Justice Tay Yong Kwang on Tuesday said the fine would serve to denounce the conduct of the newspaper, 'a repeat offender', and hopefully deter future transgressions.

He also ordered the Hong Kong-based publication to pay costs of $30,000.

Previous fines for contempt of court involving newspapers have been in the thousands of dollars. The highest - $10,000 - was meted out to American academic Christopher Lingle in 1995 for an article he wrote in the International Herald Tribune that insinuated the judiciary was compliant.

In the present case, the Attorney-General took Dow Jones - the publisher of the WSJA - to court over three articles published in the newspaper in June and July this year.

The first was an editorial on Singapore's democracy, arising out of a May hearing to assess damages that Singapore Democratic Party chief Chee Soon Juan and others had to pay Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew for libel.

The second was a letter by Dr Chee, in reply to a rebuttal of that editorial by MM Lee?s press secretary.

The third article was another editorial, on the International Bar Association?s Human Rights Institute's report on the Singapore judiciary in July.

At a hearing on Tuesday morning, Justice Tay found that all three articles contained insinuations that the judiciary was biased, impartial and lacked independence.

The articles also implied that the judiciary was subservient to Minister Mentor Lee and the People's Action Party, and was a tool for silencing political dissent.

These allegations had the inherent tendency to interfere with the administration of justice and risked undermining public confidence in the courts, Justice Tay said.

His ruling came three weeks after he heard arguments from Attorney-General Walter Woon and Dow Jones' lawyer, Senior Counsel Philip Jeyaretnam.

In a 42-page written judgment which he summarised in court, Justice Tay noted that although the paper's earlier instances of contempt of court were committed about two decades ago - in 1985 and 1989 - 'that is not a very long period of time in the context of corporate history'.

In 1985, when the paper was called the Asian Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones and then-editor Fred Zimmerman were fined $6,000 and $2,000 respectively for a report on the conviction of then-Workers' Party leader J.B. Jeyaretnam.

In 1991, Dow Jones and then-editor Barry Wain were each fined $4,000 for implying that a judge hearing a libel case was biased towards Mr Lee Kuan Yew. Justice Tay also cited three other aggravating factors against the WSJA:

One, the offending articles appeared in the span of three weeks, in a respectable journal with a wide and sophisticated readership.

Two, the constant refrain of the imputations against the judiciary's independence destablised the rule of law and threatened to bring down the reputation of Singapore.

Three, the WSJA had not offered any apology but maintained that the articles were not in contempt.

WSJA has seven days from Tuesday to pay the fine.

Said a Dow Jones spokesman: 'We are currently reviewing the decision.'

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