Posted on 04/25/2003 3:02:48 PM PDT by Shermy
George Galloway's lawyers today said that he was planning legal action over what they said were "totally untrue" claims that Saddam Hussein's regime authorised payments of more than $10 million (£6.3 million) to the Labour MP.
The fresh accusations against the representative for Glasgow Kelvin were contained in the Boston-based newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor.
Responding to the report, Mr Galloway's lawyers, Davenport Lyons, said that the newspaper accepted that the authenticity of the documents could not be verified.
"Indeed, the alleged content and wording of the documents referred to in the article raise very serious questions about their authenticity and provenance. George Galloway told us today that he thought the alleged wording is bordering on farce and is more like a Private Eye spoof."
The newspaper claimed that documents uncovered in a Baghdad house used by Saddam's son Qusay detailed orders for six payments to Mr Galloway between July 1992 and January 2003 totalling more than $10 million.
"These allegations are also totally untrue," Davenport Lyons said in a statement. "George Galloway did not visit Iraq before 1993 and has never met Qusay Hussein or even heard of any of the other people whose names are supposed to be mentioned in the documents.
"George Galloway has not received any money from Saddam Hussein's regime in return for his support or any other reason and he intends to take legal action in respect of the publication of these false allegations. He hopes that the British media will not further disseminate them under the guise of public interest or otherwise."
The newspaper does not claim that Mr Galloway actually received the millions of dollars or that he asked for or encouraged any payment. It points to questions in The Guardian that raise the possibility that previous documents published by The Daily Telegraph could contain false claims that Iraqi agents could have profited from.
However, it does claim that the two earliest payments, in July of 1992 and October of 1993, are noted down on green stationery as having been delivered.
The Monitor claimed that the three most recent alleged payment authorisations, beginning on April 4, 2000, and ending on January 14, 2003, were for $3 million each.
It said that the January 14, 2003, document, written on Republican Guard stationery with its Iraqi eagle and "Trust in Allah" slogan, called for the "Manager of the security department, in the name of President Saddam Hussein, to order a gratuity to be issued to Mr George Galloway of British nationality in the amount of three million dollars only."
It said that the document stated that the money was in return for "his courageous and daring stands against the enemies of Iraq, like Blair, the British Prime Minister, and for his opposition in the House of Commons and Lords against all outrageous lies against our patient people...."
The newspaper said that the document was signed by General Saif Adeen Flaya al-Hassan, Colonel Shawki Abed Ahmed, and apparently Qusay - according to the former Iraqi general who, the newspaper said, discovered the files in a house in the Baghdad suburbs used by the President's son.
This afternoon, speaking from his holiday home in Portugal, Mr Galloway said: Mr Galloway said of the 1992 date: "(At that time) I had never set foot in the country (Iraq), not met an Iraqi leader and they had probably never heard of me."
Mr Galloway described the latest allegations as "fantastically untrue", adding that they removed any doubt that "I am the subject of a deliberate campaign of forgery and deception".
Ah, but he met his current wife, Amineh Abu-Zayyad, in 1991....The "close relative", possibly niece, of Yasser Arafat.
Where did you hear that?
He met his current wife in 1991.
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Galloway is quick to remind you that he, and his comrades on the left, were among the first to condemn Saddam's human rights record, even if the chief motive was that the country had become a virulently anti-communist puppet of America. Until 1991, Iraq was the only Arab country he'd not visited. "I wouldn't have been allowed in. I was a known opponent of the Iraqi regime because I was with the left, and the communists in Iraq who were shattered and sent into orbit in the late 70s."
He says his political position is no different now than it was then; that while there are so many politicians marching across the ideological spectrum without explanation, he has stayed put. What is that position? "I am on the anti-imperialist left." The Stalinist left? "I wouldn't define it that way because of the pejoratives loaded around it; that would be making a rod for your own back. If you are asking did I support the Soviet Union, yes I did. Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life. If there was a Soviet Union today, we would not be having this conversation about plunging into a new war in the Middle East, and the US would not be rampaging around the globe."
British member of parliament George Galloway refused to accept an apology from the Wall Street Journal, which retracted a claim he had received $10 million to promote Iraq in the West, June 20, 2003. The newspaper said documents from Baghdad -- on which its April 25 report about the anti-war legislator were based -- were 'almost certainly forgeries.' Galloway is shown talking to reporters April 24. (Jose Manuel Ribeiro/Reuters)
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