UK Labour peer suspended for Jewish comments

British Labour Party has suspended Lord Ahmed after blaming a Jewish conspiracy for the imprisonment he received in 2009 for dangerous driving.

The peer, who was jailed for sending a text message shortly before his car was involved in a fatal crash, allegedly said the courts were under pressure to charge him with a more serious offence as a result of his support for Palestinians in Gaza.

Lord Ahmed is reported to have made the comments in a television interview in April last year while he was on a visit to Pakistan.

“My case became more critical because I went to Gaza to support Palestinians. My Jewish friends who own newspapers and TV channels opposed this,” the Times reported him as saying in the television interview.

Suspending Lord Ahmed, a spokesperson for the Labour Party said, “The Labour Party deplores and does not tolerate any sort of racism or anti-Semitism. We are suspending Lord Ahmed pending an investigation.”

This comes as Labour Party leader Ed Miliband established his pro-Israel credentials like never before earlier last week, saying that he is “intolerant of those who question Israel’s right to exist”.