Court asks newspaper to pay Al Maliki

London: An Iraqi court has ordered the Guardian to pay Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri Al Maliki, damages of 100 million dinars (£51,000-Dh312,000) after supporting a complaint by the Iraqi leader's intelligence service that a story defamed him by describing him as increasingly autocratic.

The court delivered its ruling six months after the award-winning correspondent Gaith Abdul Ahad wrote a piece quoting three unnamed members of the Iraqi National Intelligence Service (INIS) as saying the prime minister was beginning to run Iraqi affairs with an authoritarian hand.

Al Maliki was not a party to the legal action. However, a five-member panel of experts who provided opinions to the court said Iraqi publishing law forbade foreigners from publishing articles critical of the prime minister or president, and from interfering in Iraqi internal affairs

The ruling overlooked the fact that the author of the piece is an Iraqi citizen, and ignored vast amounts of critical coverage of Iraq by foreign media spanning the three years since Al Maliki was elected as leader.

It also trumped earlier advice provided by three independent experts to the trial judge in October.

The experts, all prominent members of the Iraqi Journalists' Union, were commissioned by the court. They unanimously found that the article was neither defamatory nor insulting, and that no damages were warranted.

Attempts to identify one of the panel members who provided the second opinion named as Hussain Al Arkabi, a journalist were last night unsuccessful, with none of 12 Iraqi media outlets contacted in Baghdad recognising his name.

However, a second "expert", Salah Najim Al Maliki, no relation of the prime minister, was revealed as the host of a legal affairs programme on the government-run Al Iraqia television channel.