Updated at 5.30pm and again at 8pm: The Sun's splash today, "Inside Islamic State terror camps", is a terrific revelation about the training of jihadist fighters.
It warranted its page one status and its inside spread, which is headlined "Brainwashed to think they can have virgins in Heaven.. and rape women on Earth."
But the paper did not break the story. The whole article, including verbatim quotes, was "borrowed" from a Swedish-based website without attribution.
The reporter's name was mentioned in passing after 33 paragraphs of the 41-paragraph article. Yet he had not given permission for the Sun to use his exclusive copy.
Now the website, Your Middle East, is planning to ask for compensation. Its managing editor and founder, Adam Hedengren, said the Sun contacted him prior to publication in order to reach the reporter, Rozh Ahmad.
It did not say it would publish the material. It did not say it would be the splash. It did not offer a payment for using the copy.
The website's editors were told by Ahmad, a Paris-based journalist who grew up in England with roots in Iraq's Kurdish region, that he was not keen to speak to the Sun. He did not, according to the editor, have positive views about the paper.
Since the row blew up, the Sun has changed its website story to include a hyperlink to the original Q&A as reported by Ahmad, which can be found here.
A Sun spokesman stressed that its journalists spent a day trying to reach Ahmad and remained unaware of his views about the paper.
It had not been a deliberate attempt to rip off the Your Middle East site and it had mentioned the reporter by name.
It is an embarrassing matter for the Sun, which has complained several times in recent months about Mail Online stealing its stories.
The paper's ultimate owner, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, also accused Google last week of being "a platform for piracy" because its search engine offers links to newspaper stories.
The Sun's story relied in its entirety on Ahmad's Q&A with a former "reformed" member of the Islamic State, an Iraqi Kurd, Sherko Omer (not his real name).
Omer said he witnessed public beheadings and revealed that unqualified recruits who cannot speak Arabic — including Britons — were assigned to suicide squads because "they are considered useless for any other terror tasks." The article contains many direct quotes from Omer to Ahmad.
Update 5.30pm: All now appears to be sweetnesss and light between the Sun and Rozh Ahmad. I am given to understand that a Sun reporter has spoken to him, agreed to pay him for his work and they are to meet in the hope of Ahmad working with the paper on future projects.
Update 8pm: No sweetness and light after all. The above update is hotly disputed by the editors of Your Middle East website. Firstly, they tell me they hold the copyright in Ahmad's article. Secondly, they say Ahmad disputes the interpretation the Sun has placed on his conversation with its member of staff.
