The story in The Guardian of 12 November, ‘Diplomat’s “slave” can stay in UK’, was the tip of an iceberg. The story concerned the allegations made that a Sudanese diplomat had kept a ‘slave’ in London. Allegations of slavery in the Sudan have been made – and denied – for years. (A summary of the situation is at http://www.sudan update.org/REPORTS/Slavery/slave.htm) The regime in the Sudan is Islamic and the allegations have been coming from a variety of Christian groups, including Christian Solidarity Worldwide, headed by Baroness Cox. These groups have found the columns of a number of conservative newspapers open to them; in this country notably the Daily and Sunday Telegraph. Attempting to refute and rebut the claims of these groups is the European-Sudanese Public Affairs Council (ESPAC) in London. Whether or not slavery is being practised in southern Sudan, these rebuttal efforts by ESPAC have exposed the Telegraph group’s role in yet more disinformation.
At the ESPAC website < www.espac.org > there is a mass of documentation on this, the centrepiece of which is ‘Recycling lies: the strange case of the Sudanese “slave girl” Zeinab Nazer’ (7 November 2002) which includes the 4 July 2002 judgement in the High Court in a libel case brought by the Sudanese diplomat named in The Sunday Telegraph’s version of the ‘slave girl’ story. In court The Telegraph admitted the story was false.
Oddly, the fact that The Telegraph had lost in the High Court was not included in The Guardian’s report of 12 November.