JEDDAH, 7 December 2004 — Prince Turki Al-Faisal, Saudi ambassador to Britain, has accepted “substantial” damages and a public apology from Paris Match’s publishers after the magazine alleged that he set up Al-Qaeda and was responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

Prince Turki, a former director of Saudi intelligence, sued Hachette Filipacchi Associes after it printed allegations from the book “La Guerre D’Apres” by Laurent Murawiec. The prince’s lawyer Rupert Earle told London’s High Court: “In particular he described Prince Turki as having set up Al-Qaeda and thereafter used it as his military organization.”

The article also pinned on Prince Turki direct responsibility for the atrocity of Sept. 11, 2001, and for Al-Qaeda terrorism worldwide, the lawyer said.

He said the magazine also alleged that Prince Turki, who, while heading the Kingdom’s External Intelligence Service, had contacts with Osama Bin Laden in the 1980s, had given him $200 million in return for his agreement not to attack Saudi Arabia.

He said: “Prince Turki points out that he has sought to curb and then bring to justice Osama Bin Laden once it became evident that he was working to build up Al-Qaeda as a terrorist network and had called for jihad against the United States.

“Neither Prince Turki nor to his knowledge anyone in the Saudi government, ever offered any assistance, financial or otherwise, to Al-Qaeda in exchange for their not attacking Saudi Arabia.

“Mr. Murawiec’s views have been rejected at the highest level in the United States as well as by the 9/11 Commission and French authorities have distanced themselves from Mr. Murawiec,” he pointed out.

In July this year, the 9/11 Commission exonerated the Kingdom and Islam from terrorist charges.

The publisher’s lawyer Kathryn Johnson said: “The defendant accepts Prince Turki’s assurances that there is no truth in any of these allegations and is happy to withdraw them unreservedly.”

Prince Turki is to donate the damages he won in the case to the charity Islamic Relief, which works with children and orphans in Afghanistan. The publishers will also pay his legal costs and publish an apology.

Prince Turki said yesterday the allegations against the Saudi government and him were outrageous. “On behalf of my government, I spent a number of years trying to track down Osama Bin Laden and bring him to justice at a time when other governments were less convinced of the threat he posed. Al-Qaeda and all terrorist groups go against everything I believe in and hold most sacred.”