Shah Yousuf Shah Yousuf, Shah Yousuf London Bangla, Shah Yousuf v Helal Abbas
After Lutfur Rahman was selected to be Labour’s candidate for Tower Hamlets Mayor in the October 2010 elections, two newspapers (the Telegraph and the Evening Standard) and two journalists (Andrew Gilligan and Ted Jeory) began carrying hostile articles about him and those whom they saw as his supporters. These were sometimes picked up in other parts of the media, but no other journal and no other reporters were as consistent in carrying hostile material.
Here are some links to articles which referred to myself. They show how these elements of the media carried material hostile to me after the CPS charged me – and sometimes even before. These pieces are not straight, honest news reporting: they are clearly putting an opinion across. After the CPS dropped their case against me, for example, there was no reporting from these journalists or in these papers that this had been the outcome.
The following journalists have a combined readership which must be much larger than that of London Bangla. They have referred in some of their articles or posts to a leaflet which was circulated before the 2010 mayoral election and which contained allegations against the Labour candidate. The leaflet was printed in London Bangla as a paid advertisement (and the Labour candidate now accepts that I was not the author of the advertisement) – but much of the comment here acts as if London Bangla had produced the leaflet. The advert appearing in London Bangla prompted the Labour candidate to take libel action against myself as editor of London Bangla The Labour candidate took no action against other newspapers reporting that action and spreading news of the allegations much further afield.
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Andrew Gilligan
These articles were posted on his personal blog, on which he describes himself as a “senior reporter for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph”. Mr Gilligan did not contact me for comment before or after publication.
Andrew Gilligan was a BBC journalist. He did a report on the Radio 4 Today programme claiming that the Government’s dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. He revealed that one of his sources was government scientist David Kelly. This led to Kelly being questioned by the parliamentary foreign affairs select committee. Kelly was found dead two days later, with the official verdict being that he had committed suicide. Gilligan left the BBC after he was criticised in the Hutton report, admitting that his story had included some mistakes. Mr Gilligan gave evidence to the election court on behalf of the petitioners who brought a case against Mayor Lutfur Rahman.
The background to Mr Gilligan’s departure from the BBC can be seen on:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3446391.stm
I am not the only one to feel that Mr Gilligan has an agenda. A comment from Mehdi Hassan on Mr Gilligan’s writings on Lutfur Rahman can be read here:
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/mehdi-hasan/2010/11/andrew-gilligan-islamism-press
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Evening Standard
Here is one example of the Evening Standard throwing allegations against London Bangla into an article which is generally backing the official Labour candidate Cllr Helal Abbas and slating Cllr Lutfur Rahman. This paragraph is particularly worth noting:
As for the “rally against domestic violence” called for in the paper to “stop wife-beating mayoral candidate Helal Abbas” by a group named as Domestic Violence Forum East, no one turned up and the contact telephone number was a dud, exposing the story, and London Bangla, for the sham that it is.
The Standard implies this was a story in the newspaper rather than an advert. It has not reported that when the libel case was eventually settled, Mr Helal Abbas accepted that I was not the author of the advert.
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/a-right-mayoral-mess-in-tower-hamlets-6527581.html
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Ted Jeory was the editor of local newspaper the East London Advertiser for some years, but after he moved on to a job with the Daily Express he continued to write a blog about local politics, Trial By Jeory, on which a small number of local readers comment, most using pseudonyms. Most of his comments have been hostile to Lutfur Rahman. Mr Jeory has commented on myself and/or London Bangla in terms similar to those used by Andrew Gilligan.
Here are a number of posts from Mr Jeory on his blog which cover the fact that I was charged with offences under election law by the CPS. There was no coverage of the fact that the CPS had to drop the charges just before the trial, when they spotted that something in their own evidence undermined their own case.
http://trialbyjeory.com/2010/10/19/wife-beating-smears-and-non-protests-a-new-low/
http://trialbyjeory.wordpress.com/2010/10/16/smears-and-victims-of-poison/
http://trialbyjeory.com/2011/11/14/london-bangla-owner-in-court-over-alleged-abbas-smear/
NOTE:
Some of the press coverage about the criminal charges against me point out that no one came to the rally advertised by the leaflet which contained the allegations and that the telephone number given in the leaflet was not answered. The Facebook page mentioned did exist, though and can still be viewed here: