Denmark wants Brussels to stop UK Mohammed cartoon lawsuit

by Leigh Phillips
EUobserver
March 16, 2010

https://www.legal-project.org/674/denmark-wants-brussels-to-stop-uk-mohammed

Excerpt:

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The Danish minister of justice has called on the European Commission to put a stop to a lawsuit by a Saudi lawyer who is using the UK's famously libel-happy courts to go after Danish newspapers for their publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

"It's fundamentally reasonable that judgments in the EU can often be exercised across borders," the minister, Lars Barfoed, said according to the Berlingske Tidende newspaper.

"But it would be taking it to the extreme if a UK court could rule against the Danish media and then require compensation and court costs to be paid."

Celebrities, eastern European oligarchs and Gulf sheikhs regularly fly into London not to see the sights, but for a very different kind of vacation. The British capital is also the "libel tourism" capital of the world.

In English and Welsh courts, the burden of proof is borne by the accused rather than the complainant, and as a result they have become the jurisdiction of choice for oligarchs and mafiosi, Saudi billionaires and even totalitarian governments.

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