The former beauty queen was also awarded Dh3, 000 as compensation.

It is expected that attorneys for Joelle Behlok will ask the Dubai courts to award an as yet undisclosed sum of money as additional compensation. It is also expected that Mr Jarallah’s attorneys will appeal the ruling passed against the newspaper editor.

Earlier last week, the Dubai Appeal Court upheld a three-month jail term against a Saudi national and publisher of a London-based Internet publication for making false and libelous statements against Behlok. The lower court had originally issued the three-month sentence against the Saudi national last July. The appeal court also referred the compensation claim component of the case to the Dubai Civil Court.

Mr Jarallah was in the news not too long ago, as on December 11, 2003 a letter bomb was addressed to him and other journalists at Kuwait's Al Siyassah newspaper. The letter was ostensibly from an editor of a Lebanese publication, which later proved to be untrue.

Mr Jarallah, quoted in a report published on the web site of Reporters Without Borders, said he thought the letter bomb was sent to him as a reaction to what I had written about terrorists and extremists in the Arab world." He is known for his fierce criticism of and opposition to religious fanaticism. Mr Jarallah is the owner of both Al Siyassah and the English-language daily, Arab Times.

During the war in Iraq he expressed his backing in the newspaper for the US-led intervention.

More recently, Al Siyassah, which appears simultaneously in Kuwait and Jeddah, has been critical of Saudi Arabia's militants.