The Bookseller.com

5th July 2009

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CUP pays damages to Saudi sheikh

03.08.07 Tom Tivnan

Cambridge University Press has been forced to pay compensation and pulp its 2006 title Alms for Jihad, which accused a Saudi businessman of funding terrorism. Sheikh Khalid Bin Mahfouz, a philanthropist and former director of Saudi Arabia’s National Commercial Bank, began libel proceedings against CUP in April 2006 following the publication of J Millard Burr and Robert O Collins’ Alms for Jihad. The book alleged that Bin Mahfouz and his family had supported Osama Bin Laden and funded terrorist activities.

A settlement was agreed on 30th July in the High Court after Cambridge University Press accepted there was no truth in the allegations. Kevin Taylor, CUP intellectual property director, said: “We withdrew the book in March 2007 immediately after we became aware that the allegations were defamatory. It was a settlement we decided not to defend because it was indefensible.”

Bin Mahfouz will donate the compensation money, which Taylor said “was not a staggering amount”, to Unicef. The publisher is also destroying all 1,500 copies of the book.

In February 2007, Bin Mahfouz won a suit against Profile for its publication of Matthew Carr’s Unknown Soldiers, which also alleged that he supported terrorism.

CUP