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Update on the Al Jazeera memo

Posted July 13th, 2006 by Davide Simonetti
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Sorry, still no memo yet but… There is a link between the current battle between the Government and Craig Murray over the publishing of documents which support the case he makes in his book, and the upcoming court case over the leaking of the Al Jazeera memo. The link was touched upon in the Oh My News article we posted in relation to the media catching on to the Craig Murray story.

There will be a jury trial in October under the Official Secrets Act about the leaking of a memo that may in part be about Al Jazeera. There has been a request to find out more about this memo under the Freedom of Information Act but so far, nothing has been published. If the FCO legal argument is accepted in court, Al Jazeera may succeed in their request for information but be unable to publish anything for copyright reasons.

Some of the documents Mr Murray had were obtained under the FoIA, and Al Jazeera want to obtain the memo (that allegedly has a discussion between Bush and Blair about the bombing of the Al Jazeera buildings in Qatar) under the same act, but may face the same problems as Mr Murray.

This is interesting for several reasons. On October 9 this year David Keogh and Leo O'Connor will appear at The Old Bailey criminal court to face charges under Britain's Official Secrets Act in the leaking of the memo. As part of their defence, they will attempt to use the memo as evidence in court.

Keogh's lawyer, Stuart Jeffrey, plans to argue that the government memo should be presented as evidence in open court, a move that is sure to be opposed by the prosecution and might muddy the proceedings.

"The prosecution has to show beyond a reasonable doubt that the disclosure they say occurred seriously damaged international relations or defense and national security," Jeffrey said. "We're saying, 'What's the damage?' It's not a situation where all of a sudden the administration in the United States has said, 'If you can't keep this under your hats, we're not friends anymore.'"

The attorney general, Lord Goldsmith has already used the heavy-handed tactic of banning the media from revealing anything from the memo under the official secrets act, so presumably they will be prohibited from reporting on the trial if the memo is admitted as evidence. Even if that ban is lifted, the copyright law will leave them unable to print anything.

In another development, the widow of Al Jazeera correspondent Tareq Ayyoub, who was killed in 2003 when the US military bombed the Al Jazeera offices in Baghdad, is filing a lawsuit against the Bush administration.

Yesterday, the attorney for Dima Tahboub, the widow of Tareq Ayyoub, held a press conference in Washington D.C announcing the lawsuit. The attorney, Hamdi Rifai, said the case is being launched in part because of the disclosure last year in London's Daily Mirror that President Bush told British Prime Minister Tony Blair of his desire to bomb Al Jazeera's headquarters in Qatar. The Mirror cited a secret memo leaked from the British government.

This could have big implications for the releasing of the memo and the trial in Britain. Read the whole transcript of her interview with Amy Goodman from Democracy Now. US laws are a little different from British laws and if Dima Tahboub is successful in her lawsuit or even manages to have the memo read out in a US court, then it won't be long before we get to hear about it in Britain. That is, of course, a very big "if".

Meanwhile both the US and UK governments are going out of their way to halt the series of leaks that have been occurring since the invasion of Iraq. I feel we may be hearing more about the Al Jazeera memo quite soon.