Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin, who is facing the death penalty in Bangladesh for war crimes, filed a case against British Home Secretary Priti Patel for £60,000 in libel damages.
The war criminal alleges that he was defamed in a Home Office report last year, reports bdnews24.com citing Daily Mail.
The lawsuit says the Challenging Hateful Extremism document by the Commission for Countering Extremism was shared on the Home Office’s Twitter account, which has almost one million followers, and retweeted by Patel and others, including BBC journalist Mishal Husain and rights campaigner Peter Tatchell.
Mueen-Uddin alleges the report libelled him by stating that he was responsible for serious criminal violence, including crimes against humanity, in 1971.
His appeal submitted to the High Court last month also claims that the Challenging Hateful Extremism report breached European data protection regulations and that his personal information was unlawfully used.
The report, originally published in October last year, remained on the government’s website until March 20 after the Commission initially dismissed Mueen-Uddin’s complaint. It later removed references to him and deleted his personal data.
Mueen-Uddin, who fled Bangladesh after the war and gained British citizenship, claims the report’s publication caused him severe distress and embarrassment which was aggravated by the Commission’s failure to contact him before publishing the allegations.
He says he suffered further when the home secretary’s lawyers wrote to him in February, suggesting it was ‘fanciful’ that the report had seriously harmed his reputation.
A Home Office spokesman said: “This relates to claims made within a report published by the Independent Commission for Countering Extremism. However, the Home Office is the sponsoring department for the commission, we are unable to comment further while legal proceedings are ongoing.”
