Muslim family who Katie Hopkins accused of being Al Qaeda extremists awarded £150k in damages

Katie Hopkins has been forced to apologise to a pair of Muslim brothers, who she suggested were Al Qaeda extremists in an article for the Mail Online last year.

The article was penned on 23rd December 2015 and was in response to a news article about Mohammed Tariq Mahmood and his brother Mohammed Zahid Mahmood, who were prevented from boarding their flight to Disneyland by US security, spoiling their excited children’s Christmas holiday plans.

Katie’s opinion piece was titled: “Just because Britain’s border security is a Mickey Mouse operation you can’t blame America for not letting this lot travel to Disneyland – I wouldn’t either” and hinted that the two men had links to Muslim extremists and Disneyland was a cover up for their “real reason” for visiting the States.

She concluded that US Homeland Security were right to stop them from boarding their flights.

But today it emerged that not only has Katie and the Mail Online been forced to say sorry, the publication is to pay the family £150,000 in libel damages.

In today’s apology, posted on the Mail Online website, the it reads: “We are happy to make clear that Tariq Mahmood and Zahid Mahmood are not extremists, nor do they have links to Al Qaeda.

“They were travelling to the USA with their families to see one of their brothers for a holiday in California and they had indeed planned to visit Disneyland as part of their trip.

“In addition a further article in Katie’s column on 29 December (‘A brave Muslim tried to warn us their week about the extremists taking over his community. What a tragedy it is that our PC politicians would rather not know’) suggested that Hamza Mahmood (Mohammed Tariq Mahmood’s son) was responsible for a Facebook page which allegedly contained extremist material.

“Our article included a photo of the family home. Hamza Mahmood has pointed out that he is not responsible for the Facebook page, which was linked to him as a result of an error involving his email address. We are happy to make clear that there is no suggestion that either Hamza nor Taeeba or Hafsa Mahmood (Hamza’s mother and sister) have any links to extremism.

“We and Katie Hopkins apologise to the Mahmood family for the distress and embarrassment caused and have agreed to pay them substantial damages and their legal costs.”

Katie tweeted the apology out on her personal social media account, however, she faced backlash for opting to post the link at 2am on a Monday morning, with followers claiming that she was trying to “bury” her apology.

One wrote: “Let’s give that pathetic 2am apology a little more help by retweeting.”

Another sarcastically added: “2:00am? Is almost as if she didn’t want anybody to see her sincere heartfelt apology. How odd.”

Katie has not publicly commented on the story any further.