UK: Politician Charged With ‘Racially Aggravated Abuse’ for Telling Activist to ‘Go Back to Bahrain’
A Tory MP has been charged with public order offences – one of them racially motivated – over a clash with Bahrani activists, Scotland Yard said today. Bob Stewart, 73, who has been Beckenham MP since 2010, faces two charges and is due to appear in court in July.
The former British Army officer was investigated after an incident outside the Foreign Office’s Lancaster House after an event hosted by the Bahraini embassy in December.
Mr Stewart was reported to police by Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, the director of the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, who alleges that the MP told him to ‘go back to Bahrain’.
Stewart is charged with using threatening or abusive words or behaviour or disorderly behaviour and the offence was racially aggravated, and an alternative charge of Using threatening or abusive words or behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress.
He is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates Court on July 5, the Metropolitan Police said. It is understood that he will remain a Conservative MP while the case progresses, and he plans to contest the charges.
