Sayed Zulfikar Abbas Bukhari v Syed Tauqeer Bukhari

This claim concerns 249 tweets published by the Defendant between early September 2019 and 20 March 2020, some of them including embedded videos. The Claimant contends that 40 of the tweets, or the videos they contained, amount to libels. He also relies on all 249 tweets as constituting a course of conduct amounting to harassment, giving rise to liability under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 (PfHA). The Claimant seeks damages and an injunction. I heard the trial of the claim over four days, commencing on 28 July 2025. This is my judgment. It is structured as follows.

The Claimant (commonly known as Zulfi Bukhari) built a successful and high-profile business career in the UK before serving as a minister in Imran Khan’s government in Pakistan. He remains active in both business and politics. At the material time he had British and Pakistani nationality but has since relinquished his British nationality. He now resides in Dubai. He has been represented by Stone White solicitors throughout these proceedings. His trial barrister was David Lemer.

The Defendant is a first cousin of the Claimant. He lives in England. The Defendant has been represented at various stages of these proceedings but now represents himself, citing lack of funds. He also has some disabilities. I noted the inequality of arms between the parties and made adjustments to the trial process accordingly, as mentioned below.

This claim has had a long and tortuous history. I do not need to recite all the twists and turns. The essential points are as follows.

The Claim Form was issued and served (along with the original Particulars of Claim) on 20 March 2020.

On 1 February 2022 Murray J gave judgment on the preliminary issues that are now routinely determined at an early stage in libel claims: [2022] EWHC 173 (QB). He determined the natural and ordinary meaning of the tweets and videos that were relied upon by the Claimant for the purposes of his libel claim; he held that 40 of these tweets (and/or the videos embedded in them) were defamatory at common law; and he held that each of those tweets and videos were statements of fact, not expressions of opinion.

On 14 February 2022, the Claimant served Amended Particulars of Claim (APC), omitting from the libel claim those tweets that Murray J had decided were not defamatory at common law and incorporating the meanings that Murray J had held to be borne by the remaining tweets and videos that are sued upon in libel.

The Defendant served a Defence on 7 March 2022 and then produced a draft Amended Defence in response to the Claimant’s criticisms of the original. In a judgment dated 1 March 2023 which, pragmatically, considered both the original Defence and the Defendant’s draft amendments, Steyn J held that the proposed defence of truth to the libel claim was inadequately particularised; that this defect also vitiated the Defendant’s reliance on the truth of his statements in defence of the harassment claim; and that his intended defence under PfHA s1(3)(a) (“prevention or detection of crime”) was also inadequately particularised: see her judgment, [2022] EWHC 417 (KB), at [82]-[85] and [136]. She granted the Defendant a further opportunity to put his Defence in order.

The Defendant made further attempts to amend the Defence in light of Steyn J’s judgment. I understand that he was represented by, or had the benefit of assistance from, solicitors during some of this time. Having failed to secure the Claimant’s consent to his proposed amendments, he made an application for permission to amend his Defence in the terms of a draft dated June 2023 which bears the hallmarks of professional input. This came before Julian Knowles J who, in a judgment dated 25 June 2024, refused the Defendant permission to amend. Specifically, he rejected the proposed amended pleading asserting that the Defendant’s statements were true, and he rejected the proposed reliance on PfHA s1(3)(a): [2024] EWHC 1578 (KB). The Judge gave detailed directions as to what could and could not feature in an Amended Defence. The Defendant then served an Amended Defence on 2 July 2024 that complied with these directions (ADF).

There were a number of matters that needed to be dealt with before the trial proper could commence or which arose in the course of the trial.

First, I heard an application by the Defendant that I should recuse myself as trial judge. This was in response to some information that I had disclosed to the parties the previous week about a case I am involved in as a barrister. I rejected the application and gave an oral judgment. I do not need to repeat it here.

Second, I considered whether the Defendant’s disability required any adjustments to be made to the normal trial process. It was common ground between the parties that the Defendant has a disability, though I was not given medical details. It was said to affect him in two ways relevant to the trial. He told me that he is on medication which makes it difficult for him to get going and to concentrate in the morning but that his cognitive function improves later in the day. He also said that he has difficulties speaking. I was able to observe this for myself, particularly at times when he became stressed.

It would have been preferable if the question of adjustments at trial had been raised earlier, at the CMC or PTR, in accordance with the King’s Bench Guide 2025 para 9.90. I was only alerted to the fact that the Defendant was seeking adjustments to the usual trial process when he emailed the Court the week before trial asking the Court to sit only in the afternoons.

On the first day of trial, Mr Lemer indicated that, from his client’s perspective, the trial could probably be concluded within much less than the four full sitting days that had been allocated. I therefore directed late starts for the hearings and we often finished early or had lengthy breaks so that the Defendant was at his best and had a chance to familiarise himself with the issues he needed to address at each stage in the trial.

As to the Defendant’s communication problems, I permitted his wife to act as a McKenzie Friend (i.e. to assist, advise and prompt him) and, further, I permitted her to address me directly on occasions when the Defendant was struggling to formulate questions or get his point across. The Defendant and his wife were very clear that, when it came to the Defendant giving evidence, he should do so on his own, without her assistance. That proved possible. Given that the usual artificiality of a litigant in person “re-examining” themselves was further heightened in this case by the Defendant’s communications problems, I gave the Defendant some leeway when it came to his closing submissions, allowing him to clarify and expand somewhat on the answers he had given in cross-examination.

Although the issues flowing from the Defendant’s disability were raised late, I was satisfied that, with the co-operation of the parties, we had been able to come up with a way of proceeding with the trial that was acceptable to all, and in accordance with the Overriding Objective, CPR 1.6 and CPR PD1A.

As well as considering the Defendant’s disability, I took into account, when managing the trial, the fact that he is a litigant in person. Accordingly, when it came to cross-examining the Claimant and the Claimant’s other witness, I provided guidance to the Defendant on the nature and purpose of cross-examination and I identified to him and his wife aspects of the evidence of the Claimant and the Claimant’s other witness which, in light of the ADF, the Defendant would need to challenge. The Defendant did challenge this evidence. I also granted him some latitude in pursuing lines of questioning that did not obviously go to any matter in dispute on the parties’ pleaded cases though I reined him in from time to time when he was clearly straying into irrelevant matters or was repeating himself.

The third issue concerned a Supplemental Bundle filed by the Claimant the week before trial. I was puzzled by this, as its contents did not seem to match either parties’ disclosure lists. Mr Lemer explained that these were documents that the Claimant’s legal team regarded as disclosable but which they had failed to disclose through oversight. They had been provided to the Defendant during the week before trial. The Defendant confirmed that he had no objection to these documents being considered and, accordingly, I said that I would take them into account so far as relevant, subject to the Claimant regularising the position by filing a further disclosure statement.

Fourthly, I needed to consider some documents that the Defendant submitted to the Court on Friday 25 July 2025 (with the trial due to commence on Monday 28 July 2025) entitled “Defence Trial Bundle” and “Notes, possible defence strategy for Defendant in Bukhari libel and harassment claim”.

The key document among these was an undated, unsigned “defence statement” in which the Defendant purported to advance defences under section 2 of the Defamation Act 2013 (truth), section 3 (honest opinion), and section 4 (publication on matter of public interest). The “defence statement” gave no particulars for any of these defences, but stated that it was based on four events between 6 January 2024 and 13 September 2024, being alleged court decisions in Pakistan or other decisions of Pakistani state authorities adverse to the Claimant. The other documents were, in effect, submissions in support of this new “defence statement” or links to media reports that are said to support it.

I explained to the Defendant that, as the pleadings presently stood, there was no case for me to consider under ss2, 3 or 4 of the Defamation Act 2013, but that I would permit him to make an application orally to introduce such a case. He did so.

Having heard his submissions and Mr Lemer’s submissions in response, I rejected the Claimant’s application. Briefly, my reasons were as follows: this was an exceptionally late application, being made on the first day of trial; if I were to allow it, it would inevitably require an adjournment to allow the Claimant to plead a case in response and submit relevant evidence; the case is already old, having been commenced in 2020 and, if well-founded, the Claimant deserves swift vindication, not further delay; the Defendant has already tried repeatedly to put a defence of truth on record but has had those attempts rejected by two High Court judges; the Defendant has never previously pleaded or intimated defences of honest opinion or publication on matter of public interest; the alleged events relied upon by the Defendant all occurred in 2024, giving the Defendant ample opportunity to make a more timely application; the new defence was completely unparticularised and relies on matters occurring long after the period with which the present claim is concerned: it was not clear how any of the events relied upon could provide a substantive defence to the claim for libel and harassment based on the Defendant’s publications between September 2019 and March 2020.

As I explain further below, the authorities on the PfHA suggest that a claim for harassment is made out only if the claimant experienced the harassing effects of the defendant’s course of conduct while in England and Wales. No point about this is taken in the ADF but it seemed to me that I should treat this as a requisite ingredient of a harassment claim which a claimant must establish, whether or not a defendant takes the point. I explained my provisional views to the parties at the outset of the trial so that they could have a fair opportunity to address the issue either evidentially or through argument.

This resulted in the Claimant applying on Day 2 of the trial to rely on a second witness statement, in which he gave dates for when he had been in England during the relevant period and then, on Day 3, a third witness statement, correcting those dates and exhibiting the documents he had used to ascertain them. The Defendant’s stance in respect of the second witness statement had been neutral but it hardened into formal opposition once the third witness statement was served.

I permitted the Claimant to rely on this new evidence. He ought to have anticipated that the issue would require determination and should have dealt with it more fully in the first place. Nevertheless, having flagged the issue myself, it would hardly have been fair to refuse him the opportunity to address it through evidence, unless that would have caused significant prejudice to the Defendant. I did not think it did so: the Claimant’s new evidence actually gave the Defendant a better platform to challenge the harassment claim than he previously had (the ADF contained an admission that the Claimant “visits England regularly”; the new evidence showed only very limited time in England during the relevant period). The fact that the Defendant had only limited time to conduct his own investigations into the Claimant’s movements once I had indicated the issue needed to be addressed has to be weighed against the fact that the point could have been raised in the ADF and then addressed in the normal way. I gave the Defendant and his wife a substantial amount of time to digest the new material before the Claimant was recalled to deal with it.

The pleadings show agreement on many issues. In the ADF the Defendant admits responsibility for publication of all the tweets and the videos complained of. Where tweets or videos were in Urdu, the translations are agreed. Although not clear on the face of the pleadings, Mr Lemer confirmed to me that the Claimant’s libel claim is based only on publications occurring in England and Wales and, where those resulted in the material being republished, only republications occurring in England and Wales.

As to the libel claim, the Claimant puts his case on serious harm (Defamation Act 2013, s1) in a single paragraph in the following terms: “Given the extent of publication of the Tweets in question, and the nature and the identity of the publishees, the Claimant will invite the inference that serious harm has been caused to his reputation by the publication of each such Tweet”. The ADF denies this, with no further elaboration. The ADF does not contain any substantive defence to the libel claim.

As for harassment, the APC (at [6]) complain of the frequency of the Defendant’s tweets, and their “common theme” (namely that “the Claimant is corrupt, that his family wealth is derived from serious crime, and that the Defendant and his father are the victims of the Claimant and the Claimant’s father’s serious criminal conduct”). At APC [9] the Claimant pleads reliance on three “notable characteristics” of the Defendant’s Twitter campaign: (1) that the Claimant was tagged in many of the tweets, with the intention and effect of bringing them to his attention; (2) that the Defendant also tagged other Twitter users, including media organisations, in the hope of obtaining retweets to a wider audience; and (3) that his hopes have been rewarded on several occasions, for example when a well-known journalist Reham Khan retweeted a particular Tweet to her 2.4 million followers, resulting in the video embedded in that Tweet being viewed over 10,000 times. The APC plead that a very substantial proportion of those views will have been by Urdu speakers within England and Wales.

In support of his case that the Defendant knew or ought to have known that he was engaged in a course of conduct amounting to harassment, the Claimant relies on legal letters sent to the Defendant on 10 December 2019 and 10 January 2020 which articulated his harassment complaint but which did not prevent the Defendant from continuing to tweet as before.

The ADF admits paragraph 9 of the APC, save for denying the reasonableness of the inference that a substantial proportion of viewers of the Urdu video were within England and Wales. The ADF denies harassment and, in the alternative, advances a defence of reasonable conduct pursuant to PfHA s1(3)(c). The basis for this denial/defence is set out in ADF [9]-[10]. The Defendant pleads that his conduct was not harassment (or was reasonable in the circumstances) because of the Claimant’s position of power and influence (through his political appointment and his status as a wealthy businessman); because of the fact that he was an advisor to a Prime Minister who had been elected on an anti-corruption ticket; and because, in those circumstances, the Defendant’s publishees had a proper interest in considering his allegations of corruption etc.

The following issues arise for determination.

As to liability for libel, the only issue I need to decide is whether the publication of one or more of the tweets or videos complained of in the libel claim has caused serious harm to the Claimant’s reputation.

As to liability for harassment, I need to decide whether the Defendant’s publication of his tweets and videos constitutes a course of conduct amounting to harassment; whether he knew or ought to have known that that was the case; and whether (if prima facie amounting to harassment) his conduct was reasonable in the circumstances so as to give him a defence under PfHA s1(3)(c). As part of the first issue, I need to consider the authorities indicating that a claim in harassment is not made out unless the harassing effects of the defendant’s conduct are experienced by the claimant in England and Wales.

If liability is established, then the usual questions as to damages and an injunction arise. The Claimant did not pursue the pleaded claim for an order under s12 of the Defamation Act 2013 (publication of a summary of the judgment).

Having stated the issues which doarise for determination, it is also important to identify issues that, in my view, I do not have to decide. Specifically, in order to dispose fairly of this case, it is unnecessary and inappropriate to determine whether the imputations conveyed by any of the Defendant’s tweets and videos are true or false. I say that for the following reasons.

As to the libel claim, the Claimant is entitled to rely on the common law presumption of falsity. He does not need to prove that the Defendant’s allegations are false. The burden lies on the Defendant to prove the truth of any statements whose publication is found to have caused the Claimant serious reputational harm. The Defendant cannot do so in this case because his attempts to get a defence of truth on the record have comprehensively failed.

As to harassment, claimants sometimes rely on the fact that published allegations about them are false as a reason for regarding their publication as harassment. If they do so, then truth becomes an issue in the case (though rarely a determinative one). The Claimant has not done that here. His pleaded case on harassment does not include an averment that the Defendant’s statements are false. Rather he relies on the nature of the allegations, the frequency and repetitiveness with which the Defendant was making them, the element of targeting (by tagging the Claimant) and the Defendant’s evident intent to publicise his allegations as widely as possible.

As to the Defendant’s case on harassment, the pleaded case is clearly limited to the assertion that, by reason of the Claimant’s political status and wealth, and in particular his association with Imran Khan’s anti-corruption stance, it was not harassment (or alternatively it was reasonable in the circumstances) for the Defendant to publicise his allegations. There is no averment that these allegations were true (nor could there have been, given the decisions of Steyn J and Julian Knowles J). There is no averment that the Defendant had reasonable grounds for believing these allegations to be true.

Accordingly, on my analysis, questions of the truth or falsity of the Defendant’s allegations (or even question as to whether he had a reasonable basis for believing them to be true) do not arise on the pleaded cases. I made this clear to the parties.

Finally, no issue arose under PfHA s1(3)(a) (the defence that protects a defendant who is acting for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime). Julian Knowles J had ruled that this could not feature in the ADF.

The following facts and matters were not seriously in dispute. The Claimant and Defendant are the sons, respectively, of Syed Wajid Hussain Bukhari and Syed Gulzar Hussain Bukhari, two of five brothers. Both the Claimant and his father are wealthy, though the Defendant does not accept what they say about the source of their wealth. The Claimant’s father was born in Pakistan and then came to the UK to study. Thereafter he spent nearly four decades here in business. He moved back to Pakistan in 2003 and held political office there from 2007 as Minister of Environment, Local Government and Rural Development.

The Claimant was born in London in 1980. He was educated in Pakistan between the ages of 13 and 18 and then attended university in London. After university he worked for his father for a couple of years and then founded his own property development business called HPM Developments, specialising in developments for high net worth individuals around the world. He also co-founded Martin Kemp Design, an interior design studio specialising in luxury designs for yachts, private jets and the like. The Claimant said that he wrapped up HPM Developments while he was in politics and also stepped back from running the interior design business, though he remains a shareholder.

The Claimant set up the Bukhari Foundation in 2017 to work on social and humanitarian projects. In about 2016 he joined the British Asian Trust, a charity founded by the Prince of Wales (as he then was) to unlock the potential of disadvantaged people in South Asia. He served as Vice Chairman and remains on its advisory board. He produced a film called “Cake” which was selected as Pakistan’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards and had a red-carpet premiere in Leicester Square. In 2018 the Claimant featured in the “Muslim 100 Power List”, which I understand to be a list of influential British Muslims. He has also featured on the front cover of the Mayfair Times, the first Pakistani to do so.

The Claimant has a wife and children who remained in the UK while the Claimant was serving in the Pakistani government.

The Claimant’s career in politics began with a personal friendship with Imran Khan which developed into involvement in Mr Khan’s political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). In September 2018, after the PTI had won the general election and Mr Khan became Prime Minister, the Claimant was appointed as a special assistant to Mr Khan and Minister of State for Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resources Development. Then, in March 2019, the Claimant was appointed Chairman of the National Tourism Coordination Board and later Chairman of Pakistan’s Tourism Development Corporation. While serving in the government, he supported Mr Khan’s crackdown on corruption.

The Claimant found himself the target of allegations in 2021 concerning something that became known as the “Rawalpindi Ring Road scandal” and resigned from his roles in May that year. He was subsequently cleared of all wrongdoing. After his resignation, the Claimant has continued to serve the PTI and is currently its advisor to Imran Khan on international affairs and international media.

The “Panama Papers” leaks revealed companies in the British Virgin Islands that held assets owned by the Claimant. This triggered a preliminary enquiry by the National Accountability Bureau of Pakistan which looked at the Claimant’s financial transactions and assets. The enquiry was closed without making any findings adverse to the Claimant and without progressing to a formal investigation.

As is well-known, Mr Khan was obliged to resign as Prime Minister in 2022 following a vote of no confidence and has been in prison since 2023 for a variety of convictions and pending cases. The Claimant has recently been declared an absconder by a Pakistani court because he refused to return to Pakistan to testify against Mr Khan. The same court has also recently directed that property Pakistan belonging to the Claimant should be seized.

The Defendant moved to the UK from Pakistan in about 1991 with his parents and siblings and has lived here ever since. His father died in December 2019. The Defendant and the Claimant have not been close in recent years. There is a dispute about how much they saw of each other in earlier times.

The Defendant believes that his side of the family have been treated unjustly by the wider family. In particular, he believes that some £200,000 of his father’s money was unlawfully withdrawn from a bank in Pakistan and, although he was able to secure its return, he was unable to bring the alleged perpetrator to justice. He believes that a forged power of attorney was used to remove jewellery belonging to his side of the family from a safety deposit box in Pakistan, and used again to gain possession of land in Pakistan to which his side of the family was entitled.

In early September 2019 the Defendant began a Twitter campaign, tweeting prolifically about the Claimant and the Claimant’s father. Between then and 20 March 2020, there were 249 Tweets of which the Claimant complains, some of them containing embedded videos. The Tweets came fairly regularly, usually every day or couple of days and sometimes more than once a day. The Defendant’s self-description on his Twitter homepage stated “Real cousin & victim of Zulfi Bukhari (PM Imran Khan’s advisor & minister) & his father Wajid Bukhari. They ruined our lives Seeking justice & need your help”. In many of the Tweets, the Defendant “tagged” the Claimant, meaning that they came to his attention. The tweets about the Claimant and his father were just a subset of his tweets overall because Twitter analytics show that, by November 2019, the Claimant had made around 3000 tweets.

There was no evidence as to how many “impressions” any individual tweet received (“impressions” being Twitter’s term for the number of times a tweet is actually generated on the screen of a viewer who is active at the time: see the document “How Twitter Works” annexed to the judgment of Warby J in Monroe v Hopkins [2017] EWHC 433 (QB), [2017] 4 WLR 68).

At first the Defendant had no followers but by the end of the period he had 1879. As at 11 November 2019 Twitter analytics show that he had 671 followers, rising to 1,350 on 19 November 2019. Apart from this, there was no evidence as to the precise number of followers at the time of any particular tweet. The Defendant’s own evidence was that he wanted to ensure his tweets were seen by as many people as possible, that his followers included “many influential political and social individuals” , and that his tweets were “being acknowledged and reached by Pakistani politicians and celebrities”. It was agreed that “many” of his followers were in England and Wales, but not how many.

Some of the tweets were retweeted by recipients or “liked” by them. The number of retweets of the allegedly defamatory tweets ranged from 0 to 997; the number of likes ranged from 0 to 1600.

Twitter analytics from November 2019 show that most of the Defendant’s followers themselves had fewer than 500 followers, though some had more, including two with more than 1 million followers. There was no evidence of where those who received retweets were located nor, in most cases, the number of recipients of the retweets. Tweet 163 (embedding Video 11) was retweeted by Reham Khan, a well-known Pakistani journalist, to her 2.4m followers, and by Abid Sher Ali (a Pakistani politician) to his 1.3m followers, but there is no evidence of where Ms Khan or Mr Ali were when they read that tweet and retweeted it.

The viewing figures for the videos ranged from 86 to 34,700. The location of those who viewed the videos is unclear.

As to their subject matter, the tweets and videos tended to revolve around the same themes, often expressed in the same or very similar terms. One theme was that the Claimant had inherited his wealth from his father and other senior family members, who had accumulated it illegally; a second theme was that the Claimant had stolen land and valuables from the Defendant’s father; a third was that the Claimant is corrupt, dishonest and guilty of fraud; a fourth was that the Claimant had threatened the Defendant and his parents and then arranged for the Defendant to be attacked. The videos are mostly pieces to camera with the Defendant directly addressing the Claimant and repeating his allegations. In the videos the Defendant speaks in Urdu. The vast majority of the tweets are in English.

Where a tweet or video is relied on for the libel claim, I have set out in an appendix to this judgment the meaning attributed to it by Murray J and the number of retweets and likes the tweet received (or, as the case may be, the number of times the video was viewed).

On 10 December 2019, the Claimant’s solicitors sent the Defendant a letter of claim outlining intended claims in libel and harassment and identifying the conduct relied upon. The Defendant responded by posting a tweet and a video on 15 December 2019 challenging the Claimant to issue proceedings forthwith and stating that he would prove the truth of his allegations (which he again repeated).

The Claimant was aware of the Defendant’s tweets and videos (not least because he was tagged in many of them). However he was mostly abroad (in Pakistan or elsewhere) when he saw them.

The bundle included tweets in similar vein that the Defendant made after 20 March 2020 and extending in to early 2021. I was not shown any tweets later than that. The Defendant’s evidence, on which he was not challenged, is that in 2023 he chose to end his social media campaign and deactivated his Twitter account. He said that he has decided to sever ties with all members of his family.

In this section I summarise only evidence that was not (or not clearly) agreed, and which is potentially relevant to the issues I have to decide.

The Claimant adopted his Witness Statement dated 11 April 2025 and was cross-examined on it.

As to his family background and career, the Claimant explained that his father had built up a substantial portfolio of investment properties, using funds he had generated through his initial career as an accountant. As to his own entry into business, the Claimant explained that his father provided some initial capital by selling some of his properties but thereafter, the Claimant said, he built his businesses on his own.

The Claimant said that he remains active in business and that all his business is UK-based. He has a large property portfolio here and runs British companies. He says he maintains an office here and has more than 80 employees in the UK. He deals with UK banks and mortgage lenders.

He said that, since leaving Pakistan, the Pakistani authorities have sought to have him arrested abroad but that these requests have been refused by Interpol and described to him as politically motivated.

As for the Claimant’s relationship with the Defendant, the Claimant told me that, when he was young, he would see the Defendant every two years or so on family visits to Pakistan, where the Defendant and his father then lived. After the Defendant and his father moved to London in about 1991, the Claimant was not particularly close to them. He accepted in cross-examination that the Defendant (who worked in a cinema for a while) would sometimes sort out cinema tickets for the Claimant, and that they would both have attended family gatherings in London from time to time. He attended the Defendant’s wedding and the Defendant stayed at the Claimant’s house during parts of that wedding. The Claimant said that one of the last times he met the Defendant was when the Claimant’s father sent him to the Defendant’s house to invite him to the Claimant’s own wedding, which took place some 12 or 13 years ago. He said that he or his father offered to pay for the Defendant’s family to attend the wedding but could not remember whether any of them came (the wedding had around 3,500 guests). The Claimant said that he believed the Defendant had his telephone number, which he had not changed for years, and that the Defendant could have contacted him easily at all times.

The Claimant said that when the Defendant and his parents moved to the UK, his understanding (from his own father) is that they had little by way of assets and income here and lived a hand-to-mouth existence. The Claimant’s father therefore supported them financially, including by purchasing them a property to live in. At some point, the Claimant said, he took over this support at his father’s request and paid the Defendant’s family a monthly stipend. He says he did this by bank transfer to the Defendant’s mother at the rate of £1,000-£2,000 per month. Around 7 years ago, the Claimant says he stopped these payments because of unspecified “issues between the families”.

The Defendant put to the Claimant that, while in he was in government in Pakistan, the Defendant had contacted him via the Pakistani Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) requesting him to investigate his grievances. The Claimant said that he was unaware of this request (explaining that the FIA and his own ministry received many thousands of complaints, only some of which would be escalated to a minister such as himself). He denied that the Defendant had ever asked him for help before the Twitter campaign began.

As to the Claimant’s whereabouts during the relevant period (early September 2019-20 March 2020), he adopted his Third Witness Statement and gave further details under cross-examination. His evidence was that he flew to the UK from the US on 28 September 2019 and was in London for 2 nights before heading back to Pakistan where he arrived on 30 September 2019 (meaning that he would either have left on a night flight on 29 September, or a day time flight on 30 September 2019 - he could not remember which). He exhibited a photo of him with his son taken at his London home at 16:42 on 29 September 2019. The Claimant said he came to London again on 19 December 2019, then left on or around 23 December 2019 with his wife and children for the Christmas holidays. He said that he remembers having things to do in Pakistan in the afternoon/evening of 24 December 2019, so at the latest he must have taken the night flight on 23 December 2019 which would have arrived around 7am the next day (he could not remember the precise details of which flight he took). Lastly, the Claimant said that he was in London between 23 January 2020 and 6 February 2020, arriving back in Pakistan on 6 February 2020 (and so, either leaving London on the night flight on 5 February, or the morning flight on 6 February. Again he could not remember the precise details). When in the UK, he spent the time with his wife and children in London. He said that he remembered seeing some of the Claimant’s tweets during these visits and that they became a topic of conversation at dinner.

Coming on to the effect of the Defendant’s tweets and videos, the Claimant explained that he was deeply concerned by them. He was in office in Pakistan and felt under great scrutiny, in particular in the UK Pakistani community because of his novel situation: a British Pakistani coming in to Pakistani politics for the first time. He said he felt targeted and belittled by the tweets which, though naming him and drawing attention to his role, were often about matters of family history which had occurred before his birth or when he was very young. He expressed concern that, in his government role, he was having to meet counterparts in the UK government and sign MOUs around the world, all the while knowing that the Defendant was repeatedly tweeting allegations of corruption against him.

In one paragraph of his witness statement, the Claimant stated that friends, family members, colleagues and others in the UK contacted him about the tweets and that he repeatedly had to explain that they were untrue. He wrote that people started sharing the tweets and videos via WhatsApp and that this resulted in him being called names and ridiculed by the Pakistani opposition party and its supporters, and that Pakistani news outlets had covered the tweets. In oral evidence, he expanded on this, saying that, because of the Defendant’s tweets he had to start going on TV shows to answer questions and that banking and raising finance in the UK became difficult for him as a result of the Tweets being considered as part of the “know your customer” checks undertaken by financial institutions. He also said that the Defendant’s tweets had led to questions being asked about him in the Pakistani parliament. None of these matters had been pleaded in support of the Claimant’s case on serious reputational harm.

The Defendant questioned the Claimant about allegations that have been published about him by others (apparently in support of an unpleaded case that the Claimant already had a general bad reputation by the time of his Tweets, or that any more recent reputational harm was attributable to third parties, not his Tweets). The Claimant explained that where this has occurred, he has brought proceedings or made regulatory complaints which have either been resolved in his favour or are pending.

A significant part of the Claimant’s witness statement was devoted to denying the allegations made against him in the Defendant’s tweets and rejecting the Defendant’s grievances as baseless. I understand why he wished to put these denials on the record but, as I have explained, I am not required to determine the truth or falsity of the tweets or the validity of the Defendant’s underlying grievances and, accordingly, I curtailed cross-examination on these aspects of the Claimant’s statement.

Overall, I found the Claimant to be an honest and truthful witness, though he was prone to exaggeration on occasions (his initial evidence that the Defendant’s tweets had contributed somewhat to difficulties in raising finance later became a statement that, as a result of the Tweets, it is “impossible” to get mortgages now, for example). He was clearly exasperated and irritated by the Defendant’s cross-examination. My impression was that this probably reflected his predominant reaction to the tweets and videos themselves.

The only other witness called by the Claimant was his cousin Syed Nasir Abbas Bukhari, who is the son of the eldest of the five brothers in his father’s generation. He expressed a great deal of sympathy and affection for the Defendant but said that, in recent years, the Defendant has fallen out with him and the rest of the family, principally because of the Defendant’s claims that he has been wrongly deprived of family land and money. The witness said that he had become aware of the Defendant’s tweets because other people showed him what the Defendant was writing and saying. He did not believe the tweets. He regarded them as vindictive lies. In cross-examination the Defendant appeared to challenge the character and credibility of this witness but he was unable to identify what relevantevidence he actually disagreed with. I therefore accepted this witness’s evidence insofar as it went to the issues in dispute, which was minimally.

The Defendant adopted his witness statement and was cross-examined concisely by Mr Lemer, although some of his answers were lengthy. So far as relevant, his evidence was as follows.

The Defendant said that he turned to social media only after he had exhausted all other avenues for addressing the injustices that he considers he and his parents have suffered. He said that he initially tried to raise these issues within the family. In cross-examination he accepted that he had not done so directly with the Claimant but said that his parents had spoken to the Claimant’s father about it. He said that he did not have a telephone number for the Claimant and never tried to obtain it, because the Claimant would already have been aware of his requests via their respective parents.

Next, the Defendant said, he complained to many authorities and politicians in the UK and Pakistan but these complaints were either rejected or ignored. In October 2020, according to the Defendant, a complaint to the Metropolitan Police eventually resulted in the police contacting the FIA and a referral to the Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development (with the Claimant being the minister at the time), but that was after the Defendant had launched his social media campaign.

With his official complaints apparently getting nowhere, the Defendant said that he launched a petition on Change.org, to no avail, and also tried to interest the media in his case. He had some modest success with this in that his parents were interviewed on the ARY TV network in 2019, making their allegations of forgery, theft and land grabbing, and his family’s story was also covered on a Pakistani channel called Channel 92. However he says that the ARY TV broadcast did not result in anything, and the journalist who presented the story on Channel 92 was swiftly dismissed. The Defendant speculates, without evidence, that this was at the instigation of the Claimant. The Defendant said that he failed to engage the interest of other media outlets. One came to interview him at his home but nothing was broadcast.

It was thus, according to the Defendant, that he felt he had no option but to launch a social media campaign to expose the injustice which he perceived his side of the family to have suffered. He denied Mr Lemer’s suggestions that his true motivation was the fact that the Claimant’s side of the family had ceased to support his parents and himself financially (he did not accept that there ever was any financial support), or jealousy about the Claimant’s financial and political success. He also denied that he was seeking to get money from the Claimant. He said that he had never made demands for money and that, if what he wanted was money rather than justice, he would have sucked up to the Claimant rather than criticising him in the way that he did.

The Defendant pointed out that the Claimant was both a very rich businessman and a high-ranking politician in the government of Pakistan which was ostensibly committed to rooting out corruption and imposing high standards of probity. Quoting from the ADF, he said he thought that the judiciary, the police, the government, the people and those within the state responsible for considering where wealth had come from had a proper interest in considering the matters that he was raising in his campaign.

The Defendant described his Twitter campaign as political activism. He said that his purpose was to “highlight the unfair class system in Pakistan”. He accepted that it was initially focussed on the Claimant and his family but said that it later developed to tackle other social and political issues in Pakistan such as injustices suffered by others, and issues such as child rape.

The Defendant confirmed his pleaded case that “many” of his followers were in the UK, but said that mostly they were in Pakistan.

Asked why he referred to the Claimant in tweets that were essentially concerned with alleged wrongdoing by the Claimant’s father (i.e. those concerning the source of his father’s wealth), the Defendant said he thought this was reasonable given that the Claimant had benefitted from his father’s wealth.

Asked about why he tagged the Claimant in many of his tweets, the Defendant explained that he wanted to get the Claimant’s attention. He said that the Claimant does exactly the same thing when he Tweets in support of Imran Khan, tagging media organisations so as to draw attention to his own campaign for the release of Mr Khan.

Asked about why he published so many tweets that simply repeated his allegations without further elaboration, the Defendant said that there was a question about whether the Claimant was actually receiving them and, if he was, then the Claimant could simply have contacted him and said “do you need help?, we can sort this out”. He persisted, he said, because he was trying to get the Claimant’s attention.

The Defendant denied that he knew that his social media campaign amounted to harassment. He acknowledged receipt of the Claimant’s solicitors’ letter which characterised it as such but he said that the solicitors could say what they liked and had written a lot of wrong things. He said that he felt he was being bullied and harassed by this letter and that the tweet and video that he then posted (15 December 2019) was a way of saying that he would not be gagged by the Claimant and his lawyers.

The Defendant said he had never intended to embarrass or humiliate the Claimant.

My impression of the Defendant was that, whatever the true position, he has genuinely convinced himself that his side of the family has been treated unfairly by the wider family. He may well have sincerely believed that his Twitter campaign was an appropriate way to go about pursuing his grievances. That counts for little, given the objective nature of the test for harassment.

Section 1(1) of the Defamation Act 2013 provides that “a statement is not defamatory unless its publication has caused or is likely to cause serious harm to the reputation of the claimant”. “Serious” is an ordinary English word requiring no further gloss: Lachaux v Independent Print Ltd [2017] EWCA Civ 1334, [2018] QB 594 at [44]. Whether serious reputational harm has been caused is a proposition of fact which can be established only by reference to the impact which the statement is shown actually to have had: Lachaux in the Supreme Court [2019] UKSC 27, [2020] AC 612 at [14] (Lord Sumption). Sometimes harm to reputation results in observable consequences: the claimant may be shunned socially, vilified on social media, miss out on a promotion, or lose custom from their business. Where such events occur, a claimant may rely upon them, but the absence of such evidence will not necessarily mean that the claim fails. It is possible for a claimant to prove their case relying only upon “the meaning of the words, the situation of [the claimant], the circumstances of publication and the inherent probabilities”: Lachaux at [21] (Lord Sumption) but the exercise is one of inference not speculation: the claimant must establish by evidence facts which cumulatively support the inference that, on the balance of probabilities, serious harm has in fact been caused: see e.g. the comments of Collins Rice J in Sivananthan v Vasikaran [2023] EMLR 7 at [53] and Miller v Turner [2023] EWHC 2799 (KB) at [45].

The state of a claimant’s pre-existing reputation among publishees is a relevant matter: see Lachaux v Independent Print Ltd [2019] UKSC 27, [2020] AC 612at [16] (Lord Sumption) and George v Cannell [2021] EWHC 2988 (QB) at [119]-[125] (Saini J). A defendant is therefore entitled to argue that a claimant’s reputation was already so bad that it was incapable of suffering any further serious harm. There is some uncertainty as to precisely how the rules governing evidence in mitigation of damage might read across to proof of a pre-existing bad reputation for the purposes of assessing serious harm (see my discussion in Bates v Rubython [2024] EWHC 2706 (KB) at [10]-[21]), but it has been held that the so-called rule in Dingle (after Associated Newspapers Ltd v Dingle [1964] AC 371), precluding reliance on earlier publications making the same allegation as the statement complained of, applies equally to both situations: Lachaux (Supreme Court) at [21] (Lord Sumption). In an appropriate case a defendant may be able to rely on the claimant’s previous conviction for a criminal offence, or “judicial strictures” in civil litigation, or (perhaps) a single event that has gained him notoriety.

In his decision on permission to appeal in Amersi v Leslie [2023] EWCA Civ 1468 at [56] Warby LJ considered it arguable that, where the same or substantially the same statement is published repeatedly, it may be permissible to aggregate the harm done by all those sequential publications when assessing whether the serious harm threshold has been crossed. The Claimant did not invite me to adopt that approach. He asked me to look at each publication individually and accepted (citing Sivananthan at [56]) that repeated publications of the same allegation to the same audience will have a diminishing effect in terms of reputational harm. I adopt the Claimant’s proposed approach without further comment since his concession about diminishing effects favours the Defendant.

In my judgement, where the republication of a statement by its original publishees would sound in damages (under the principles enunciated in Slipper v BBC [1991] QB 283 (CA) and McManus v Beckham [2002] EWCA Civ 939, [2002] 1 WLR 2982), then the damaging effects of such republication should also be considered on the issue of serious harm. That accords with the wording of s1(1) and ordinary common law principles of causation. In his permission to appeal decision in Amersi, at [63], Warby LJ said that Nicklin J’s decision to the contrary was arguably an error of law (though not a material one in the circumstances). I would add that the point is of limited importance in this case since there is little reliable evidence of the extent of relevant republication in this jurisdiction.

The Claimant advances an inferential case based on his prior good reputation, his high profile in the UK Pakistani community, the seriousness of the allegations and the extent of publication here, so far as that can be estimated from the number of followers, the number of views of the videos and so on. The Claimant also invited me to rely on the alleged adverse consequences of publication that had come into evidence, viz being questioned about the allegations, insults and ridicule from political opponents, the question in the Pakistani parliament and difficulties raising finance.

The Defendant’s case was that the allegations he published were already circulating. He says that his tweets were directed to a Pakistani audience and that the likely impact on the Claimant’s reputation through publication in this jurisdiction was little or nothing. He emphasised that the Claimant had not produced any witnesses who said they read the tweets here and thought less of him, neither has he produced evidence of any phone calls, messages or media articles showing people here reacting negatively.

“Serious harm” – discussion and conclusions

I begin with some general conclusions and observations.

First, I accept that the Claimant was a man of good reputation before the Defendant began his publications. I was unpersuaded by the Defendant’s (unpleaded) case that the Claimant already had a bad reputation. To the extent that the Defendant advanced that case based on previous media coverage, it breached the rule in Dingle. To the extent that the Defendant sought to suggest that the Claimant had gained notoriety, for example through being declared an absconder from Pakistan, Mr Lemer was able to establish in cross-examination that the events relied on by the Defendant occurred after the publications complained of.

Second, all the defamatory allegations are serious and most are very serious. The allegation that the Claimant has derived his wealth from the illegal activities of his family is one of guilt by association, more harmful to the reputation of his father than himself, but in the tweets complained of as libel, it is always combined with an allegation that the Claimant himself has dishonestly covered up that fact, pretending to be a self-made businessman. Allegations of theft, fraud, corruption, threats and responsibility for physical attacks are all very serious allegations to level against a person in the Claimant’s position, i.e. a businessman who trades on his reputation for integrity and a minister in a government ostensibly committed to tackling corruption and criminality.

Third, there is the apparent credibility of the Defendant. Readers would understand him to be a close relative of the Claimant and therefore someone with privileged access to inside knowledge about the family matters that form the basis of most of his allegations. This supports the Claimant’s case on serious harm. However, at least some readers will have noted the repetitive and obsessive nature of the Defendant’s tweeting and will have been reluctant to take his allegations at face value, which is a factor going the other way.

Fourth, I can draw some inferences about the characteristics of the readership which support the Claimant’s case on serious harm. Since the Defendant presented himself on Twitter as the “Real cousin & victim of Zulfi Bukhari (PM Imran Khan’s advisor and minister…” it is reasonable to infer that many of those who followed the Defendant will have done so because they had a particular interest in the Claimant. Then there is the Defendant’s own admission that his followers included “many influential political and social individuals”.

Fifth, these are short, pithy tweets published in the fast-moving, conversational world of Twitter. Some readers at least will have been reluctant to place any reliance on these bare assertions, often rattled off in rapid response to some news story or other about the Claimant or Imran Khan, without seeing any explanatory detail.

Sixth, I consider that I must take a cautious approach when estimating the extent of publication and republication. That is for the following reasons:

Seventh, I consider that where a primary publishee “liked” or retweeted a post, that is evidence that they have read and paid attention to the tweet in a way that is likely to have affected their view of the Claimant. A substantial number of likes or retweets therefore supports the Claimant’s case on serious harm for the tweet concerned. This is a separate point from the question of how much the relevant overall readership was increased by retweeting. It goes to the impact the tweet was having, not the extent of publication. Likewise, where an embedded video received a large number of views, that is a good proxy indicator of how much interest was being taken in the video and the accompanying tweet, including in this jurisdiction, and supports a case on serious harm, even though it is not possible to be precise about where and how all those views took place.

Eighth, I am prepared to infer a degree of “grapevine” percolation going beyond the initial tweets and subsequent retweets. Given the Claimant’s prominence in the Pakistani community here, it is likely that Defendant’s allegations will have been passed on to some extent not only through retweets but by other forms of electronic communication and by word of mouth.

Ninth, I do not place any weight on the Claimant’s evidence about the adverse reactions of third parties or difficulties he had with financial institutions. A case that a publication has had tangible adverse consequences needs to be pleaded so that a defendant is on proper notice and can challenge causation. The Claimant did not do this. Further, the Claimant’s evidence on these matters was extremely vague, with no dates or details. It would be impossible to attribute these events to any particular tweet or to rule out the possibility that they represent a reaction to the cumulative effect of the tweets rather than evidence that one or more of them, considered in isolation, had caused serious harm. There are obvious causation problems in linking the Pakistani parliamentary question to publication of tweets in England and Wales.

Applying these findings and observations to the individual tweets, I find as follows.

In my judgement, the publication in England and Wales of the following 5 tweets has caused serious harm to the Claimant’s reputation. In chronological order:

I am not satisfied that the publication of any of the other tweets in England and Wales has caused serious harm to the Claimant’s reputation. In the case of Tweet 119, and whether or not it might otherwise have crossed the threshold, I reject the Claimant’s case on grounds of repetition. It was posted on the same day as Tweet 117 and made substantially the same allegation. It received fewer retweets and likes and the embedded video received fewer views. This is therefore a case where the Claimant’s concession about the diminishing effects of repeat publications appears to be pertinent.

In respect of the remaining tweets, the low number of followers (particularly at the time of the earlier tweets) and/or the absence (or low number) of retweets, likes and views of embedded videos means that I am not persuaded that these tweets were in fact viewed to any significant extent here or, if viewed, that they had any significant impact on the readers. That is so even when I take into account the generic factors that tend to favour the Claimant’s case.

It is often said of course that libel is not a “numbers game” and that “one well-directed arrow [may] hit the bull’s eye of reputation” (see e.g. King v Grundon [2021] EWHC (QB) at [40], Sharp J) but, in this case, the Claimant did not identify any individual recipient of the tweets who was particularly important to him. I note that one tweet (Tweet 63) was directed at David Rose, a British journalist, but there is no evidence that he responded, or took it seriously or took any other step based on the tweet.

I turn next to the videos that are relied on as libels. Some of the videos were attached to more than one tweet. Where this has occurred, my approach has been to look at the total number of views. For the reasons explained above under the generic factors, I have had to take a cautious approach on numbers because of the difficulty of ascertaining how many views took place in this jurisdiction rather than in Pakistan or elsewhere.

I find that the publication of the following videos in England and Wales has caused serious harm to the Claimant’s reputation:

By contrast, publication in England and Wales of the following videos complained of have not caused serious harm to the Claimant’s reputation.

Section 1 of the PfHA materially provides:

Section 7 provides some definitions including:

The question of what amounts to harassment has been considered in a large number of appellate and first instance cases. In Hayden v Dickenson [2020] EWHC 3291 (QB) at [44] Nicklin J summarised the principles that can be extracted and his summary was approved by the Divisional Court in Scottow v Crown Prosecution Service [2020] EWHC 3421 (Admin), [2021] 1 WLR 1828. I need not set it all out here, but direct myself by reference to it. For the purposes of this case, a number of points are particularly important.

Harassment consists in a persistent and deliberate course of unacceptable and oppressive conduct, targeted at an individual. To qualify as such the conduct must reach a level of seriousness passing beyond the irritations, annoyances and upset that arise occasionally in everybody’s day-to-day dealings with other people. It must be of an order that would sustain criminal liability under s 2: Hayden principles (i) & (ii).

Some regard needs to be had to the standing and characteristics of the claimant. Thus “where the claimant is, by choice, a public figure that should influence any assessment of whether particular conduct amounts to harassment of that individual; such a person has “inevitably and knowingly laid themselves open to close scrutiny of their every word and deed”, and others can expect them to be more robust and tolerant accordingly…”: Scottow at [25](2). By contrast, the test of whether the defendant “ought to know” that their course of conduct amounts to harassment is wholly objective: Hayden principle (iii).

Harassment by publication will usually engage ECHR Article 10 and therefore the Court’s assessment must pay due regard to the importance of freedom of expression and the need for any restrictions upon the right to be necessary, proportionate and established convincingly: Hayden principles (vi)-(viii).

In a publication case, the harassing element is likely to come more from the manner in which the words are published than their content, and their truth or falsity is unlikely to be determinative. Repetition of material already in the public domain can qualify: Hayden principles (ix)-(xi).

The Court should take account of the extent to which the coverage complained of is repetitious and taunting, as opposed to being new, and prompted by some fresh newsworthy event. The imposition of liability in respect of coverage that falls into the latter category will be harder to justify: Sube v News Group Newspapers Ltd [2020] EWHC 1125 (QB), [2020] EMLR 25 at [106](2) (Warby J).

Where the publications are of journalistic material, nothing short of a conscious or negligent abuse of media freedom will justify a finding of harassment. Such cases will be rare and exceptional: Hayden principle (xii). Journalistic material “is to be identified by its subject matter, not its author, nor the process by which it comes to be published”: McNally v Saunders [2021] EWHC 2012 (QB), [2022] EMLR 3 at [74] (Chamberlain J). Blog posts and social media publications may therefore qualify in an appropriate case.

As to the defence of reasonableness (s1(3)(c)), this raises some of the same issues as the threshold test for harassment, since a course of conduct is unlikely to amount to harassment unless it is at least prima facie unreasonable (see McNally at [86]. The test is objective: R v Sean Peter C [2001] EWCA Crim 1251. In a publication case it must be applied, like the test for harassment itself, in a manner that avoids disproportionate interference with a defendant’s ECHR Article 10 rights: Thomas v News Group Newspapers Ltd [2001] EWCA Civ 1233, [2002] EMLR 4 at[32]-[37].

Complications arise in harassment claims that have an international dimension. In Shakil-Ur-Rahman v ARY Network Ltd [2016] EWHC 3110 (QB), [2017] 4 WLR 22 at [119], Sir David Eady J accepted a submission that “The Act is clearly premised on and directed at acts committed within the jurisdiction of the court” but held that the Claimant must also experience, in this jurisdiction, the impact of being harassed, before the tort is complete. The same approach was taken by Richard Spearman QC (sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge) in Lawal v Adeyinka [2021] EWHC 2486 (QB) at [17]-[23]. In Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn v Juan Carlos 1 [2023] EWHC 2478 (KB) at [284]-[292] Collins Rice J noted that Sir David Eady had not said that that the acts of a defendant outside the jurisdiction were necessarily irrelevant or excluded. She left open the possibility that a harassment claim could be based on a course of conduct that comprised some acts done outside the jurisdiction but considered it settled that the effects of the course of conduct must be experienced here. She observed that there is no authority “which comes close to giving any basis for concluding that fully ‘international harassment’ is comprehended within the geographical scope of the Act”.

Mr Lemer accepts that the Claimant is by choice a public figure who can be expected to be more robust and tolerant than others but submits that the Defendant’s Twitter campaign, lasting 171 days and comprising 249 tweets nevertheless passes the threshold for a course of conduct amounting to harassment and cannot be defended as reasonable. He points to the gravity of the allegations, the frequency of the tweeting, the high degree of repetition, the taunting nature of some of the material, the targeting of the Claimant (by tagging him in many of the tweets), and the tagging of news organisations in a visible attempt to increase circulation. Mr Lemer submits that it would be wrong to dignify the Defendant’s tweeting as journalism when it consists mostly of bare assertions, apparently motivated by personal animosity. Alternatively, if the Defendant’s tweets could be described as journalistic then, he submits, they were a conscious or negligent abuse of media freedom.

As to the international element, Mr Lemer invites me to consider the whole of the Defendant’s tweeting during the relevant period as constituting a course of conduct and to find the claim in harassment to be made out provided that the Claimant was in England and Wales to experience its harassing effects for at least some of the time. He sought to draw an analogy with Howlett v Holding [2006] EWHC 41 (QB) where, at [22]-[23], Eady J indicated that acts of covert surveillance may count towards a “course of conduct” even though the Claimant may not be aware of them (or hence, distressed by them) at the time.

The Defendant contends that he was engaged in raising important matters of public interest about the Claimant, drawing on matters that had already been ventilated in the public domain. He says he did this in good faith. He says he only turned to tweeting about the Claimant when attempts to raise his concerns by other means came to nothing. As to the international element, the Defendant invites me to disbelieve the Claimant’s evidence about his presence in England and Wales during the relevant period. He submits that the Claimant did not suffer the effects of his publications here (or only to a de minimis extent).

I am satisfied that the claim in harassment is made out, essentially for the reasons advanced by Mr Lemer. The Defendant’s Twitter campaign had all the hallmarks of a course of conduct amounting to harassment. It was specifically targeted at the Claimant, both through the Defendant describing himself as a “victim” of the Claimant in his Twitter handle and by his tagging of the Claimant in many of the tweets. The tweets were very frequent and extremely repetitive, mostly circling around the same few allegations over and over again. There was an element of taunting in some of them, particularly some of the videos where the Defendant addresses the Claimant directly. The tweets and videos were calculated (i.e. objectively likely) to cause the Claimant alarm and distress, given in particular the seriousness of the allegations that the Defendant was making and his evident intent (e.g. through tagging media outlets) to obtain the widest possible publicity for them. I take full account of the fact that the Claimant has chosen to put himself in the public eye through his business and political career and must therefore be regarded as having broader shoulders than others, but no-one in his position could be reasonably be expected to put up with this relentless torrent of abuse.

I reject the Defendant’s attempt to portray himself as engaged in public interest campaigning or journalism. That is simply not sustainable on the evidence of the tweets themselves. Whatever else he may have posted on Twitter, his tweets directed at the Claimant were not, in my judgement, journalistic in nature. For the most part, they simply repeated the same bare allegations without any attempt to develop them. From time to time, he tweeted in response to some new event (such as his car being stolen; or his receipt of a threatening phone call; or the story about the Roosevelt Hotel breaking), but he treated these events merely as an excuse to repeat and elaborate on the same old allegations. Accordingly, the heightened standard that applies in respect of journalistic material (see Sube) has no application here.

The Defendant has managed to convince himself that he is the victim of wrongdoing by the Claimant and his wider family, and he may have sincerely believed that it was perfectly acceptable for him to tweet about these matters in the way that he did. I do not need to make findings about the sincerity of the Defendant’s beliefs because I am entirely satisfied, on the objective limb of the test, that he ought to have known that his course of conduct amounted to harassment: a reasonable person in possession of the same information as himself would have recognised this.

As to the pleaded defence of reasonable conduct, it is insufficient, in my judgement, merely to rely on the Claimant’s business and political prominence and the fact that he was aligned to Mr Khan’s anti-corruption stance. Those things in themselves cannot make it reasonable to throw allegations of corruption and criminality at him. There would have at least to be some reasonable basis for the allegations (which the Defendant would have liked to assert, but could not, given his pleaded case) and reasonable grounds for repeating them so frequently.

Another line of argument on reasonableness emerged from the Defendant’s evidence and submissions (without objection from the Claimant), namely that it was reasonable for the Defendant to seek to raise his grievances via Twitter because he had exhausted all other avenues. This argument cannot be squared with the evidence. The Defendant accepts that he never tried to contact the Claimant directly before launching his Twitter campaign. I accept the Claimant’s evidence that the Defendant had or could easily have obtained his phone number if he wanted to speak directly. The much more plausible reason for the Defendant taking to Twitter was that it allowed him to apply pressure to the Claimant by publicly shaming him for the alleged misdeeds of himself and his family, exploiting the sensitivity that the Claimant was likely to feel about such allegations given his high profile and political office. But that is the opposite of a reasonable way to go about resolving private family grievances. It only tends to underline the harassing nature of the Defendant’s conduct.

As to the complications introduced by the international aspect of this claim, no-one asked me to depart from the first-instance Shakil-Ur-Rahman line of authorities but it seems to me that, while following them, I should seek to guard against introducing unnecessary artificiality into the law of harassment.

With this in mind, I am satisfied that I can take into account all of the tweets and videos as constituting the course of conduct (they were all published from, and in, England and Wales) and that I do not need to consider whether the tweets published while the Claimant was here, looked at in isolation, add up themselves to a course (or courses) of conduct.

I also take the view that the “being harassed” limb of the tort will be complete if the Claimant experienced the effects of the Defendant’s tweeting to a more than minimal extent while he was in this jurisdiction and that, when assessing that question, I can take into account that those tweets did not come out of the blue, but were a continuation of the conduct that was already affecting the Claimant abroad.

I think it is unnecessary and over-complicated to rely by way of analogy on Howlett (or the later surveillance case of Gerrard v Eurasian Natural Resources Corp Ltd [2020] EWHC 3241 (QB), [2021] EMLR 8). The short point is that none of the Shakil-Ur-Rahman line of cases states that a claimant must experience the harassing effects of the Defendant’s course of conduct exclusively in England and Wales, and I see no basis for reading that in to the statutory tort as a matter of construction. Experiencing the effects of the course of conduct while in England and Wales will suffice even if they were also experienced elsewhere at other times.

I accept the Claimant’s evidence as to the dates when he was in England and Wales during the relevant period. In his second and third witness statements, I consider that he was conscientiously trying his best, at short notice, to identify the dates and to provide supporting documentary evidence. This included travel documents, and screenshots of his wife’s phone showing photos of himself with his family with the time, date and location visible. The Defendant could not seriously contend that these were fabrications. On this evidence, the Claimant was here for some 20-22 days during the relevant period. On 29 September 2019 (when the Claimant was here either for the whole day or until he took a night flight to Pakistan) the Defendant tweeted 5 times. There were tweets on 21 and 23 December, when the Claimant was here, and there were 7 tweets during the time he was here in late January/early February 2020. I also accept the Claimant’s evidence that the Defendant’s tweeting was a talking point within his family while he was here, so was clearly playing on his mind. Taking account of these matters and the fact that the tweets that were posted while he was here will have exacerbated the effects of the harassment he was already experiencing elsewhere, I am satisfied that the Claimant endured the experience of being harassed within England and Wales to a sufficient extent to found liability. The limited amount of time he was here goes to damages, not liability.

I have decided to make separate awards for libel and harassment. In both causes of action the Claimant is entitled to compensation for injury to his feelings but, in light of my findings, there is only a very limited overlap between the distress caused by the libels and the distress caused by the harassment. I have decided that, in the harassment claim, consistently with the Shakil-Ur-Rahman line of cases, I should only compensate for distress that the Claimant suffered while he was in this jurisdiction. None of the libels were published during those periods, save that the Defendant included Video 14 (first published on 15 December 2019) in tweets on 21 December 2019 and 27 January 2020, when the Claimant was in the jurisdiction. I have taken this very limited overlap into account when fixing both awards.

The principles governing the award of damages for defamation were set out by Warby J in Barron v Vines [2016] EWHC 1226 (QB) at [20]-[21]. I direct myself by reference to that summary but do not need to repeat it. Essentially, I must arrive at a sum which adequately compensates the Claimant for the harm to his reputation, serves as vindication, and compensates him for the injury to his feelings. Aggravated damages may be awarded to compensate for any additional injury to feelings caused by the way in which the Defendants have conducted themselves. The sum I award must be no more than is necessary to serve those ends. Anything more would be a disproportionate interference with the Defendants’ rights under ECHR Article 10.

In Wright v McCormack [2023] EWCA Civ 892, [2024] KB 495 Warby LJ acknowledged that post-publication events that show a claimant’s reputation to be undeserved may be relied upon to reduce damages: such a claimant does not require compensation and vindication in the same way as a claimant of good character. Evidence of such events must be properly before the court, in compliance with the rules governing evidence in mitigation of damages. In Wright itself, Chamberlain J had awarded only nominal damages in respect of an allegation of dishonesty that had caused serious harm to the claimant’s (at the time, unblemished) reputation. He did so on the basis that the claimant had shown himself to be dishonest in the course of the subsequent litigation. At [67] Warby LJ considered that this was (among other things) a proper application of the principle in Goody v Odhams Press Ltd [1967] 1 QB 333 which permits reliance on criminal convictions or “judicial strictures” in civil litigation to reduce damages where those convictions or strictures concern the same sector of the claimant’s reputation as the libel complained of.

The Claimant makes conventional submissions in respect of damages: he stresses that he was a person with a high profile and an excellent reputation at the time; he stresses the gravity of allegations of corruption and the like for a man in his position and the apparent credibility of the Defendant; he relies on the extent of publication and likely percolation; he submits that the length of time the material remained available online, the lack of an apology, and the Defendant’s insistence at trial on the truth of his allegations (despite there being no truth defence on the record) are all aggravating factors. Mr Lemer points to awards in other cases that he says are comparable, and which (when updated for inflation and the uplift required by Simmons v Castle [2012] EWCA Civ 1288) provide a range of £35,906 to £135,338. Mr Lemer submits that, in light of these cases, the appropriate award should be between £60,000 and £80,000.

The Defendant’s submissions on damages were not easily discernible but I took him to be saying that if the serious harm threshold were crossed, then it was only just crossed. He repeated that his publications had not resulted in any adverse real-world consequences for the Claimant, and I understood him to be saying that the Claimant was undeserving of the good reputation he previously enjoyed, as demonstrated by the recent actions taken against him by the Pakistani authorities.

I have found that only 5 tweets and 3 videos have passed the serious harm threshold. That in itself requires a substantially lower award that the sums mentioned by Mr Lemer, which were advanced on the basis that the libel claim would succeed in respect of all 40 tweets and videos. Given that there is a high degree of overlap between the allegations in these 8 publications, I shall make a global award in respect of the libel claim.

These 8 libels make serious allegations (corruption, theft, fraud, threats, and the engineering of a violent attack on the Defendant’s home). They go to the heart of the Claimant’s personal integrity and they are particularly damaging for a man in his position, i.e. a politician, an entrepreneurial businessman and an active supporter of charities. The readership will have comprised members of the Pakistani diaspora in England and Wales, a group in whose eyes the Claimant’s reputation will have been particularly important, given his ministerial responsibilities for that group. At least some readers will have regarded the Defendant as a credible source of reliable information about the Claimant, given the family connection (though others will have been more sceptical given the repetitive, obsessive nature of the Defendant’s publications).

For the reasons already explained under “serious harm” above, I must take a cautious approach as to the extent of publication. Primary publication to individuals in England and Wales is likely to have been in the low hundreds, with relevant secondary publication (i.e. retweets by individuals here to individuals here) increasing those numbers but to an uncertain extent. There will have been some further percolation by other forms of electronic communication or word of mouth.

As to the impact on the Claimant, I have ignored the unpleaded case that he received adverse comments and encountered business difficulties but I accept his evidence that these tweets and videos have been upsetting and concerning for him and that he at least harboured genuine fears that they would cause him practical difficulties in politics, business and his charitable work. I find that the Defendant’s conduct of the trial, in the course of which he repeatedly tried to bring in irrelevant smears against the Claimant and his wider family, knowing that they were not in issue, caused the Claimant considerable irritation and frustration. I regard that as an aggravating factor.

I do not consider there is any need to reduce the award on the basis of post-publication events such as the decision by the Pakistani authorities to declare the Claimant an absconder and to confiscate his property in Pakistan. So far as the evidence before me showed, these decisions concerned the Claimant’s refusal to return to Pakistan to testify against Mr Khan. They are not, as I understand it, premised on public findings of fraud or corruption of the sort that might demonstrate that the Claimant’s reputation for honesty and integrity is undeserved.

The closest analogous case, from the ones identified by Mr Lemer, is Doyle v Smith [2018] EWHC 2935 (QB), [2019] EMLR 15 where, in respect of one article, Warby J awarded £30,000 (equivalent to £42,470 now). That was an article published in a community online newsletter making serious allegations of fraud against the claimant, a businessman who was seeking to develop land in the local area. It received some 242 views. The article and the defendant’s attempts to defend it caused the claimant significant distress. Warby J rejected a submission that its author lacked credibility. It seems to me that, given the readership’s interest in local planning matters, the allegations in Doyle v Smith will probably have had an immediacy that was lacking in the present case. The article was also longer and more detailed than most of the Defendant’s short tweets and I have noted that, in this case, at least some readers will have doubted the Defendant’s credibility. But in other respects, given the greater number of publications and the likely wider circulation, the present case is more serious.

I would repeat though, what I said in Bates v Rubython at [109]: updating previous awards so as to state them in today’s money is instructive but should not obscure the ultimate question, which is what sum is the minimum required, in contemporary society, to provide the compensation and vindication that a claimant deserves.

Taking all this into account, the appropriate award for the proven libels is, in my judgement, £40,000.

Damages under the PfHA compensate the claimant for the distress and injury to their feelings that they have suffered as a result of the defendant’s course of conduct. It has become conventional to apply by analogy the guidance set out by the Court of Appeal in Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police v Vento (No.2) [2002] EWCA Civ 1871, [2003] ICR 318 as to compensation for injury to feelings in employment cases. The Court of Appeal identified three bands which, updated for inflation, are as follows: very serious cases, £36,400-£60,700; moderately serious cases, £12,100-£36,400; less serious cases, £1,200-£12,100. Even in a less serious case, awards that are so low as to appear derisory should be avoided.

For the Claimant, Mr Lemer submitted that, even looking only at the distress experienced by the Claimant while in England and Wales, this was significant. The Claimant’s evidence was that the Defendant has caused him serious alarm and distress, in particular by tagging him in the tweets, evidently seeking to publicise his allegations as widely as possible, and persisting defiantly even when threatened with proceedings.

Again, the Defendant’s submissions on damages for harassment were difficult to discern, but I take him to be saying that the Claimant’s evidence as to the impact of his publications is overstated.

As previously indicated, I consider that I must limit damages for harassment to compensation for the impact on his feelings that the Claimant experienced in England and Wales, while taking into account that the tweets that the Defendant published during those periods did not come out of the blue but formed part of a pre-existing course of conduct that was already causing the Claimant serious concern.

Had I been compensating for the course of conduct as a whole, I would have awarded damages within the middle Vento band. Given that I must award compensation only for the distressing effects of the Defendant’s course of conduct that the Claimant experienced during the limited time he was in England and Wales, and that I have already compensated the Claimant for the distress caused by the publications of the libellous Video 14, some of which occurred while he was in this jurisdiction, I move down to the lower Vento band. I also take into account my finding that the predominant emotions caused by the Defendant’s conduct were irritation and exasperation, rather than the fear of violence or psychological trauma that victims of harassment often report, though I accept that the Claimant was genuinely concerned that the tweets might affect this political career and his ability to do business and that they preyed upon his mind during what should have been relaxing time with his family when visiting them in London. The appropriate award, in my judgement, is £3,000.

I have considered whether the totality of my award (£43,000) represents a disproportionate interference with the Defendant’s ECHR Art 10 rights. In my judgement it does not. As explained above, there is very limited overlap between the two award and I have already taken that overlap into account. No further reduction is necessary.

Before I could grant an injunction, I would need to be satisfied that there is a real risk that, if not restrained, the Defendant would resume harassing and/or defaming the Claimant. If that threshold test is satisfied, the grant of a final injunction is a matter of discretion.

The Defendant says that he has no intention of tweeting about the Claimant ever again. He points to his unchallenged evidence that he chose to end his social media campaign in 2023, deactivated his Twitter account and has since refrained from communicating with the wider family. He also refers to correspondence with the Claimant’s solicitors in which he gives similar assurances. He told me that his health conditions are now so bad that he must concentrate on those and has no interest in pursuing grievances against the Claimant and his relatives.

The Claimant submits that I should not take these assurances at face value. He points to the ADF (signed in July 2024 and hence after the Defendant states that he had abandoned his campaign). Paragraph 50 of the ADF resists the claim for an injunction, not on the ground that the Defendant has abandoned his campaign, but on the basis that the Defendant should not be retrained “from telling the truth about the Claimant”.

I am not persuaded that the threshold test for the grant of a final injunction is met. I have no evidence of any tweeting about the Claimant since early 2021. Paragraph 50 of the ADF appears to me to be a hangover from an earlier draft where a defence of truth was being asserted. In the circumstances, I do not regard it as undermining the Defendant’s protestations that he has definitively abandoned his campaign. These stuck me as genuine.

If, contrary to his protestations, the Defendant were to recommence his campaign of defamatory and harassing publications, he will expose himself to further claims by the Claimant.

The Claimant has established his claim for libel in respect of Tweets 98, 117, 163, 191 and 212 and Videos 10, 13 and 14. In respect of those libels, I award him £40,000 in damages, including aggravated damages.

The Claimant has established his claim in harassment insofar as he experienced the effects of the Defendant’s course of conduct in England and Wales. For that, I award him £3,000 damages.

The total award of damages is therefore £43,000.

I refuse the claim for an injunction.

I shall invite the parties to make written submissions on costs and I propose to determine any disputes about costs without a hearing unless persuaded that a hearing is necessary. During the trial, the Defendant repeatedly asserted that he had attempted to settle this dispute. Those assertions are irrelevant to the issues of liability and damages that I have decided but they may have some bearing on costs, if they can be evidenced without delving into privileged communications.

If either party considers that they may wish to ask me for permission to appeal, they should inform the Court prior to the hand-down of this judgment.

Tweets (omitting tweets that simply embed an allegedly libellous video but which are not relied on themselves as libels)

Cumulative views of videos relied upon by the Claimant as libels and their meanings