Telegraph triumph

SIR – One of the greatest achievements of The Sunday Telegraph was to persuade the late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia to outlaw slavery.

In the excellent supplement that accompanied your 3,000th edition, you looked back with justifiable pride on “some of the newspaper’s greatest triumphs”, but made no mention of the expensive and risky investigation across Africa and into Saudi Arabia itself, lasting for over a year, that persuaded Faisal to ban slavery and attracted international attention.

It was a brave decision by the then proprietor of the newspaper, Michael Berry, to launch this difficult project, and a brave decision by Faisal to act upon the evidence unearthed. He was brother to the old and ill King Saud, as well as being his prime minister and the crown prince, when the evidence was presented by me on behalf of The Sunday Telegraph.

When, soon afterwards, Saud died, one of Faisal’s first acts as his successor was to make slavery illegal. The Saudi authorities spent a great deal of money compensating both slaves and slave-owners, as Faisal wished to avoid upsetting traditional areas of the Saudi economy.

He was probably the greatest reformer in the history of the desert kingdom – detested by religious extremists and unhappy members of the Saudi royal family. After ruling effectively for some years he was assassinated by a nephew.

As Middle East correspondent in the early Sixties for both Telegraph titles, I was The Sunday Telegraph’s investigator. Those interested in Faisal’s efforts and your newspaper’s commitment to abolishing slavery can find more in my book, Life, Love, Laughter, Liberty. John Osman

Witney, Oxfordshire