Atma Singh, an aide to Ken Livingstone when he was Mayor of London, has claimed he saw Ken’s staff “cheering” 9/11 as they watched events unfold in the mayoral press office:
Q: “You were in the Mayor’s Office during the actual attacks. What was your and others’ reaction inside the Mayor’s Office?”
Singh: “I watched the attacks unfolding while I was in my office as one officer had come into my office in the Mayoral corridor to inform me about them. Then, as the situation unfolded, I went into the Mayoral Press Officer’s room to watch the terrible events. I was disturbed to see a few people cheering the events. Others watched soberly and others talked matter-of-fact about the consequences for London.”
Q: “Celebrating the attacks?
Singh: “Yes.”
Quite an allegation from a former aide…
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Yet another intervention in the debate on Sadiq Khan’s links to extremists – this was Atma Singh on LBC yesterday:
“I think Sadiq Khan is using a smokescreen to hide the fact that he has associated with a lot of people who support terrorism and I think that does raise questions about his suitability to be mayor of London and especially when terrorism is such an imminent threat to the UK. He has never denied that he has associated with these people and it’s also a fact that those people have supported terrorism. Now the question is why, and on what basis, was Sadiq Khan associating with them. And I think this is an area for legitimate scrutiny, it’s not Islamophobic or racist to ask questions and to ask Sadiq Khan to provide answers and it’s not.. he can’t hide behind these slogans of racism or Islamophobia.”
And who is Atma Singh? Not a member of Zac Goldsmith’s campaign team. Not a voice from the right. He’s a former aide to Ken Livingstone, former Labour Party adviser and even a former member of Socialist Action. Do Labour think their own former aide is an Islamophobe too?
