Labour peer, Lord Amhed, is a blot on the British escutcheon. In the past ten years, he has sided with those who imposed a fatwa on Salman Rushdie, excused the July 7, 2005 London bombings as the product of an “identity crisis,” threatened in 2009 to ”bring a force of 10,000 Muslims to lay siege to the Lords if the campaigning anti-Islamist Dutch MP Geert Wilders was allowed to speak,” and, in 2011, told a Pakistani business meeting that, “Even if I have to beg I am willing to raise and offer £10 million so that George W Bush and Tony Blair can be brought to the International Court of Justice on war crimes charges.”
Now, he has waded in to the Malala Yousafzai case — and how. According to the Telegraph:
Lord Ahmed said he believed Malala Yousafzai, who is awaiting reconstructive surgery at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, could have been shot as part of a plot to discredit the Taliban.
The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for trying to kill the schoolgirl, who was shot in the head at point blank range, on the day of the shooting and later said it would try again.
But Lord Ahmed told the meeting in Willesden, North London the following evening that he believed the young girl may have been shot as an excuse to launch a military assault in the Taliban stronghold of Waziristan.
He claimed similar incidents had happened in London and compared the crime to Jimmy Savile’s sex assaults, during a speech at a community meeting in North London.
Why does Ahmed think this?
He said he had visited Mingora, the town where Malala lived with her family in the Swat Valley and there was “no danger whatsoever” from militants.
“I don’t know why it happened and one reason could possibly be there’s an operation in Waziristan [which] may possibly be on the cards or some other sort of action,” he told the meeting.
“It could have also been to build and increase public opinion and support in favour of a Waziristan operation and God forbid, she could have been caught as a tool in that conspiracy.”
Comparing the incident to crimes in London, he added: “One lone accident should not be generalised and this could have taken place in London and has done so in the past too.
“So we should not imply that this area is under the control of Tehreek-e-Taliban [the Pakistani Taliban] in anyways just because of this incident.
“Criminal activity can even take place inside the BBC and crimes have been committed by people smoking cigars, which the police are now investigating.
Ahmed’s words are typical of conspiracy theorists’. He begins by confirming that he doesn’t know anything about the matter, before offering a series of unsubstantiated suggestions that are reverse engineered to conform with his personal prejudices. (The line about cigars is the icing on the cake, and ranges into pastiche.) Then, when called on his comments, Ahmed plays it coy: Oh that, he asks. I was just “repeating opinions which had been expressed in the Pakistani parliament.” Fair enough. Given his record, perhaps Ahmed would be better off serving there.