Galloway wins

MP George Galloway accepted undisclosed High Court libel damages and a public apology yesterday over an article which said he had opposed the conflict in Iraq because he had been paid by Saddam’s regime.

His solicitor, Mark Bateman, told Mr Justice Eady that the allegations in The Christian Science Monitor in April last year were “false and without foundation”.

Mr Galloway, the Independent MP for Glasgow Kelvin, was at London’s High Court to hear Mr Bateman say that the article in the Boston-based newspaper, which publishes in the UK through the Internet, reported on documents which had been given to a journalist by an Iraqi general.

These, he said, purported to show that Mr Galloway had received payments of more than $10 million in return for his support of Saddam Hussein’s regime.