A Dewsbury man today received a public apology and substantial libel damages at London’s High Court.
Kala Khan had sued Express Newspapers over an article in the Daily Express in April this year which focused on the establishment of a Sharia court in Dewsbury.
The article was accompanied by a photograph of Khan which the High Court was told the paper mistakenly believed was another man.
Today Khan’s solicitor told libel judge, Mr Justice David Eady that the paper now accepted that taken together the photographs and the text of the article would have been understood to allege that Mr Khan was instrumental in founding the Sharia court.
The paper also carried a comment piece the same day that the article appeared under the headline ‘We cannot sit back and let Sharia law take root in Britain.”
The judge was told that the allegations insofar as they were understood to refer to Mr Khan were ‘wholly untrue.”
He was told that the paper has acknowledge that Mr Khan has no involvement whatsoever in the alleged Sharia court, no interest in supporting it or the implementation of Sharia law in Britain and is not linked to Muslim extremism.
Counsel for the paper apologised for the distress and embarrassment suffered by Khan as a result of the articles.
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