‘Libel tourism’ assaults free speech

Oct 29, 2009
By STAFF

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)—In the debate over Intelligent Design, William Dembski is wary of a new trend dubbed “libel tourism” that may force Americans to submit to lawsuits in other countries for alleged crimes that otherwise would be protected by the First Amendment.

Dembski, research professor of philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, noted on his blog the case of Paul L. Williams, a Pennsylvania-based journalist and National Book Award-winning author who is facing trial in Canada because of a loophole in free trade agreements.

Such agreements, including NAFTA, give foreign entities the right to take action against American citizens, Williams said. He is being sued for revealing potential terrorist threats from al-Qaida affiliates at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, in his 2006 book, The Dunces of Doomsday.

Williams contends that McMaster University has harbored leading al-Qaida operatives, including one who has been described by the U.S. Justice Department as “the next Mohammad Atta” and has been commissioned to lead the next attack on U.S. soil.

McMaster, with a prominent engineering school, houses a 5-megawatt nuclear reactor, one of the largest reactors for educational purposes in the western hemisphere, Williams said.

When the operatives left McMaster, 180 pounds of nuclear material was reported missing, though the university claimed no material was missing from the reactor but radiological material was missing from pharmacological and medical facilities, Williams said.

He drew several other documented links to McMaster and terrorism, but the university sued him for libel and demanded $4 million in punitive and aggregated damages.

“Unlike American libel laws where the plaintiff must prove that what was said about him is not true and it was said in malice, Canadian libel laws, like the British, put the burden of proof on the defendant, not the plaintiff,” Williams wrote in an opinion piece.

Though he wrote the book from his home in Pennsylvania, Williams must stand trial in Toronto next spring.

“This ordeal has damaged my professional career, depleted my life savings, and placed me in financial jeopardy,” Williams wrote. “I am not alone.”

Joe Sharkey, a New Jersey-based writer often carried by The New York Times, reported on the aftermath of a plane crash he survived over the Amazon, and a woman in Brazil sued him for libel for offending the dignity of Brazil by criticizing its air traffic control. The woman is demanding $500,000 and apologies in national and international media outlets.

Rachel Ehrenfeld, founder and director of the American Center for Democracy, also has been a libel tourism victim. In 2005, a Saudi billionaire sued her for libel in London because in a heavily researched book she alleged that he funded al-Qaida. She was ordered to pay more than $250,000 and destroy the book.

As a remedy to the libel tourism trend, Williams, Ehrenfeld and others are advocating the passage of the Free Speech Protection Act of 2009, which was introduced by Sen. Arlen Specter, D.-Pa., to protect American writers and publishers from foreign libel judgments rendered in countries lacking America’s free speech protections.

The bill, though, is stuck in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Robert Spencer, whose column on the subject appeared on the news and opinion site canadafreepress.com Oct. 9, said the bill faces an uphill battle. It’s not likely President Obama will support it, Spencer said, after recently supporting an anti-free speech resolution at the United Nations.

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