Saudi Arabia: Sheikh Saad Al-Shathri

Following the May 2013 news that Saudi cleric Sheikh Saad Bin Nasser Al-Shathri was suing The Guardian newspaper in the High Court for unlimited damages for suggestions in a July 2011 article that he was an “extremist” sympathetic to Al-Qaeda, the paper on 18 October issued an apology and clarification on what it had written. It noted that both sides had agreed to amicably settle their differences. The dispute arose because of the way Sheikh Saad was portrayed in the article, which suggested that he was opposed to King Abdullah’s reforms, that he was a hardliner, and that he was not in agreement with the king on the mixing of genders at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (GSN 866/8).