[1] The Claimant is Mr Azad Ali, who is a civil servant employed in the Treasury. These libel proceedings relate to allegations published in The Mail on Sunday on 18 January 2009 and repeated the following day in The Daily Mail. Reliance is also placed on the corresponding publications on the Defendants website. The heading for the Sunday (and website) article was "Muslim civil servant suspended over kill British blog" and that for the following day was "Civil servant backed fanatics call to kill our troops in Iraq".

[2] The articles recorded the fact that the Claimant had been suspended from his employment following the posting of a number of remarks on his personal blog published on the Between the Lines website. This is hosted by the Islamic Forum of Europe. In the course of the article passages were cited