbusto emerged in 1986 as Harken Energy Corporation. When Harken ran into trouble a year later, Saudi Sheik Abdullah Taha Bakhsh purchased a 17.6 percent stake in the company. Bakhsh was a business partner with Pharaon in Saudi Arabia; his banker there just happened to be bin Mahfouz.

Though Bush told the Wall Street Journal he had "no idea" BCCI was involved in Harken's financial dealings, the network of connections between Bush and BCCI is so extensive that the Journal concluded their investigation of the matter in 1991 by stating: "The number of BCCI-connected people who had dealings with Harken—all since George W. Bush came on board—raises the question of whether they mask an effort to cozy up to a presidential son." Or even the president: Bath finally came under investigation by the FBI in 1992 for his Saudi business relationships, accused of funneling Saudi money through Houston in order to influence the foreign policies of the Reagan and first Bush administrations.

Worst of all, bin Mahfouz allegedly has been financing the bin Laden terrorist network—making Bush a U.S. citizen who has done business with those who finance and support terrorists. According to USA Today, bin Mahfouz and other Saudis attempted to transfer $3 million to various bin Laden front operations in Saudi Arabia in 1999. ABC News reported the same year that Saudi officials stopped bin Mahfouz from contributing money directly to bin Laden. (Bin Mahfouz's sister is also a wife of Osama bin Laden, a fact that former CIA Director James Woolsey revealed in 1998 Senate testimony.)

When President Bush announced he is hot on the trail of the money used over the years to finance terrorism, he must realize that trail ultimately leads not only to Saudi Arabia, but to some of the same financiers who originally helped propel him into the oil business and later the White House. The ties between bin Laden and the White House may be much closer than he is willing to acknowledge.

Wayne Madsen, an investigative journalist based in Washington, is the author of Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993-1999.

Does Sharia Libel Law Now Apply in the U.S.?

by Alyssa A. Lappen

Unless the U.S. Congress and New York legislatures act immediately to stop them, foreign terror financiers and libel tourists now can essentially impose sharia (Islamic) law on American writers and publishers.

Intended or not, a narrow, technical New York Appeals Court decision on Thursday Dec. 20, 2007 produces that net effect. The ruling concerns jurisdiction in Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld's suit against Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz, seeking a federal declaratory judgment against him to render unenforceable in the U.S. a U.K. High Court default "libel" decision. By implication, the New York Appeals Court ruling harms all publishers and writers in New York, the world's publishing capital.

Ehrenfeld's case stems from her 2003 book, Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed—and How to Stop It, where American Center for Democracy Director reports Mahfouz' well-documented terror funding. (Full disclosure: Since September 2005, I've been an ACD Senior Fellow.) As always after such terror financing reports, Mahfouz sued Ehrenfeld for libel in Britain. His attorneys informed U.K. High Court Justice David Eady that former CIA director R. James Woolsey wrote her book's foreword. "Say no more," Eady replied. "I award you a judgment by default, and if you want, an injunction, too."

Eady then ordered Ehrenfeld to apologize, retract, pay Mahfouz $225,913.37 in damages and destroy remaining copies of her book. Instead, she ignored the British default judgment and false libel claim—never tried on its merits—and asked the Southern District Court of New York to rule the U.K. judgment unenforceable here.

In the U.S., the Supreme Court's seminal 1964 New York Times v. Sullivan decision defined libel or slander by a journalist as stating or writing falsehoods or misrepresentations that damage someone's reputation—and in cases of public figures, doing so with malice.

Under sharia, by contrast, libel constitutes any oral or written remark offensive to a complainant, regardless of its accuracy or intent. Slander "means to mention anything concerning a person that he would dislike, whether about his body, religion, everyday life, self, disposition, property, son, father, wife, servant, turban, garment, gait, movements, smiling, dissoluteness, frowning, cheerfulness, or anything else connected with him," according to Ahmad Ibn Lulu Ibn Al-Naqib (d. 1368). 1

Repeat: Sharia regards even the truth as slander if its subject dislikes the facts. Now applied through foreign courts, sharia law interpretations of libel have demonstrably undermined U.S. press viability already. Though Mahfouz never proved merits in any libel case, he has threatened or sued more than 35 journalists and publishers (including many in the U.S.) through Britain's High Court, and exacted fines, apologies and retractions from all but Ehrenfeld. Last Thursday, New York's Appeals Court substantially (if not intentionally) allowed the application of sharia rules here.

New York State recently held that it can collect sales taxes from "commercial" enterprises with as little physical presence as a single link on any New York-based website. While temporarily reversed on November 15, the state's controversial opinion will be enforced after the 2007 Christmas season.

Yet, also by New York fiat, Constitutional First Amendment rights now take a back seat to the state's conservative "long-arm" statutes—which protect distant commercial enterprises from state courts. A Saudi national suing an American journalist in Britain, Mahfouz hired numerous New York agents and couriers and used many New York electronic and telephone communication systems expressly to halt Ehrenfeld's investigations and publications concerning terror finance. However, on Dec. 20 the New York Appeals Court established Mahfouz' New York-based commercial transactions as less commercial (or significant) than a distant merchant's sales link on a New York-based website.

In its unanimous June 8, 2007 request for a local ruling on jurisdiction, the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals panel specifically extended as wide a berth as possible to the New York Court of Appeals to consider First Amendment rights within the context of Ehrenfeld's case.

However, the New York Court ignored the federal instructions to consider Constitutional issues—or the effects this case will consequently have on Constitutional rights in the world's publishing capital. "However pernicious the effect of this practice [libel tourism] may be, our duty here is to determine whether defendant's New York contacts establish a proper basis for jurisdiction," wrote Judge Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick, an appointee of former Governor Mario Cuomo.

Shockingly, New York's Court of Appeals allowed Mahfouz' commercial actions (and any similar commercial actions of any other foreign terror financier and libel tourist) to subjugate Constitutional First Amendment rights to archaic commercial statutes.

Now, the U.S. Congress and New York legislators must swiftly enact new "long-arm" statues, suitable to our electronic age, before further damage to the U.S. Constitution ensues.

NOTE:

1Ahmad Ibn Lulu Ibn Al-Naqib (d. 1368), Reliance of the Traveller: The Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law Umdat, translated by Nuh Ha Mim Keller, 1991 and 1994, Amana Publications (revised ed., 1994), p. 730.

Alyssa A. Lappen, an American Center for Democracy Senior Fellow and American Congress for Truth Contributing Editor, is a former senior editor of Institutional Investor, Working Woman and Corporate Finance and former associate editor of Forbes.

Insufferable British Judges, Wimpy New York Ones.

Rachel Ehrenfeld was sued in Britain by a Saudi zillionaire who didn't
like what she said about his "well-documented terror funding."

As always after such terror financing reports, Mahfouz sued
Ehrenfeld for libel in Britain. His attorneys informed U.K. High Court
Justice David Eady that former CIA director R. James Woolsey wrote her
book's foreword. "Say no more," Eady replied. "I award you a judgment by
default, and if you want, an injunction, too."

Eady then ordered Ehrenfeld to apologize, retract, pay Mahfouz
$225,913.37 in damages and destroy remaining copies of her book.

This a sad reminder that the "Special Relationship" between Britain and
the U.S. does not exists in the minds of some British officials. The
judge's ignorance is also apparent in his conclusion that a former CIA
director had contributed to Ms. Ehrenfeld's book. In this gentleman's
mind, the CIA is local galactic outlet for satanic gamma waves.

Your Colonel has read no small number of books about British
intelligence and counterintelligence operations and disasters over the
years and could not call to mind in a two-second period the personal
characteristics of any of the officials who headed the relevant
agencies, let alone say anything intelligent about their characters or
overall effectiveness. But Her Majesty's Justice Eady knew in a
heartbeat that Mr. Woolsey was a species of lowlife. Obviously, he knew
nothing about Mr. Woolsey and was eager to punish Ms. Ehrenfeld for her
having a connection to the despised CIA.

Didn't this start out as a libel action? I'm just asking, is all.

Ms. Lappen's piece discusses the issue of how "connected" litigants need
to be to justify the assertion of jurisdiction over them. If memory
serves me, Ms. Ehrenfeld did not directly market her book in Britain
and, on the basis of only some six or seven books that made their way to
Britain, the British court asserted jurisdiction over her for purposes
of a libel action. New York courts, whose judges must surely drink their
afternoon tea with their pinkies raised in the air, chose not to find
jurisdiction in New York over the Saudi funder of terror notwithstanding
his far more substantial activities in New York.

Ms. Ehrenfeld is the only one sued by this putz not to lie down like a
cur dog when sued. Would that New York judges had as much spine as this
woman.

"Does Sharia Libel Law Now Apply in the U.S.?"
By Alyssa A. Lappen, Pajamas Media, 1/2/08
(also of interest for discussion of Islamic libel law. Cliff Notes
version: The truth hurts. So pay me).

Ehrenfeld: British Libel Judgment Upheld by NY Court; First Amendment Implications Debated

A New York state appeals court ruled in Ehrenfeld v. Mahfouz that it did not have jurisdiction to declare a British libel judgment unenforceable on First Amendment grounds.  In 2005, a British court ordered American author Rachel Ehrenfeld to pay $60,000 for accusing a Saudi billionaire of having ties to terrorism in her 2003 book, Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed - and How to Stop It.  Ehrenfeld claims that as a result of the judgment, she has abandoned certain projects and watered down others in order to comply with British libel laws.  Though Mahfouz had not yet tried to enforce the British judgment, she asked a domestic court to declare it unenforceable on the grounds that it would violate federal and state free speech laws.  The court declined to do so.

So far, commentators are split on the significance on the Ehrenfeld ruling.  The New York Sun described the case as a test of how state courts would respond when US authors seek to block foreign judgments that conflict with the First Amendment, adding that the decision reflects a disturbing trend in "libel tourism" that promotes law suits against authors and journalists in nations where libel laws are more favorable to plaintiffs than in the US.  In line with that view, Findlaw's Julie Hilden predicts that Ehrenfeld will have "significant First Amendment implications" in an age of global internet e-publishing.  Yet attorney Douglas Lee's post at The First Amendment Center describes Ehrenfeld as a relatively "routine" case grounded in rules of civil procedure that prevent New York courts from exercising personal jurisdiction over a foreign judgment holder who has not yet attempted to enforce the judgment.  Had Mahfouz tried to enforce the British judgment in New York, jurisdiction would have attached, bringing into focus the First Amendment concerns related to "libel tourism."   

-Kathleen A. Bergin