The European Court of Human Rights has accepted a lawsuit filed by a Saudi national against a satellite channel, a newspaper and a news agency on charges of insulting the Kingdom.

This is the first lawsuit of its kind accepted by the court as the petitioner has moved it in his personal capacity, rather than the involvement of a government agency.

The court, headquartered in Strasbourg, France, said it has accepted the lawsuit as it comes within the legal aspect that is under the court’s jurisdiction. It pointed out the Saudi citizen has filed the lawsuit under his full responsibility against Al-Jazeera satellite channel, and the Turkish Daily Sabah newspaper and Anadolu News Agency.

Petitioner Dr. Ahmed Al-Bougari has authorized a number of European lawyers to defend his case in his personal capacity while officially authorizing Khaled Abu Rashed to be the legal consultant in the case in the Kingdom. He said that the the acceptance of the suit by the European court means half the battle won.

Al-Bougari filed his lawsuit on June 15, 2019, while the first court session was on Sept. 5. The court has asked Al-Jazeera, Daily Sabah and Anadolu to provide veracity of the news published by them.

The material they published contained insults against the Kingdom and its citizens. Dr. Al-Bougari pointed out that litigations in the case are going on.

Dr. Al-Bougari said that the Kingdom’s government has nothing to do with litigations in the case. Furthermore, the lawsuit is not against the governments of Qatar and Turkey, but individual media outlets. He further said that the objective is to ask the defendants to provide proof of the truth in the media content that they published. Otherwise, they have to submit an official apology via their media to the Kingdom and its citizens.

Al-Bougari said that the next court session is scheduled for Nov. 11 when the defendants are to give authenticated evidence for all that has been published and transmitted to disparage and harm the Kingdom and its citizens.

Al-Bougari stressed that the defendants will be exposed before the whole world because they will not be able to find any truth in what they published or transmitted, “because they are liars”.

He reaffirmed the strong and transparent relations between the leadership and the citizens in the Kingdom, and the citizens rallying behind their leadership in support of the nation as well as cooperating and making sacrifices on any issue that aims to harm its reputation, image and security. He added that they completely reject such conspiracies and tendentious media campaigns.

SOURCE : SAUDIGAZETTE