The Other Saudi Lawsuit

[seemslikeadream]

By Joel Mowbray
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 15, 2005

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After publishing Funding Evil in 2003, which boasts an introduction by former CIA Director Jim Woolsey, Rachel Ehrenfeld became the latest victim of the litigious former banker for the Saudi royal family, Khalid bin Mahfouz. He sued her for libel, though not in American courts, which properly balance plaintiffs’ concerns about harm to reputation with freedom of speech.

No, bin Mahfouz—whose name may sound familiar from the collapse of BCCI (Bank of Credit & Commerce International) in 1991—chose the forum that has been kindest to him and myriad others seeking an easy win in a libel case: British courts.

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No one’s ever tried anything quite like it. Ehrenfeld is hoping to get the U.S. District Court in Manhattan to rule that whatever damages bin Mahfouz wins in Britain will be unforceable in the United States. Her argument is sound: the Saudi billionaire is forum-shopping by suing in Britain—a country where neither he nor Ehrenfeld resides and where Funding Evil wasn’t even published or widely available—because there’s no way he’d win a libel case in America.

Ehrenfeld’s contention that bin Mahfouz has significant links to terrorism generally and al Qaeda specifically is backed by no less an authority than the U.S. Treasury Department, which called one of his Islamic charities an “al Qaeda front.” The Saudi billionaire founded the Muwaffaq Foundation in 1992, and his son is quoted in Forbes Magazine as having funded it with as much as $30 million.

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