GEORGE GALLOWAY, the expelled Labour MP, exploded with rage in the witness box at the High Court yesterday when accused of being anti-Semitic.

Red-faced and shaking with anger, he told Mr Justice Eady: “My Lord, this is an outrage.”

His outburst arose over claims that The Daily Telegraph hated him for his pro-Palestinian views on the Middle East.

Lord Black of Crossharbour, the newspaper’s former proprietor, and his Jewish wife, Barbara Amiel, were the “most vociferous supporters” of Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, he said. But that did not make him anti-Semitic, he insisted during protracted exchanges with James Price, QC, the counsel for the Telegraph.

Mr Galloway is suing the newspaper for libel over allegations that he was in the pay of Saddam Hussein.

Mr Price put it to him: “My suggestion to you is that responsible journalists and editors could well take the view that you were a well-known apologist for Saddam Hussein.”

Mr Galloway replied: “That was the view in 1998 in a leader in The Daily Telegraph. I freely concede that throughout the period of ownership of Lord Conrad Black and Barbara Amiel the Telegraph hated everything I believed about the Middle East.”

Mr Price then asked: “That’s because Barbara Amiel was Jewish, are you saying?”

Mr Galloway, 50, retorted: “If you can libel someone in a courtroom . . . that is a clear accusation of anti-Semitism. I have never made an anti-Semitic remark in my life and I demand that you withdraw it.”

Mr Price asked him to look at a letter in which he appealed for funds to support his lawsuit, in which he made the remark about the support the Blacks gave Israel.

“This is an outrage,” Mr Galloway shouted. “This letter does not mention the word ‘Jewish’.”

He added: “I demand that you withdraw the allegation of anti-Semitism against me. You said that in the letter I referred to Lady Black as being Jewish. It’s a lie, a lie, a lie.”

Mr Price: “Very well, I withdraw.”

The trial comes after articles in April last year in which Mr Galloway was alleged to have received at least £375,000 a year from the Iraqi regime.

The articles were based on documents found in the ruins of the Iraqi Foreign Ministry in Baghdad. The MP says they were forgeries.

They purport to show that he received money through the UN’s Oil-for-Food programme.It was alleged that Mr Galloway was dissatisfied with these “very substantial profits” at a meeting with an Iraqi intelligence agent on Boxing Day 1999.

The newspaper claimed that he used the Mariam Appeal, established by him when he brought an Iraqi girl with leukaemia to Britain for hospital treatment, as a front to conceal secret commercial dealings with the intelligence service.

Earlier David Blair, the reporter who uncovered the documents, described coming across them in filing boxes. Some of them were open and contained pale blue folders stamped with the Iraqi eagle. They were marked “confidential” and two of the documents, the translator told him, were signed by Tariq Azis, Iraq’s former Deputy Prime Minister. Among the documents he came across a letter from Mr Galloway nominating Mr Zureikat as his representative in Baghdad.

Mr Blair told the court: “We soon came across a letter from Tariq Aziz to four Cabinet ministers, supposedly circulating Mr Galloway’s work programme for 2000. This letter intrigued me because it was signed by one of the most powerful figures in Saddam Hussein’s regime.

“It was apparently circulated at a very high level and referred to Mr Galloway. At this point I began to think that the documents might have material for a story about Mr Galloway’s links with Saddam Hussein’s regime, although I was still not sure.”

Another document was from the head of Iraqi intelligence to the dictator’s secretariat. Mr Blair said he had been struck by the apparent authenticity of the documents. “I thought it would have been an extraordinarily elaborate exercise to forge this intelligence memorandum running to several pages, not to mention Tariq Aziz’s letter and Mr Galloway’s letter appointing Mr Zureikat to act for him. It simply did not seem plausible that someone would go to such lengths to discredit Mr Galloway.”

The case continues today.

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Science News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Donor organ allowed child’s own heart to heal
• Michael Jackson: Not the final chapter
• Brüno toned down for 15 rating