Safiullah Ahmadi is seeking more than £100,000 in damages over a Guardian article which created the false “perception he is a gay man” - and forced him into hiding from the Taliban, the Telegraph reported on Wednesday, citing the High Court.
Ahmadi is suing for damages over the 2022 article “Gay Afghan student ‘murdered by Taliban’ as anti-LGBTQ+ violence rises”.
While the article had been about the killing of gay medical student Hamed Sabori in Kabul in August, Ahmadi claimed the Guardian originally used an image of him.
While Ahmadi’s image was reportedly attached to the article for only 12 hours, his lawyer claimed that the “extremist and homophobic views that are prevalent” in Afghan and Iranian communities forced him to go into hiding.
Guardian News & Media (GNM), The Guardian’s publisher, denied that Ahmadi had any claim and applied for the case to be thrown out of court, with its lawyers arguing the article was not defamatory.
Ben Silverstone, for GNM, told the courts that the article was removed the same day it was published, and Ahmadi failed to file a complaint until September 2023. Silverstone also argued that Ahmadi could not suffer “serious harm” to his reputation in England and Wales.
“No reasonable reader would assume that those references were in fact meant to be about someone else with a completely different name,” he argued. “The inclusion of the photograph alleged to depict the claimant, and which for the purposes of the present application is assumed to depict him, is incapable of overriding these factors.”
How did the article impact the life of Safiullah Ahmadi?
Muhammad Zahab Jamali, representing Ahmadi, stressed that the photograph made him an “object of ridicule” and has prevented him from working in Afghanistan.
He stated: “Whilst the defendant’s published story was regarding Mr Hamed Sabouri, the photograph published with the article was that of the claimant who is neither gay, nor does he have any connections with the gay community.
“He was forced to go into hiding due to the extremists and homophobic views that are prevalent in the Iranian and Afghan community.
“In March 2023, he returned to Afghanistan, where he went into hiding and remains so. He has been unable to study or undertake work due to a fear for his life in the Taliban regime, and the perception he is a gay man arising from this publication.”