The Paladins are disappointed by the defamatory, materially false, incomplete and misleading article published by the Associated Press on 11 September 2021, which makes a series of unsourced ed assertions apparently based upon a likewise unsourced article in the tabloid legal gossip journal Global Arbitration Review dated the day before 10 September 2021. These articles are about the trial of a member of the Kuwaiti Royal Family, Sheikh Ahmed Al-Fahed Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah, and his right hand man Hamad Al-Haroun. The events are the subject of a number of sets of legal proceedings in various jurisdictions, something that neither the Associated Press nor the Global Arbitration Review made clear - perhaps because they didn't know the facts and hadn't asked any of the relevant parties, an omission which is obvious from the text of both articles.
In contradistinction to what these articles say -
The Geneva trial was conducted in the total absence of due process. The defendants were not allowed to call any witnesses.
One of the defendants, a lawyer Matthew Parish, was tried in absentia, so he could not explain his version of events to the Court at all.
This was all the more lamentable given that his version of events was explained in statements given to the Geneva Prosecutor involved several months before, who did not present these statements to the Court or make any reference to them altogether.
Hence the parties' defences were simply ignored by the Court, which did not discuss them or assess them.
It is a matter of public record that a US$1 million facilitation payment (i.e. bribe) was paid to the Geneva public institutions in connection with the prosecution.
A Swiss publicly owned media source reveals the facilitation payment in the following article: https://www.rts.ch/info/regions/geneve/10325275-un-don-koweitien-a-luni-de-geneve-suscite-des-questions-politiques.html
The lawyer defendant Matthew Parish was convicted of a crime of forgery of a person's signature he had never met or heard of, and this accusation was not mentioned in the indictment or in any of the evidence that the Court heard.
The article is misleading about the sentences imposed upon the defendants, that were all in substantial part suspended and no custody warrants were issued at the end of the trial: all defendants walked free.
The principal Geneva Judge in the trial has been the subject of substantial criticism for breaches of due process and the trial as a whole has not been regarded as fair by legal observers.
The judgment of the Court was foreclosed by a prior judgment of the High Court in London dated 16 June 2021 on the same issues; a copy of the judgment is available at: https://d085b3be-2bc3-46ba-b3cf-cf0b6e23d977.usrfiles.com/ugd/d085b3_0b7c23582d734b018e04f9ed02273570.pdf
A discussion of that English court judgment, and its res judicata effects (i.e. the English judgment takes precedence over the Geneva judgment), is available here: https://www.the-paladins.com/post/the-battle-for-the-kuwaiti-emiracy-chapter-four
The two principal Kuwaitis defending the proceedings, Ahmed Al-Fahad Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, are accused in ongoing English High Court proceedings by their former lawyer of massive criminality amounting to the running of one or more international criminal organisations. A summary of those proceedings is available here: https://www.the-paladins.com/post/suing-the-intelligence-services-part-4-the-battle-for-the-kuwaiti-emiracy-part-18
Copies of the Court documents before the High Court in London making these allegations against the Kuwaitis are available here: https://d085b3be-2bc3-46ba-b3cf-cf0b6e23d977.usrfiles.com/ugd/d085b3_ee625c4b8c764ac8acfa64596429090a.pdf
The judgment of the Geneva Court is private and its publication is not permitted by law; nonetheless both the Associated Press and the tabloid magazine Global Arbitration Review have seen fit to ignore these injunctions of confidence and discuss the trial in a one-sided way.
None of this is perhaps surprising because Associated Press did not contact the above mentioned lawyer before defaming him in print based upon reprehensible tabloid journalism written in a tabloid newspaper owned by a notorious Geneva lawyer whose criminal activities are well-known across town and have been published in reputable sources. Nor did the tabloid journal Global Arbitration Review. Neither Associated Press nor Global Arbitration Review referred to the public English court documents undermining their story, which they easily could have done had they made enquiry of the parties they were defaming and/or undertaken usual due diligence and research upon the matter they were purporting to report upon.
The Paladins deplore one-sided, misleading journalism that falls to these low standards, particularly where no opportunity to comment is provided upon a defamatory article: a right that exists explicitly in Swiss law.
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