Friday Jun 16, 2023
LONDON: A UK High Court judge has accepted that Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Nasir Butt did nothing wrong when he filmed the late Justice Arshad Malik rejecting the defense of Pakistan Television.
Butt secretly filmed Malik confessing to convicting Nawaz in the Azizia Reference for 10 years and claiming that he was blackmailed via video before the 2018 elections and forced to imprison the top PML-N leader and his daughter Maryam Nawaz ever. costs.
In a stunning ruling, Judge Heather Williams rejected the "truthful defence" put forward by SAMAA TV UK's lawyers that Nawaz's 10-year sentence in the Al-Azizia Reference was correct and based on corruption.
The lawyers said Justice Malik was an honest man blackmailed by Butt to help Nawaz and that reporting the video scandal was in the public interest.
The judge called this evidence a "manifestly weak and unsustainable defense of the truth" and expressed her outrage at the defendant's insistence.
Butt has so far won three defamation cases against three television channels in out-of-court settlements.
However, this was the first case involving Nawaz's conviction, Pakistani politics and the Judge Malik video scandal to be challenged before an English judge over the trial and test of evidence.
Judge Williams also banned the television company through an injunction from repeating the same allegations in the UK against the Butt, Nawaz and Arshad Malik scandal.
In her 36-page judgement, Judge Williams ruled that the broadcast defamed Butt, rejecting the arguments put forward by the TV channel against him.
The judge ruled: "The defense of truth fails because the defendant failed to show that the defamatory charge, namely that the plaintiff threatened and attempted to bribe the judge, was substantially true. The defense of disclosure in the public interest case fails because the defendant failed to show that any relevant the person believed at the time that the publication of the impugned words was in the public interest, and in any event, if such a belief existed, it was not a reasonable belief in all the circumstances, and the appellant's claim for defamation is accordingly established. I award him £35,000 as damages and I will issue an injunction restraining future repetition of the defamation."
When the channel made these allegations on 11 July 2019, its current owner did not take it over from its former owners in the UK. Butt's case was against a British company not associated with the leader of the Istehkam Party of Pakistan (IPP), which now owns SAMAA in the UK and Pakistan.
SAMAA UK in the United Kingdom alleged that Butt was involved in threatening and bribing the late accountability judge who convicted former prime minister Nawaz in the wealth case.
During the broadcast, the channel made several allegations against Nawaz, Butt and their associates.
SAMAA analyst and employee Adnan Adil accused Butt of threatening and intimidating the judge and accusing him of conspiring against Pakistan's judicial system.
He said: "How are these conspiracies being exposed. People in Pakistan should know about this conspiracy. Has our judicial system and state apparatus sold out? Can someone sabotage our systems through conspiracies? The public should know what conspiracy has taken place. They should know how these characters were involved. They should receive exemplary punishment for this."
In his case before the court, SAMAA's lawyer for the former owner of SAMAA TV relied on the affidavit of Judge Malik, who accused Butt of corruption and tampering with the judiciary, to help Nawaz, who was in jail when Butt filmed the judge.
The channel told the court about the 2016 Mossack Fonseca leaks - better known as the Panama Papers - and the revelation that Nawaz and his family had properties and companies worth millions of dollars in the UK.
The channel told the court that Nawaz was removed from the post of prime minister by the Supreme Court of Pakistan as a finding was made for dishonesty and non-disclosure of his interest in a job in the capital city of Dubai-based FZE and was therefore convicted and sentenced.
The channel told the court that Nawaz's conviction was correct and that according to Judge Malik Butt's confession, he threatened physical harm and intimidation, and that Butt told the judge that he owed Nawaz a lot for avoiding punishment in the murder cases he committed.
The channel told the court that Butt, according to Justice Malik, was willing to help Nawaz in his legal processes to any extent.
Butt's case was based on the fact that the court acquitted Nawaz of charges related to the purchase of four flats in London. Still, he punished him for not being able to prove the source of income from owning a steel plant in Saudi Arabia for which he was neither the owner nor the beneficiary.
Butt's lawyer dismissed the SAMAA UK case and told the judge that it was now a proven fact that Nawaz Sharif was convicted in these cases through the manipulation of judges by the then establishment to rig the 2018 elections and remove Nawaz from power. .
His lawyer told the court that retired Pakistani judges had said the same, and former prime minister Imran Khan had recently acknowledged that then army chief General (retd) Qamar Javed Bajwa controlled the entire system and ran the show - an allegation Nawaz has been making since 2018.
Butt told the judge that he did not believe for a second that Nawaz had done anything wrong and all the evidence supported that fact.
He told the judge: “I made the video because I thought it was important to bring Mr Nawaz's innocence to light... Judge Malik would never have consented to being filmed and would have been uncomfortable if he knew I was filming him. The recording of Judge Malik's confession was in the public interest and in the interest of justice. I was uncovering one of the biggest stories of injustice and miscarriages of justice.”
Butt told the court that he arranged for the late judge to meet Nawaz at Jati Umra, where the judge apologized to Nawaz and told him he had no choice.
Judge Williams ruled that the defendant had not shown that the defamatory allegation that the plaintiff threatened and attempted to bribe the judge was substantially true, and "the defendant did not even come close to claiming that the plaintiff threatened and attempted to bribe the judge." .
The judge said it was clear that the TV channel's editorial did not take any reasonable steps to get Butt's version and rejected the arguments put forward by the defendants that they had tried to contact the plaintiff.
The judge said: "The applicant has established his claim for defamation. I accept that the defamatory statement involved a very serious imputation of such a kind that it went to the core of the applicant's integrity as a political figure. I also accept that the damage to his reputation was all the greater because he is a prominent figure in of Pakistan and in the Pakistani diaspora
