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Newspaper wins five-year fight to name millionaire former child abuse suspect

KhujaA regional daily has won its five-year battle to name a millionaire who was suspected of child sex offences before being released without charge.

The Supreme Court ruled five to two in favour of the Oxford Mail being allowed to name Tariq Khuja, left, who was arrested by detectives investigating a paedophile sex ring in Oxford in 2012.

Mr Khuja, a former magistrate, was named by a witness in a grooming trial the following year but has always vehemently denied any involvement in exploiting children.

Supreme Court judges ruled that Mr Khuja, referred to as PNM during court proceedings, could not use privacy laws to ban the Mail from naming him.

In its judgement handed down this morning, it said: “PNM’s application is to prohibit the reporting, however fair or accurate, of certain matters which were discussed at a public trial. These are not matters in respect of which PNM can have had any reasonable expectation of privacy.”

Mr Khuja’s battle for anonymity started after he was arrested in March 2012 in connection with Operation Bullfinch, a Thames Valley Police investigation into allegations of child sexual grooming and prostitution.

He was given police bail, and was later released, but told the case was being kept under review. He was never charged with any offence – and, said the Supreme Court, there was no reason to believe that he ever would be.

But nine other men were prosecuted in connection with the investigation.

Early in the criminal proceedings, a magistrates’ court made an order under section 4 (2) of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 which banned the media from identifying Mr Khuja.

During the course of the trial of the other nine men at the Old Bailey, Mr Khuja was referred to by name on several occasions before the jury.

Mr Khuja was not a defendant in the trial, but his lawyers argued the public might mistakenly believe he was the perpetrator once news of his arrest emerged.

The trial ended with seven men being jailed for a minimum of 95 years for their roles in the ring which groomed, drugged, raped, and sold six young girls for sex between 2004 and 2011.

Following the Supreme Court judgmnent, Mr Khuja’s legal representative, Alex Cochrane, of Collyer Bristow LLP, told the Mail: “My client has always maintained his innocence and he continues to believe that, save in exceptional cases, people who are facing criminal allegations should not be named publicly unless and until charged.

“My client was arrested as long ago as 2012 and he has never been charged with – let alone convicted of – any offence.

“In fact, in July 2013, Thames Valley Police took the step of informing him that he had been “de-arrested”, since when no further action has been taken against him.

“​My client will not be providing any further comment and would ask the media to respect his privacy and that of his family.”

In the Supreme Court, Lord Sumption, who delivered a judgment with which Lord Neuberger, Lady Hale, Lord Clarke and Lord Reed agreed, said there were five main reasons why Mr Khuja could not win an injunction, writes Media Lawyer.

First, he had not applied for the criminal trial to be conducted in such a way as to withhold his identity in the first place -his application was to prohibit the reporting, however fair or accurate, of certain matters which were discussed at a public trial.

“These are not matters in respect of which (Mr Khuja) can have had any reasonable expectation of privacy,” Lord Sumption said.

“The contrast between this situation and the case where a newspaper responds to a tip-off about intensely personal information such as a claimant’s participation in private drug rehabilitation sessions could hardly be more stark.”

Second, Mr Khuja was entitled to rely on the impact which publication would have on his relations with his family and their relations with the community – but the impact on his family life of what was said about him at the trial was “no different in kind from the impact of many disagreeable statements which may be made about individuals at a high profile criminal trial”.

Lord Sumption went on: “A defendant at such a trial may be acquitted, possibly on an issue of admissibility, after bruising disclosures have been made about him at the trial.

“Within the limits of professional propriety, a witness may have his integrity attacked in cross-examination. He may be accused by other witnesses of lying or even of having committed the offence himself.

“All of these matters may be exposed in public under the cloak of the absolute immunity of counsel and witnesses from civil liability, and reported under the protection of the absolute privilege from liability fordefamation for fair, accurate and contemporaneous publication.

“The immunity and the privilege reflect the law’s conviction that the collateral impact that this process has on those affected is part of the price to be paid for open justice and the freedom of the press to report fairly and accurately on judicial proceedings held in public.”

Third, the impact on his family life was “indirect and incidental”.

Neither Mr Khuja nor his family participated in any capacity at the trial, and nothing that was said at the trial related to his family.

Mr Khuja was seeking to restrain reporting of the proceedings in order to protect his reputation.

“A party is entitled to invoke the right of privacy to protect his reputation but, as I have explained, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in relation to proceedings in open court,” Lord Sumption said.

The only claim available to Mr Khuja was based on the adverse impact on his family life which would follow indirectly from the damage to his reputation, he said, adding that it was “clear that in an action for defamation no injunction would issue to prevent the publication of a fair and accurate report of what was said” about him in the proceedings, as the report would be both privileged and justified.

“In the context of the publication of proceedings in open court, it would be incoherent for the law to refuse an injunction to prevent damage to (Mr Khuja’s) reputation directly, while granting it to prevent the collateral impact on his family life in precisely the same circumstances,” Lord Sumption said.

It would also, as Lord Steyn had pointed out in In re S (Identification: Restrictions on Publication) ([2005] 1 AC 593), make it particularly difficult to distinguish the many other cases in which judicial proceedings generated damaging or distressing collateral publicity for those not directly involved.

Fourth, said Lord Sumption, he would not rule out the possibility of a pre-emptive injunction in a case where the information was private or there was no sufficiently substantial public interest in publication.

“But in relation to the reporting of public court proceedings such cases are likely to be rare,” he said.

“This is clearly not such a case. The sexual abuse of children, especially on an organised basis, is a subject of great public concern. The processes by which such cases are investigated and brought to trial are matters of legitimate public interest. The criticisms made of the police and social services inevitably reinforce the public interest in this particular case.”

The use of section 4 (2) of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 to postpone the reporting of aspects of a public trial was justified by the need to protect the interests of justice, but was nonetheless a proper matter for debate which the media are entitled to raise.

The fifth issue was whether the public interest extend to Mr Khuja’s identity.

This case differed from earlier cases in which the same question had arisen because the order being sought would not prevent the identification of a party to the criminal proceedings or even of a witness.

“To my mind that makes it even more difficult to justify an injunction,” said Lord Sumption.

“But in any event I do not think it can be a relevant distinction. The policy which permits media reporting of judicial proceedings does not depend on the person adversely affected by the publicity being a participant in the proceedings.

“It depends on (i) the right of the public to be informed about a significant public act of the state, and (ii) the law’s recognition that, within the limits imposed by the law of defamation, the way in which the story is presented is a matter of editorial judgment, in which the desire to increase the interest of the story by giving it a human face is a legitimate consideration.”

Mr Khuja’s identity was not a peripheral or irrelevant feature of this particular story.

Lord Sumption added that restrictions on reporting proceedings in open court were particularly difficult to justify.

“It may in some cases be easier to justify managing the trial in a way which avoids the identification of those with a sufficient claim to anonymity,” he said.

“Applications for anonymity in the courtroom will generally raise many issues other than the impact on the applicant or his family. They will include the fairness of the trial, the nature of the issues, and the existence and extent of any legitimate public interest in the applicant’s identity.”

If there was a solution to the problem of collateral damage to those not directly involved in criminal proceedings, that was where it was to be found, he added.

2 comments

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  • July 20, 2017 at 10:03 am
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    The Times claimed they won the right to name him, with it on the front page yesterday and a double page inside.

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  • July 20, 2017 at 1:36 pm
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    It was a joint case against both the Oxford Mail and The Times. The Times was working on the story as well over its many months, but the Mail was the first paper to start looking into this and was excluded from the initial hearing at mags.

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