Author:
Publication: Sify News
Date: November 1, 2002
URL: http://news.sify.com/cgi-bin/sifynews/news/content/news_fullstory_v2.jsp?article_oid=12098828&category_oid=-20614&page_no=1
Switzerland's top court on Friday
slapped a fresh ban on a controversial book by two French authors about
Osama bin Laden, the Swiss ATS news agency said.
The Federal Court said the book
Ben Laden: la verite interdite(Bin Laden: the Forbidden Truth) published
in French and German should be kept off the bookstore shelves while judges
review the facts of the case.
The book by French authors Jean-Charles
Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie alleges that the Saudi investment company
SICO owned by one of bin Laden's half-brothers, Yeslam Binladin, helps
finance the Saudi extremist's al-Qaeda network.
Yeslam Binladin, a businessman who
has been resident in Geneva since 1985 and obtained Swiss citizenship,
had petitioned the court to ban the book, arguing that its contents was
libel.
He was contesting a decision by
a lower Geneva court which eventually decided to authorise the publication
and sale of the book.
Binladin has succeeded in obtaining
a provisional injunction against the book in Geneva in January, which was
then lifted in May after an appeal by the publishers.
Binladin's lawyer Pierre de Preux
has argued that although the book can be bought in France or ordered over
the internet, the request for its prohibition in Switzerland had a symbolic
value.
Binladin claims not to have had
any contact with his notorious half-brother - who is accused of masterminding
the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington - since 1981, and denies
any link to terrorist fundraising.