Sadiq Khan’s childhood friend Babar Ahmad has been sentenced to 12 ½ years in prison in the US for providing material support to the Taliban. Ahmad confessed to helping the Taliban and Chechen mujahideen by using websites to raise money and recruit terrorists, at a time when the Taliban were harbouring Osama bin Laden. Hansard quotes Sadiq Khan on 12 July 2006 as saying:

“… Babar Ahmad should be presumed innocent until he is found guilty. Moreover, he is in fact innocent, as I shall explain later.”

How did that work out?

Readers will remember how Khan supported Ahmad for years, even earning the praise of his sister, who called him a “wonderful supporter”. Not to mention Khan’s refusal to come clean about his conflicting accounts of his relationship with Ahmad. Nor that as a human rights lawyer Khan was recruited by 9/11 terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui to act as his consultant. Since Babar Ahamd was sentenced, Khan has once more stayed silent about his old friend. Hardly conduct befitting a man who wants to be Justice Secretary, or, dare Guido say it, Mayor of London…