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Libel payment for Lofti Raissi

01 August 2003

In April 2002 Lofti Raissi, an Algerian-born pilot, was cleared by a British court of allegations that he trained the 11 September hijackers. Lofti was arrested days after the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre, and the Pentagon played a key role in instigating charges against him, insisting that they had insurmountable evidence that he had trained the pilots. After spending five months detained at Belmarsh high security prison in southeast London, where he was told he would be charged with conspiracy to murder and could face the death penalty in the USA, Lofti was cleared of all charges. He was the first person to be arrested after September 11 and his imprisonment, during which he says he was assaulted and verbally abused, was made all the more unbearable by "the way the media printed every single lie that the FBI and Scotland Yard told them".

Lofti's lawyers estimate that more than 500 articles, based on the US allegations, were published across the world. The Mail on Sunday published additional claims, including the extraordinary allegation that he had stolen the identity of a woman. At the beginning of October Lofti reached a settlement at the High Court, when Associated Newspapers (the publisher of the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday) agreed to pay substantial damages and legal costs for "any distress caused as a result of the publication of the article." Mr Raissi had argued that the allegations implied that he was "an important member of the organisation responsible for the September 11 terrorist attacks and played a key role in the preparation of those attacks, in particular by training terrorist hijackers to fly."

Lofti has already begun legal action against the FBI and the US Department of Justice for £13 million for false imprisonment and malicious prosecution. He will also bring a claim against the Crown Prosecution Service and the UK police.

Independent 6 & 7.10.03.