UK court rejects claim Nasir Butt bribed judge to help Nawaz Sharif

LONDON: A British High Court judge has accepted that Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Nasir Butt did nothing wrong by filming deceased judge Arshad Malik, rejecting a Pakistani TV's defence.

Butt had secretly filmed Malik, who admitted to having convicted Nawaz in Azizia Reference for 10 years, contending that he was blackmailed through a video ahead of the 2018 elections and coerced into jailing the PML-N supremo and his daughter, Maryam Nawaz, at all costs.

In a stunning judgment, Justice Heather Williams rejected the "truth defence" that SAMAA TV UK's lawyers advanced that Nawaz's conviction in Al-Azizia Reference for 10 years was right and based on corruption.

The lawyers stated that Judge Malik was an honest man who Butt had blackmailed into helping Nawaz and that reporting the video scandal was in the public interest.

The judge described this evidence as a "manifestly weak and unsustainable defence of truth" and expressed her annoyance that the defendant persisted.

Butt has, so far, won three defamation cases against three TV channels in out-of-court settlements.

However, this was the first case involving Nawaz's conviction, Pakistani politics, and Judge Malik's video scandal, contested before an English judge concerning a trial and test of the evidence.

Justice Williams has also banned the TV company through an injunction from repeating the same allegations in the UK against Butt, Nawaz, and Arshad Malik scandal.

In her 36-page judgment, Justice Williams ruled that the broadcast defamed Butt, rejecting the arguments advanced against him by the TV channel.

The judge ruled: "The defence of truth fails as the defendant has not shown that the defamatory sting of the imputation, namely that the claimant had threatened and tried to bribe a judge, was substantially true. The defence of publication on a matter of public interest fails, as the defendant has not shown that any relevant person believed at the time that publishing the words complained of was in the public interest and in any event if such a belief had been held, it was not a reasonable belief in all the circumstances; and accordingly, the claimant's claim for libel is established. I award him £35,000 by way of compensatory damages and I will grant an injunction restraining future repetition of the libel."

When the channel made these allegations on July 11, 2019, its current owner had not taken it over from its former proprietors in the UK. Butt's case was against the UK company not linked with Pakistan Istehkam Party (IPP) leader who now owns SAMAA in the UK and Pakistan.

SAMAA UK had alleged in the UK that Butt was involved in threatening and bribing the late accountability court judge who had convicted former premier Nawaz in the assets beyond means case.

During the broadcast, the channel made several allegations against Nawaz, Butt, and their associates.

Analyst and SAMAA employee Adnan Adil accused Butt of threatening and intimidating the judge and accused him of conspiring against the judicial system of Pakistan.

He had said: "How these conspiracies are being debunked. The people of Pakistan should know about this conspiracy. Has our court system and state apparatus sold itself out? Can anyone sabotage our systems through conspiracies? The public should know what conspiracy took place. They should know about how these characters were involved. They should receive exemplary punishment for this."

In his case before the court, SAMAA's lawyer for SAMAA TV's former owner relied upon the affidavit by Judge Malik accusing Butt of corruption and manipulation of 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 disclosure that Nawaz and his family had millions of dollars worth of properties and companies in the UK.

The channel told the court that Nawaz was removed as prime minister by the Supreme Court of Pakistan because a finding was made for dishonesty and failure to disclose his interest in employment in the Dubai-based Capital FZE, and that's why he was convicted and sentenced.

The channel told the court that Nawaz's conviction was right and that by Judge Malik's admission, Butt had made threats of physical harm and intimidation and that Butt told the judge that he owed Nawaz a great deal for avoiding punishment in murder cases that he had committed.

The channel told the court that Butt, as per Judge Malik, was willing to go to any extent to assist Nawaz in his legal trials.

Butt's case was premised on the fact that the court acquitted Nawaz of charges related to purchasing four flats in London. Still, it penalised him for being unable to prove the source of income for the ownership of a steel mill in Saudi Arabia for which he was neither the owner nor beneficiary.

Butt's lawyer rejected the case of SAMAA UK and told the judge that it was now an established fact that Nawaz Sharif was convicted in these cases through the manipulation of judges by the then-establishment in order to rig the election of 2018 and remove Nawaz from power.

His lawyer told the court that retired Pakistani judges had said the same and ex-premier Imran Khan recently acknowledged that the then army chief Gen (retd) Qamar Javed Bajwa controlled the whole system and ran the show — the allegation Nawaz has been making since 2018.

Butt told the judge that he never believed for a second that Nawaz had done anything wrong, and all the evidence supported this fact.

He told the judge: "I made the video because I thought it was important to bring to light the innocence of Mr Nawaz …. Judge Malik would never have agreed to being filmed and he would have been uncomfortable if he knew I was filming him. Filming Judge Malik's confession was of public interest and in the interest of justice. I was exposing one of the biggest stories of injustice and miscarriages of justice."

Butt told the court that he arranged the late judge's meeting with Nawaz in Jati Umra, where the judge said sorry to Nawaz and told him he was left with no choice.

Justice Williams ruled that the defendant had not established that the defamatory imputation that the claimant had threatened and tried to bribe a judge was substantially true, and "the defendant did not come close to showing that the claimant had threatened and tried to bribe a judge".

The judge said it was clear the TV channel's editorial took no reasonable steps to get a version of Butt and rejected the arguments put forward by the defendants that they had tried to contact the claimant.

The judge said: "The claimant has established his claim in libel. I accept that the defamatory statement involved a very serious imputation of a kind that went to the heart of the claimant's integrity as a political figure. I also accept that the damage to his reputation was all the greater given he is a prominent figure in Pakistan and in the Pakistan diaspora community in the United Kingdom. I accept that the imputations were given prominence within the Broadcast, as I have already described. The award must be sufficient to vindicate the claimant's reputation in circumstances where the defendant persisted with a manifestly weak and unsustainable defence of truth."

SAMAA UK's lawyer, Barrister Rashid Ahmed and Butt's lawyer Barrister David Lemer both relied on the historic defamation judgment in a case between Jang/Geo Editor-in-Chief Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman and ARY Network Ltd in 2016 in the London High Court.

That verdict has become a benchmark for the determination of defamatory meaning in the context of Urdu television broadcasts in the UK.

They both argued before the judge that this was a case in the Urdu language broadcast that set a benchmark in how such cases should be viewed when Urdu language translations are involved.

In determining the meaning in this case as defamatory in December 2021, Saini J had referred to Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman's case that the meaning of the words complained of was that the claimant threatened and tried to bribe a judge; the words complained of were a statement of fact; and the words complained of defamed the claimant at common law.