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by Mike Caswell

Altaf Nazerali's defamation lawsuit against the Deep Capture website has survived an attempt by the defence to have the case thrown out on jurisdictional grounds. In a decision handed down in the Supreme Court of British Columbia on Thursday, Feb. 9, a judge has ruled that there is sufficient basis to conclude that residents of B.C. read allegedly defamatory material, in which Deep Capture accused Mr. Nazerali of being a terrorist and an arms dealer, among other things.

The decision is a loss for the defendants, Deep Capture publisher Patrick Byrne and writer Mark Mitchell. They had argued that the case should be dismissed on the grounds that there was nothing to indicate any resident of B.C. had ever viewed the defamatory statements. In order for his libel suit to survive in the B.C. courts, Mr. Nazerali had to establish that somebody in the province had read the Deep Capture site.

In a Jan. 3 application, Mr. Byrne and Mr. Mitchell contended that the only evidence Mr. Nazerali presented to establish local readership was unreliable. The evidence included affidavits by 73-year-old Vancouver businessman Nelson Skalbania and Union Securities Ltd. chief executive officer John Thompson. The defence pointed out that Mr. Skalbania received a year in jail in 1997 after being convicted of theft, and Mr. Thompson personally paid $250,000 to the B.C. Securities Commission in 2006 to settle a complaint related to market manipulation by a Union employee.

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