The Jeremy Corbyn supporter expelled by Labour for having been jailed for breaking United Nations sanctions against Iraq said that he was “a political prisoner”.
Riad El-Taher, 77, was elected to the executive of the newly formed Hove Constituency Labour Party earlier this month.
Less than a fortnight later he was expelled by the party because of his criminal conviction but he said: “It’s purely political. To go out and dig up my past is an attempt to tarnish Jeremy Corbyn.”
He said that he had known Mr Corbyn since 1990 and they had shared a platform many times as part of the Stop the War Coalition against the Iraq War.
He said that he had also shared a platform with Labour MPs Diane Abbott, Tony Benn and Tam Dalyell as well as Caroline Lucas, the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion.
He said: “I have appealed against my expulsion. I don’t want to have my name blackened in this way. I’m an ex-con but I was a political prisoner.”
He was jailed for 10 months in 2011 – reduced to eight months on appeal – for breaking UN sanctions in 2000 in the lead up to the 2003 Iraq war. He paid the regime more than £300,000.
He served half his sentence in Wandsworth Prison apart from the final week – at Ford Open Prison – before being released to complete his sentence on licence.
He said that the oil trades for food and medicine were part of the humanitarian effort to help the people of Iraq and were carried out with official approval.
And he added: “I left Iraq because Saddam came to power. I’m not a Ba’athist.” The Ba’ath Party was the dominant political force during Saddam Hussein’s long tenure as president.
According to the latest issue of the satirical magazine Private Eye the judge who jailed Riad El-Taher, Judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith, said: “It seems to me that your primary motive was financial.”
The former Labour MP for Hove, Ivor Caplin, told the BBC yesterday (Wednesday 15 March): “This is about sanctions busting. It’s a very serious crime. And Mr Riad went to prison for it. He was convicted and given a custodial sentence.”
Mr Caplin, a government whip during the build up to the Iraq invasion who became a defence minister in 2003, the year of the war, added: “This is not something to be sneezed at. It was a very serious offence dealt with very seriously by the judge in that particular case.”
This disgusting man was lucky to have had the chance to live his life, especially seeing as some of that £300,000 was used to persecute and murder innocent Kurds and Iraqi civilians. He can lie all he likes about medicine and aid, but the judge wouldn’t have put him away if this was true.
The stink the Momentum loons seem to have kicked up about this, shows they are purely anti-western, anti-democratic bunch of terrorist supporting baddies. It also shows the type of people that Corbyn and his ugly mob are willing to share platforms with and call “comrades”.
It is a disgrace this man is trying to make out he is the victim here.
He broke UN sanctions on Iraq. He gave Saddam Hussein’s regime significant money that would have been used to murder and torture people. The judge ruled in his court case that his actions were motivated by profit, not by any desire to help people.
He truly is lacking in morals and conscience. It is right that such a man is not a part of the Labour party when his mere presence in an organisation dirties the name of that organisation due to the fact he claims he did no wrong.
What is also horrendous is that many far-left extremists which have infiltrated the Labour party in Brighton and Hove are backing him.
If you know a Labour Party member, then check if they support this man. It separates the sensible people from those who are causing so much damage to Labour locally and nationally. It truly is a disgrace that these people are still in the Labour Party.
Two comments so far and both from the Daily Mail. Right off the front page.
Absolutely Andy. And I bet they find no fault in Ivor Caplin’s disgraceful support for the war in Iraq. Even now.