Bogus Attack Interview No Longer Online

Yesterday, I wrote about how in 2011 self-styled “terror tracker” named Dominic Wightman had used his Westminster Journal website to express his wish to run Tim Ireland and myself down with his car. Wightman – who formerly advised Patrick Mercer MP – has had a grudge against both of us since 2009, when we discovered that he was viciously deceitful.

Wightman sporadically makes false accusations against both Tim and myself, sometimes under his own name and sometimes using sockpuppets. In one instance, he even appeared on someone else’s website under the title “An Interview With Dominic Wightman: Counter-Terrorism, the UK, USA, and Venezuela”. It began with a preamble:

Dominic Wightman is a former director and spokesman for the counter-extremism network VIGIL, a contributor to think tank reports and editor of the Westminster Journal, an online magazine dedicated to exposing the activities of radical Islamist organizations in Great Britain. Due to permissive British libel law, later this month, the journal will be re-launched from New York…

Wightman used his platform to accuse Tim of being a stalker (a talking point taken from Tim’s political opponents), and to make the completely bogus claim that “neighbors told some locals that computers were removed” from Tim’s house by police.

The interview was subsequently taken down; it should be noted that one former associate has repudiated Wightman for his general behaviour, while others – such as Patrick Mercer and the crowd at the Centre for Social Cohesion – appear no longer to associate with him but have maintained a self-serving silence on the subject.

Incidentally, the claim that the Westminster Journal was “re-launched from New York” is utterly meaningless: Wightman resides in the UK, and there is no New York address associated with the site. Further, a New York address would not protect Wightman from a libel action in the UK anyway, because the site can be read in the UK. However, pursuing a libel action would be extremely expense, and costs are unlikely to be recovered: in 2009, when a court ruled that he had to pay an ex-employee £14,000 he simply moved his assets, declared bankruptcy, and created a sockpuppet website where he abused his creditor and mocked the court.