“The defendant acknowledges that the allegation made in Mr Hodges’ article about Mr Vince is untrue and that Mr Vince does not support Hamas in any way.
Reading a joint statement, Mr Vince’s lawyer, Annabell Hood, said he had previously been “falsely accused” of supporting Hamas in a separate article published by the Daily Mail and online in March last year, which also “called for donations he had made to the Labour Party to be returned”.
But Ms Hood said that a second article, written by Dan Hodges, was published last October which “falsely alleged that Mr Vince had supported or defended the terrorist acts of Hamas” and “again, called into question the donations he had made to the Labour Party”.
She said: “The publication of Mr Hodges’ article has also caused Mr Vince significant distress, not least because he reasonably expected a national newspaper to comply with its undertaking, having been told by the defendant that it had circulated a memorandum to its journalists and editors.”.
Lawyers for ANL apologised to Mr Vince and said the publisher acknowledged that the allegation “was untrue and that Mr Vince does not support Hamas in any way”.
