Saudis Sue For Secrecy

August 8, 2007 — THE Saudis’ efforts to keep a veil of secrecy over their sup port for al Qaeda and Hamas got a shot in the arm last week, as a British publisher opted to suppress a controversial book on the financing of terror. Facing the mere threat of a lawsuit from Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz, Cambridge University Press agreed to pulp all the unsold copies of “Alms of Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World,” issue a public apology to Mahfouz and pay his legal expenses and substantial undisclosed damages. The prestigious publisher – the world’s oldest publishing house – had carefully vetted the book before publishing it last year. Yet now it has asked more than 200 libraries worldwide to pull the work off their shelves. Bin Mahfouz never sued the authors, J. Millard Burr and Robert O. Collins, both U.S. citizens, who had provided their publisher with all the sources to back their allegations that bin Mahfouz, his family and his former bank, the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia, funded Hamas and al Qaeda. Yet Cambridge University Press still caved – and even asked the authors to join its apology to bin Mahfouz. (They rightly refused.) Since March 2002, bin Mahfouz has sued or threatened suit in England at least 36 times against those who’ve linked him to terrorism, including many American authors and publications. Everyone settled with bin Mahfouz – except me. He sued me in London in January 2004, shortly after my book “Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed – and How to Stop It” was published in the United States. I refused to acknowledge a British court’s jurisdiction over a book published here; the court then ruled in bin Mahfouz’s favor by default. It enjoined British publication of “Funding Evil,” awarded bin Mahfouz $225,900 in damages and expenses and ordered that I publicly apologize and destroy the book. I still refuse to acknowledge the British Court and its ruling.