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[casi] Documents on Galloway: forgeries :CSM



http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAUDQBK5HD.html

Christian Science Monitor Reports Documents Behind Reporting on British
Lawmaker Were Forgeries
The Associated Press
Published: Jun 19, 2003

BOSTON (AP) - The Christian Science Monitor reported on its Web site
Thursday that documents it relied on in reporting that Iraq authorized six
payments to a British lawmaker totaling more than $10 million dollars were
fraudulent.

"When new information cast doubt on the documents, we conducted an extensive
investigation of their authenticity which culminated this week in the
virtual certainty that they were forged," Monitor editor Paul Van Slambrouck
wrote in an editor's note accompanying the Boston-based newspaper's account
of its internal investigation of the documents.

On April 25, the Monitor said it had been given documents discovered in the
Baghdad house of Qusai Hussein, one of Saddam Hussein's two sons, that
showed Saddam's government authorized six payments to Labor lawmaker George
Galloway totaling more than $10 million, between July 1992 and last January.

According to the newspaper report, a document in January authorized a check
of $3 million in recognition of Galloway's "courageous and daring stands
against the enemies of Iraq, like (Tony) Blair, the British prime minister,
and for his opposition in the House of Commons and Lords against all
outrageous lies against our patient people."

Galloway, a vocal opponent of the war to oust Saddam and a frequent visitor
to Iraq before the conflict, repeatedly denied receiving payments from Iraq
and called the Monitor report "fantastically untrue."

Similar reports on Galloway allegedly receiving payments from Saddam were
carried in The Daily Telegraph in London. As recently as Wednesday,the
Telegraph reported that Galloway had confirmed he was in Iraq on the day
that documents used by the Telegraph in its reporting showed he met an Iraqi
intelligence officer.

"I am not yet in a position to say they (the Telegraph documents) are
forgeries, but I am in a position to say they are false," Galloway told the
Telegraph.

The Monitor said an initial investigation of the documents it received from
a man who identified himself as Gen. Salah Abdel Rasool seemed to confirm
their authenticity.

But subsequent ink tests showed that the two documents carrying the oldest
dates - 1992 and 1993 - "were actually written within the past few months."

The Monitor said the "newest document - dated 2003 - appears to have been
written at approximately the same time."

Galloway has threatened libel suits against both the Telegraph and the
Monitor. He was suspended from the Labor Party May 6 while it conducted an
internal investigation.




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