Press Complaints Commission: Daily Mail and The Sun Apologise To PML-N’s Nasir Butt For Accusing Him Of Double Murder
Two powerful British newspapers the Daily Mail and The Sun have agreed to apologise to a London-based PML-N leader who was wrongly accused of committing double murder in Pakistan, The News said in a report.
In October last year, The Sun accused Nasir Butt of being involved in “double-murder” in Pakistan and published his picture on the front page with Home Secretary Theresa May and Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif. The Sun questioned how Butt had managed to “slip into the heart of government” and why he was not subjected to a “rigorous vetting faced by anyone meeting a senior cabinet minister.”
According to The News, Butt had launched a legal action against the Sun as well as the Daily Mail, which had copied the news from the Sun website.
The Press Complaints Commission (PCC) has now confirmed that both publications will publish apology to Butt for the hurt caused and for the inaccurate news. Based on the same media report, a Pakistani TV channel had called Butt a killer.
Butt says that the original news and the resulting coverage were “highly defamatory” and he continues to live in “trauma”. He has always denied his involvement in any kind of violence and says that he left Pakistan prior to the murders of two brothers in 1996, following the murder of his own brother. Butt has been living in Britain since 1996 with his family.
The PCC has told Butt that both newspapers have now taken down the articles under complaint and will not reproduce these articles.
The newspapers have accepted that their coverage was inaccurate. The PCC has offered to Butt to publish a summary of his complaint on its website which will act, importantly, as a further public record of Butt’s concerns and the subsequent remedial action taken by the newspapers.
“I am thankful to the PCC for its intervention. The baseless stories were planted by enemies in media to damage me. I am glad that both newspapers have removed the defamatory and objectionable material from their sites. I will separately launch legal action for compensation,” Butt was quoted by The News as saying.
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