Convicted Islamist terrorist running for office in UK
A convicted Islamist terrorist is running for local office in the British city of Birmingham. Shahid Butt has urged voters to overlook his past “mistakes,” which include conspiring to bomb the British consulate in Yemen.
In an interview with Birmingham Live this week, Butt described himself as the “ideal candidate” to “unite” his district of Sparkhill in city council elections this May. Two-thirds of Sparkhill’s residents are of Pakistani origin, while a third of Birmingham’s 1.1 million population is Muslim.
Butt was jailed for five years in Yemen in 1999, after being found guilty of planning attacks with a gang of Jihadists on the British consulate in Aden, an Anglican church, and a Swiss-owned hotel.
He maintains that he did nothing wrong, and that his confession was extracted under torture. “It was all just made up,” he told the Birmingham Mail. “Nobody actually died, nothing happened at all.”
He has admitted to “mistakes” in his past, however. Butt was a member of a Pakistani street gang in his youth, which fought with white skinhead gangs in 1980s Birmingham. He also admits to traveling to fight in Afghanistan and Bosnia in the 1990s alongside the son of convicted terrorist Abu Hamza.
Butt, who describes himself as an “Islamist,” is a member of the Independent Candidates Alliance (ICA), a group of Muslim candidates set up by lawyer and accused money launderer Akhmed Yakoob. The ICA is running 20 candidates across Birmingham in the upcoming elections.
“I am not a pacifist,” Butt told Birmingham Live. “If someone attacks me...I am not just going to turn the other cheek, I am going to defend myself. I will be pre-emptive, as the law advises me, if I feel like my life is threatened, or my family, I will do a pre-emptive strike.”
He has advised his fellow Muslims to follow his approach. “Muslims are not pacifists,” he told protesters before local team Aston Villa’s match against Maccabi Tel Aviv last November. “If somebody comes into your face, you knock his teeth out. That’s my message to the youth.”
