U.K. media is reporting that the Labour Party has lifted the suspension of Lord Ahmed Nazir in connection with the allegations that he had offered a bounty on the head of U.S. President Obama and former President George Bush. According to a BBC report:
Lord Ahmed A peer suspended by the Labour Party for allegedly offering a £10m bounty on the head of US President Barack Obama has had the suspension lifted. Lord Ahmed, who denied the accusations published in a Pakistani newspaper the Express Tribune, thanked Chief Whip Lord Bassam for a ‘fair’ investigation. Labour confirmed the suspension had been lifted but did not explain why. His alleged remarks followed reports the US offered $10m for the conviction of a Pakistani-based militant leader. The supposed bounty was said to be for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Hafiz Saeed, the founder of militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba. The Indian government blames Mr Saeed and his organisation for carrying out several militant attacks on its territory, including the 2008 Mumbai shootings which left 165 dead plus nine of the 10 gunmen. ‘Shocked and horrified’ Lord Ahmed said he was ‘delighted’ the suspension had been lifted as he had been a member of the Labour Party for 34 years. He told BBC Asian Network said his colleagues in the Lords had been ‘very sympathetic’ while the suspension was in place. The story was ‘lies’ and he said he was considering taking legal action against the Express Tribune newspaper, he added. In April this year the Express Tribune quoted Lord Ahmed saying: ‘If the US can announce a reward of $10m for the captor of Hafiz Saeed, I can announce a bounty of £10m on President Obama and his predecessor George Bush.’ They later corrected the article. In response to the article, Lord Ahmed said: ‘I’m shocked and horrified that this whole story could be just made up of lies. ‘I never mentioned President Obama, I never mentioned the word bounty. ‘It was a discussion about people investing in Pakistan and yes, I did talk about illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Bush and Blair involved in it. ‘But I did not mention any bounty or President Obama and the sort of rubbish that’s been on the media.’ A Labour Party spokesperson said ‘Lord Ahmed is no longer suspended from the Labour Party’ but would not expand on that statement.
An April post reported that the U.K. Labour Party had suspended Lord Ahmed following the reports that he offered a £10 million bounty for the capture of President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush. According to another Pakistani media report, cited and translated by MEMRI, Lord Ahmed also recently claimed the U.S. is planning an attack on Iran to divert attention from the country’s financial situation and called on the Muslim world to “united against the attacking powers.”
The Jerusalem Post has reported on some of the Islamist connections and anti-Semitic activities of Lord Nazir Ahmed, who became the United Kingdom’s first Muslim life peer in 1998.:
Previously, Ahmed used his influence to introduce the lord high chancellor to Sheikh Suhaib Hasan to discuss introducing Islamic divorce laws into the UK, the think tank said. In a 2008 documentary, Hasan said, “Even though cutting off the hands and feet, or flogging the drunkard and fornicator, seem to be very abhorrent, once they are implemented, they become a deterrent for the whole society. This is why in Saudi Arabia, for example, where these measures are implemented, the crime rate is very, very, low.” According to the British current affairs magazine Spectator, Ahmed recently threatened to mobilize 10,000 Muslims to prevent the House of Lords from screening Fitna, a short film by Dutch politician Geert Wilders that claims that Islam sanctions terrorism. He also threatened to take the organizer of the event to court. He called the decision not to screen the film a victory for the Muslim community. In 2005, Ahmed hosted a book launch in the House of Lords for a writer who frequently uses anti-Semitic stereotypes in his work. Russian-born Israel Shamir claimed the blood libels against the Jews were in fact true and that all political parties were Zionist-infiltrated. Shamir is a citizen of Sweden, where his legal name is Adam Ermash. In an interview on Press TV, an Iranian satellite channel, during Operation Cast Lead, Ahmed said that Jewish student groups actively recruited for the IDF, and that British Jews who fight in the IDF should be arrested and, if necessary, charged with war crimes.
In June, a post reported that Lord Nazir Ahmed had cancelled his plans to host far-right extremist groups at the House of Lords.
Lord Ahmed has a number of connections to the global Muslim Brotherhood. For example, he is listed as a member of the Advisory Board of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists UK (AMSSUK), the U.K. branch of the American organization by the same name which is headquartered at the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), a part of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood. The AMSS was founded in 1972 as an outgrowth of the Muslim Student Association by important members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood including Jamal Barzinji, currently a leader of IIIT, and the late Ismail Faruqi, a pivotal figure in the “Islamization of Knowledge” project. AMSS has sponsored annual conferences and publishes a journal entitled American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (AJISS) in conjunction with IIIT which plays host to the AMSS. The AMSSUK Advisory Board includes other individuals tied to the global Brotherhood including:
- Mustafa Ceric (Grand Mufti of Bosnia)
- Charles Butterworth (University of Maryland)
- Khurshid Ahmed Pakistani (Jamaat-d-Islami)
- Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens)
In October 2011, a post reported that US Special Envoy to the Organisation of Islamic Conference Rashad Hussain, together with representatives of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, were invited to speak at a U.K. event hosted by Lord Nazir Ahmed. An earlier post discussed Lord Ahmed’s participation in a British Muslim delegation that was expected to deliver a “letter of thanks” to the Turkish Embassy in London expressing gratitude over Turkish Prime MInister Erdogan’s remarks strongly criticizing Israeli actions in Gaza that were made at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The Jerusalem Post report indicates that Lord Ahmed was the leader of the delegation.