International newspaper the Financial Times has apologised for mistakenly identifying Foreign Minister Shaikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa as a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay.

The London-based daily published a photograph of Shaikh Khalid with a caption that incorrectly described him as "Khaled Sheikh Mohammed: among five detainees on trial" alongside an article headlined "Guantanamo inmates face two divergent paths after 12 years," said a report in the Gulf Daily News (GDN), our sister publication.

A retraction was published yesterday, which read: "We apologise unreservedly to His Excellency Shaikh Khalid for the error and any distress caused. We wish to make it clear that His Excellency Shaikh Khalid has no connection whatsoever with the article."

Sources at the Foreign Ministry told the GDN they were aware of the mistake and the apology, but no official comment was available.

In commenting on this error, Anwar Abdulrahman, editor-in-chief of our sister newspaper Akhbar Al Khaleej, recalled a meeting in Bahrain with Financial Times journalist Simon Kerr in 2011. He was trying to explain the situation in Bahrain.

"Kerr was so ill-informed, naive and arrogant that one wonders how the Financial Times recruits such low-level journalists. The newspaper has certainly reported wrongly many, many times about Bahrain," said Abdulrahman. - TradeArabia News Service