Mohammed Saeed El-Saeiti v The Islamic Centre (Manchester) & Ors

In determining the meaning of a publication, the court must consider the publication as a whole and the impression conveyed to the ordinary reasonable reader or viewer. Context may neutralise an apparently defamatory allegation where the publication itself makes clear that the allegation is not credible.

A statement may be fact or opinion according to how it would be understood in context. An express statement that something is an opinion is strong evidence, although not conclusive. Where an opinion is based on an asserted failure to test evidence, the publisher need identify the basis in general terms; it need not explain why the evidence would have failed.

A meaning is defamatory only if it tends to lower the claimant in the estimation of right-thinking people generally and would have a substantially adverse effect on how people treat the claimant.

The claimant, a former imam, brought libel proceedings against his former employer, a mosque, and one of its trustees. The claim concerned four BBC broadcasts and a press statement responding to a public inquiry into the Manchester Arena bombing.

On an application directed to preliminary issues, the court had to determine the natural and ordinary meaning of each publication, whether the meaning was fact or opinion, whether any opinion indicated its basis, and whether the meaning was defamatory at common law. No defence had yet been served.

1. First Statement. The broadcasts had to be assessed as complete programmes, viewed once by the ordinary reasonable viewer. The surrounding report described the trustee as an unreliable witness, stated that the claimant’s evidence had been found reliable, and presented the trustee’s contrary position as defiant and unsupported. That context operated as a complete antidote to the allegation that the claimant was a liar.
2. The natural and ordinary meaning of the broadcasts was that, despite the trustee’s contrary protestations, the imam who had given evidence about political meetings had done so truthfully. That meaning was a statement of fact, but it was not defamatory. Saying that a person was truthful, despite contrary protestations, would not tend to lower that person in the estimation of right-thinking people or have a substantially adverse effect on how people treated him. The claim concerning the First Statement therefore failed.
3. Second Statement. Read in the context of the press statement, the meaning was that the claimant would have been found to have given evidence which he knew to be false if he had been cross-examined and his evidence tested. The reference to the statement as an opinion, together with its conjectural form, made it a statement of opinion rather than fact.
4. The basis of the opinion was sufficiently indicated: the claimant had not been cross-examined and his evidence had not been tested. The court was not required to identify why the claimant would have been found to have given false evidence; that was a matter for the defendants to address in their defence. The meaning was defamatory at common law. The court accordingly determined the preliminary issues as set out in paragraphs 74–75.