Cllr Mohammad Shabbir confirms to Guido that he has been suspended by Labour following our story this morning. How can the party suspend Shabbir and not Naz Shah? This looks like one rule for low profile councillors and another for high profile MPs…
The Labour councillor who regularly uses the anti-Semitic epithet “zios“ was employed by Naz Shah as her taxpayer-funded aide while she was an MP. Mohammad Shabbir ran her office, was given a parliamentary email address and was Shah’s point of contact for job applications. Shabbir appears in the parliamentary email address book as “member’s staff” for the Bradford West MP:
Why did Shah employ a man who repeatedly authored anti-Semitic slurs as her taxpayer-funded office manager?
Race row Labour MP Naz Shah is the chair of Sharing Voices, a charity in Bradford run by Labour councillor Mohammad Shabbir. Shah and Cllr Shabbir are close friends, the pair have been photographed together regularly and have worked together for years. Shah has repeatedly promoted Cllr Shabbir’s website on her Twitter page and regularly shares his tweets.
Cllr Shabbir often uses the word “zio“, a racial epithet used by the KKK and Neo-Nazi groups:
He has also on several occasions equated the Israel-Palestine conflict to the Holocaust, another well-known anti-Semitic trope:
In a post on his website responding to a story about a woman being raped by a group of Pakistani men, Cllr Shabbir pointed to “orthodox Jews who are involved in the sex trafficking trade” and directed readers to text suggesting that demand for victims of sex trafficking “is particularly high among Haredim, the conservative Orthodox Jews, many of whom are regular clients of brothels”. Shah also tweeted a link to an article by Cllr Shabbir in which he compared Zionists to al-Qaeda…
Two questions for Labour ahead of PMQs:
- Will they withdraw the whip from Naz Shah?
- Will they suspend Cllr Shabbir?
24 hours on from the original revelations, Jeremy Corbyn has still refused to comment…
