Suspended Labour peer ‘cannot expect fair hearing’ over race row allegations

Lawyers acting for suspended Labour peer Lord Ahmed yesterday claimed that he cannot expect “a fair hearing” over allegations that he made anti-Semitic comments in a TV interview because he has not been shown footage of the programme.

Lord Ahmed is due to appear before Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee on May 15 to answer accusations that he blamed a Jewish conspiracy for his dangerous driving jail term.

But he insists he does not recall making the alleged comments, and his solicitor Stephen Smith yesterday suggested that the footage may have been doctored to smear the peer’s name.

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So far, Mr Smith says he has seen only a transcript of the interview, several parts of which are marked “unintelligible”.

Lord Ahmed was suspended from the Labour Party in March this year after The Times reported that he had blamed his 2009 prison sentence – for sending text messages shortly before his car was involved in a fatal crash – on pressure placed on the courts by Jews “who own newspapers and TV channels”.

The Muslim peer allegedly told an Urdu-language broadcaster in Pakistan that the judge who jailed him for 12 weeks was appointed to the High Court after helping a “Jewish colleague” of Tony Blair during an important case.

Mr Smith yesterday said that he wants to subject the film to forensic analysis to determine whether it has been edited, but has been unable to obtain a copy from The Times or Labour. He stressed that he did not suspect the newspaper or the party of tampering with the footage, but suggested that it could have been edited in Pakistan as part of a dirty tricks campaign by the peer’s opponents there.

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“Unfortunately there is no confirmation of the date of this so-called interview or where it is supposed to have taken place,” said Mr Smith. “There is a translation of sorts with a number of words left out simply referred to as ‘unintelligible’. It appears that this is taken from a film which does not represent all of the interview and we believe it has been edited in such as way as to misrepresent what was actually said.”

He added: “Everyone knows how easy it is to misrepresent conversations by way of skilful editing and history shows us that Lord Ahmed has suffered from this sort of situation before.”