It looks like people are now lining up to apologise to Salmam Rushdie. Padan muka.Sir Salman Rushdie has received an unreserved apology from a former policeman, Ron Evans and his ghost writer, for writing a disparaging book about the former, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Four thousand copies of the book have been pulped. Sir Salman has accepted the apology and expects a swift retraction but has declined to press for damages. He will however be compensated for his legal costs of GBP10,000.00 to BP15,000.00.
Helen Pidd of The Guardian writes: After the declaration of falsity was accepted, Rushdie said he was pleased with the speedy verdict and hoped his victory would spur others on to challenge falsehoods without demanding damages. He had succeeded in finding "a new method by which to establish the fact", he said. "It seems to me to be unconvincing that a huge, large amount of money will improve your reputation. It just means that your lawyers are better than the other person's lawyers. But to have the court stating that certain things are untrue seems to me to be emphatic."
Geoffrey Robertson QC, for Rushdie, said his client had "pioneered a new way of reconciling the right to freedom of speech with the right to reputation: you nail the lie for all time with a court-ordered declaration of falsity and you receive your legal costs, but you decline to chill free speech by putting authors and publishers [through] an expensive trial and making them pay heavy damages."
Evans left the police force in 2005 after being convicted of nine counts of dishonesty.
In another report, also in The Guardian, Stephen Book writes that The Mail on Sunday will apologise to Sir Salman Rushdie for publishing the allegations in a serialisation that then travelled around the world copied by several websites.
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