Apr 15, 2012 18 Comments ›› Pat Dollard
Excerpted from The Daily Mail: A Labour peer was suspended last night after allegedly claiming he would put up a £10million bounty for the capture of Barack Obama.
Lord Ahmed of Rotherham is reported to have made the gesture after the U.S. announced a $10million bounty for Hafiz Muhammed Saeed, whom it blames for orchestrating the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.
He is said to have described the bounty on Mr Saeed, who founded banned militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), as an ‘insult to all Muslims’.
Pakistani-born Lord Ahmed, Britain’s first Muslim peer, reportedly said Mr Obama had ‘challenged the dignity of the Muslim Ummah (community)’ and said his reward also applied to Mr Obama’s predecessor as U.S. president, George W Bush.
Pakistan’s Express Tribune newspaper said Lord Ahmed had made the remarks at a reception in Haripur on Friday.
A Labour spokesman said: ‘We have suspended Lord Ahmed pending investigation. If these comments are accurate we utterly condemn these remarks which are totally unacceptable.
Israel National News: A controversial British parliamentarian has announced a bounty for the capture of U.S. President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush, the Al-Arabiya network reported Sunday, citing a report in Pakistan’s Express Tribune.
The parliamentarian is Lord Nazir Ahmed, who became the first Muslim life peer in 1998. Ahmed, who is of Kashmiri origin, reportedly made the comments in Haripur on Friday, to express his solidarity with chief of Laskhar e Tayyiba, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, upon whom the United States placed a $10 million bounty last month.
The Express Tribune quoted Ahmed as having said the bounty on Saeed is “an insult to all Muslims and by doing so President Obama has challenged the dignity of the Muslim Ummah.”
He added, “If the U.S. can announce a reward of $10 million for the captor of Hafiz Saeed, I can announce a bounty of 10 million pounds on President Obama and his predecessor George Bush.”
Ahmed added that he was prepared to do whatever was necessary to gather this sum, including selling his assets, the report said.
Al-Arabiya noted that Ahmed is no stranger to controversy in Britain. He hosted a book launch at the House of Lords in 2005 for Israel Shamir, a Swedish writer who is known for his anti-Israeli and Jewish views.
He was also a vocal opponent of the British government’s decision to honor writer Salman Rushdie with a knighthood in 2007, according to the report.
