Former Sunday Express journalist Yvonne Ridley has been awarded more than £20,000 in compensation and £5,000 costs after winning a case for unfair dismissal and sexual discrimination against the Islam Channel.An employment tribunal ruled in April that Ridley had been unfairly dismissed by the digital channel and upheld her complaint of sexual discrimination and harassment. Now a tribunal in London has awarded her £20,532 in compensation and ordered the Islam Channel to pay her £5,000 in costs.
Ridley's case, which was part-funded by the NUJ, was held in London in February and heard evidence from a number of figures in support of her claims including the Respect MP George Galloway. Ridley, who resigned from the channel in April last year, complained that she had effectively been dismissed after relations between her and the channel's chief executive, Mohammed Ali, broke down.
The tribunal also found that Ridley had been unfairly dismissed, and ruled that the way she was treated was "riddled with unfairness" and that she was subjected to "a wholesale approach of seeking to blame her at various points".
Earlier this year Ridley won nearly £14,000 in damages after winning a four-year unfair dismissal case against Arabic TV station al-Jazeera. Ridley was sacked from her job as an editor on the Doha-based channel in November 2003 and launched an unfair dismissal case.
Ridley hit the headlines when she was held captive by the Taliban in Afghanistan while on assignment with the Sunday Express in 2001. She subsequently converted to Islam and now works for the Iranian-based 24-hour English language news channel PressTV, where she fronts her own London-based current affairs show, The Agenda.