Tory Candidate Suspended for Trying to Fix Election
A candidate for the Dudley North seat at the next General Election has been suspended with immediate effect over claims he tried to set up a ‘fake’ English Defence League (EDL) march in regards to the town’s ‘mega mosque’. Conservative candidate Afzal Amin was secretly filmed by the Mail on Sunday trying to persuade the leader of the EDL, Tommy Robinson, to create a fictitious English Defence League protest in his intended constituency and then to scrap it – allowing him to take full credit of the u-turn.
In return for the odd proposal, Mr Amin, a former Army captain, promised Mr Robinson that the EDL members and himself would become ‘unshakeable allies’ who would help bring their radical views into the mainstream, when elected to Parliament.
Mr Amin said the accusations were an “inaccurate picture of reality”.
In a statement, the prospective parliamentary candidate, who is currently in Dubai, said, “Today’s allegations are part of a much wider story which has been grossly misrepresented. The Mail on Sunday has provided small snippets of over 27 hours of sensitive meetings between Tommy Robinson and I, which have led to a manipulation of events.
“The point was to announce a march that would bring people together to discuss, and through discussions, tensions would be resolved. I wanted to see these two communities really learn more about each other through face-to-face discussion.”
However, Mr Robinson said that Mr Amin had tried to use the organisation. “‘I was stunned that this respectable man was talking about bribing members of the EDL and organising fake marches. I was equally alarmed when he said he had violently attacked someone. I haven’t been an angel, but this man could win his Election and I felt I had to do something.”
According to the Mail on Sunday, Mr Amin attempted to stir up racial hatred. In the secret footage, Mr Amin says, “This is my fantasy. If I could demonstrate to the people in Dudley that I can be a positive voice for community cohesion, for development, for campaigning against the evils and the terrorism and the child grooming and all the rest of it, then that would help me a lot in the forthcoming Election.
“One way of doing that is, if you were to announce a second march about the mosque… and then we have two meetings with the chief of police, members of the Muslim community, we all play our roles, you say, “Yeah we’re going to do a march, we’re campaigning and so on”. We have a second meeting where things are a bit calmer then at the third one, we have a press conference where we say, “We were going to do a march. The chief police asked Afzal Amin, members of the Muslim community, we’ve sat together and… we’re going to work closely together’.”
Prime Minister, David Cameron, has promised swift, decisive action into the allegations.
