Labour London hopeful linked to terrorist

I saw the headline in the Sunday Times and thought – yes, we know, although it won’t hurt to remind the general public as many times as is neccessary before the mayoral election next month. But it isn’t his friendship with Babar Ahmed. There’s more than one terrorist in the neighbourhood. 

From The Sunday Times and the Mail on Sunday

London Mayoral hopeful Sadiq Khan has hit out at ‘desperate’ smears after it emerged he shared a platform with extremists.

Mr Khan spoke at a 2003 conference alongside a man convicted of terrorism and a militant who helped to train the ringleader of the July 7 London bomb attacks.

Yasser al-Sirri had been sentenced to death in Egypt over a political assassination attempt, while another speaker was Sajeel Abu Ibrahim, better known as Sajeel Shahid.

Shahid called for violence against British troops and ran a training camp in Pakistan where known terrorists learned how to make bombs and fire rocket- propelled grenades.

One of his ‘graduates’ was Mohammed Siddique Khan, who led the gang of four suicide bombers on the deadliest terrorist attack ever committed in Britain, killing 52 people on the London Underground and a bus on July 7, 2005.  

At the conference, Mr Khan – who is a strong favourite to win the mayoral race – gave a speech about representing a 9/11 conspirator and criticised two anti-terrorism bills for targeting Muslim groups.

The ‘First Captives Conference’ was set up to support terror suspects in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. 

It was organised by the Islamic Observation Centre, which was run by al-Sirri.  A spokesman for Sadiq Khan said he had done nothing wrong.  “This is desperate stuff. Sadiq has always been totally honest about his time as a leading human rights lawyer…”

Atma Singh, who was Asian affairs adviser to Ken Livingstone, the former Labour mayor, today accuses Khan of being “far too willing to turn a blind eye to terrorism”. Writing in The Sunday Times, Singh says that Khan prefers to hear no evil because it suits [his] electoral ends”.

Al-Siri and Shahid were both approached by The Sunday Times but did not comment.