By Alyssa LappenUnless 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." Read more ...
Source: Pajamas Media
Posts
