When Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld published Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed—and How to Stop It, a book documenting the clandestine networks through which terrorist groups obtain their funding, her work quickly drew the litigious ire of a billionaire Saudi businessman whose ties to terror she documents. Although Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz is neither a citizen nor resident of the United Kingdom, he has a long track record as a "libel tourist," meaning that he uses that country's plaintiff-friendly libel laws to silence authors, journalists, scholars, and publishers who allege that he has covertly channeled funds from his family's vast banking fortune to organizations such as al-Qaeda. Earlier this year Mahfouz forced Cambridge University Press to withdraw and pulp Alms for Jihad, a book by two American authors that contained similar allegations to Ehrenfeld's. Numerous newspapers and magazines have been forced to make similar retractions and concessions, details of which Mahfouz then publishes on his website. The sheikh is so litigious and so wealthy that many publishers simply aren't willing to risk offending him: The New York Times cites the Saudi billionaire as the major reason why Craig Unger's publisher refuses to issue a British edition of the American bestseller House of Bush, House of Saud.
When Mahfouz sued Ehrenfeld in the UK, where her book had not even been published (twenty-three copies had been imported from online booksellers, possibly by associates of Mahfouz), the American author defiantly refused to acknowledge a foreign court's jurisdiction over her freedom of speech. She did not appear to defend herself in the London court, so the English judge awarded the suit by default to Mahfouz, fining Ehrenfeld over $200,000 in damages and legal costs and ordering that all copies of her book in the UK be destroyed. Ehrenfeld then decided to fight back in the U.S. courts. Her countersuit, which prominent Boston civil liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate calls "one of the most important First Amendment cases of the past 25 years," aims to render foreign courts' libel rulings unenforceable in the United States. It is currently pending in the New York Court of Appeals.
Last week, MPI fellow Jared Lapidus completed an eight-minute short film that documents Ehrenfeld's efforts to safeguard American civil liberties from the menace of libel tourism. He chose to premiere The Libel Tourist on the Internet to highlight the threats posed to American freedom when wealthy Saudis can use British libel law to deny U.S. citizens their constitutional right to free speech.
Today, Reason's Jacob Sullum makes note of Lapidus's film, which has been viewed an average of a thousand times a day on YouTube since its release. The film is also available in both English and Arabic versions at its official website, www.TheLibelTourist.com.