THE hate mail saga against leading Caribbean hotelier, Gordon ‘Butch’ Stewart, deepened yesterday with the announcement that a second member of the Issa family has been sued by Stewart for “publishing a toxic e-mail” against him.

The suit was filed against Muna Issa, daughter of John Issa, the founder and chairman of the SuperClubs hotel chain and long-time rival of Stewart who also filed a similar suit against John Issa for allegedly disseminating, or publishing the same hate mail.

The toxic e-mail purportedly written by one “Dr Paulette Robinson”, suspected to be a pseudonym for the real culprit, was titled “The mad rantings of Gordon Butch Stewart” and dated October 24, 2007. The mail, which Stewart said fabricated hurtful and damaging claims about him, was sent to Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett and allegedly disseminated to the media by Muna Issa.

By publishing the e-mail to a member of the media, “the defendant intended that same to be widely republished by the public media throughout Jamaica”, and aimed at damaging the image and international reputation of Stewart, the suit said.

It also said the e-mail, one of several from the same writer, collectively had been described as a “vicious smear campaign. against the Stewart family” by Travel Weekly magazine, an international travel trade publication which obtained copies.

“Their publishing of these awful e-mails is atrocious and it must come to an end. This ordeal has now gotten the attention of the international travel trade and it puts them (Issas) in a very bad light,” said a source close to the Sandals chairman, who is also chairman of the Observer.

Said the source: “It is interesting to note that the e-mails seem to have started right about the time that John Lynch, executive of Unique Vacations (a Sandals company based in Florida), was appointed as chairman of the Jamaica Tourist Board in 2007. Incidentally, Muna Issa’s twin sister, Zein Issa-Nakash, was appointed as a board member of the JTB when the new board was announced.

“The e-mails were widely and frequently disseminated but seemed to have stopped once legal proceedings against both members of the Issa family commenced,” the Sandals source added.

Numerous attempts to contact “Dr Paulette Robinson”, the alleged author of the e-mails, had so far proven futile, thus giving credence to the suspicion that the name was fictitious, in order to conceal the true identity, the source said.

The rivalry between Jamaica’s two top hoteliers has spanned almost two decades, with Stewart recently saying he had “soaked it up quietly for a long time” but had taken enough and now wanted to put an end to the “hurtful and evil nature” of the abuses.