Lutfur in trouble despite win

An award-winning British journalist, Andrew Gilligan, has blown the whistle on Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman for his controversial links and activities in his blog in UK's largest circulated newspaper 'The Telegraph'.

As a BBC journalist, Gilligan shot into limelight for exposing Tony Blair's Labour government's 'sexing up intelligence dossiers' to justify UK joining the war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Rahman has faced much adverse media exposure before including one on BBC's Panorama programme, but claims police investigations and an official inquiry ordered by Cabinet minister Eric Pickles have so far found no 'credible evidence' of wrong-doing against him.

He has blamed the BBC for 'racism' for the Panorama exposé on him.

Many local Bangladeshis in Tower Hamlets, however, resent Rahman's close links with radical elements, which they say, are needlessly bringing their community under a cloud.

They say Rahman is backed by several London-based Jamaat-e-Islami leaders who are protecting convicted war criminals like Chowdhury Mueen Uddin.

The former Al-Badr commander indicted by the war crimes tribunal for his 'crimes against humanity' during the 1971 Liberation War has dared the Bangladesh government to bring him back to the country to face trial.

"Rahman's politics is closely linked with fundamentalists and local Pakistanis, which is giving us (Bangladeshis) a bad name in the UK. As Bengalis who suffered so much in 1971 and before, we hate to be associated with these Pakistanis, " says a British Bangladeshi professional in East London.

He said Rahman enjoys the backing of the Mullahs who have created a den for radicals in the East London mosque on the White Chapel road.

But he was unwilling to be named for fear of possible retaliation.

Only last week, Rahman was re-elected as executive mayor of the East London borough.

Andrew Gilligan

Andrew Gilligan, the journalist of the year in 2008, has come out with a huge expose on Lutfur Rahman in his 'Telegraph' blog, detailing "Thirty Facts" one needs to know about this UK politician of Bangladesh origin.

1) In 2008 Rahman (then a Labour councillor) won the leadership of Tower Hamlets council with the close help of an Islamic extremist group, the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE), which which works to create a sharia state and an "Islamic social, economic and political order" in Britain. In secret filming, IFE activists described how they exercised “consolidated… influence and power” over the council.

2)Rahman channelled millions of pounds in council grants to IFE front organisations and appointed a senior IFE figure as assistant chief executive of the council, though he was wholly unqualified for this senior post. Both the assistant chief executive and Rahman were subsequently removed from their jobs.

3) An extremist preacher was invited to speak in the council chamber and extremist literature, including audio tapes by the al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, was stocked in Tower Hamlets libraries.

4) In 2010, after a campaign including large numbers of fake signatures led by the IFE, Tower Hamlets was changed from having a conventional council leader to a far more personally powerful, directly-elected mayor. In secret filming, senior IFE activists described how they would “get one of our brothers” into the new post.

5) Rahman personally signed up entire families as sham members of the Labour Party to win selection as the Labour mayoral candidate. He was selected, but was then removed by Labour’s National Executive Committee, and subsequently expelled from the party.

6)Rahman won election anyway as an independent, on a tiny turnout, after his (Muslim) Labour opponent was smeared as a wife-beater and enemy of Islam in thousands of newsletters produced with Rahman’s full knowledge. The new mayor was said by his campaign manager to have a "strategic relationship" with the IFE, with “most” of his campaigners being “either Respect or IFE activists.”

7) Even though Tower Hamlets is only 34 per cent Muslim, Rahman appointed a 100 per cent Bangladeshi and Muslim cabinet. He has never appointed any non-Muslim to any cabinet post and has no non-Muslim councillors.

8) Rahman has given control over the council’s finances to Alibor Choudhury, a former employee of an IFE front organisation with a long track record of encounters with the police. Rahman has himself taken personal control of all grants over £1000.

9) Under Rahman and Choudhury, council grants have been diverted away from secular bodies serving the whole community to IFE fronts and to other groups serving largely the Muslim community. Several of these groups, the council’s scrutiny committee found, are new and without any track record. Several appear to be based in people's private homes. Several involve individuals with close personal connections to Rahman.

10) Rahman has transferred valuable council properties to close personal associates at far less than their true market value, including a 10,000 square foot office building a stone’s throw from Canary Wharf which was sold for £875,000 to the man in charge of his election campaign website.

11) Key Rahman allies have been witnessed, and have not denied, engaging in a practice known as “vote-harvesting,” registering people for postal votes and then collecting their blank ballot papers.

12) Some of the supposed voters do not appear to exist. “Ghost” voters registered to empty properties or huge numbers of voters registered to small flats have been regular features of Tower Hamlets elections.

13) Rahman has presided over an atmosphere of menace and intimidation at council meetings. Phalanxes of Rahman supporters drafted in to the public galleries shout homophobic abuse at several key opponents of the mayor, who are gay. Rahman’s cabinet members, such as Alibor Choudhury, abuse their opponents as fascists.

14) Rahman has used council officers to hound and bully opposition councillors, spending tens of thousands of pounds of public money to make spurious, but time-consuming, legal attacks on them.

15) At council meetings, Rahman refuses to answer questions about any of these or most other issues, with officers saying that to do so would breach his human rights.

16) Rahman also refuses to engage with most other questioning. He has made almost no public appearances in this election campaign at any event where he would be required to answer questions.

17) Rahman largely ignores the non-Bengali media but pays tens of thousands of pounds of public money to UK-based Bengali-language TV stations - including £50,000 a year personally to one TV channel’s chief reporter. In return, they give him fawning coverage. The channels have been repeatedly censured by Ofcom, but it appears to make no difference.

18) Rahman has channelled further millions of taxpayers’ money into an extensive cult of personality. He has a weekly newspaper delivered to all households at public expense, containing often as many as a dozen pictures or mentions of himself.

19) Rahman has had hundreds of copies of his own picture displayed at public expense on billboards, lampposts, and even council dustcarts (to comply with election law, most have recently been removed)

20) Rahman has used public funds to send thousands of personal letters, again with his picture on them, to residents claiming credit for things which are not his doing, such as the Government-funded council housing refurbishment programme.

21) Rahman has been hostile or indifferent to the borough's non-Muslim heritage, threatening to close the local history library(reversed only after a storm of protest), selling off pubs and threatening them with closure, and attempting to dispose of a Henry Moore artwork whose form offended Islamic sensibilities. At the same time, he has created a new programme to channel hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money to (mainly Muslim) faith buildings.

22) Rahman’s cabinet member for education, Oliur Rahman, appeared on a public platform with a group campaigning for the “unacceptability of homosexuality.”

23) Rahman’s cabinet member for the environment, Shahed Ali, avoided £25,000 in tax by liquidating his restaurant business, then immediately reopening the restaurant under a new name. He boasts that he used the proceeds to buy a Porsche.

24) Rahman’s cabinet member for culture, Rania Khan, mocked gay people and published pictures of knives on her social networking site, saying: “I know it’s not ladylike, but I luv my weapons.”

25) Rahman’s key funder, Shiraj Haque, a restaurateur, has a criminal caution for selling counterfeit wine. He was sacked from his chairmanship of a council-sponsored festival after suspicions that it was being used as a front for illegal immigration, but was reappointed by Rahman. Despite being a millionaire who owns at least seven properties, Haque has been given subsidised social housing by the council.

26) Rahman has repeatedly given character references for convicted criminals, including a sex attacker.

27) Rahman charges taxpayers up to £60,000 a year for a Mercedes car and chauffeur, which he has used, among other purposes, to collect his dry cleaning. No other elected mayor, including London Mayor Boris Johnson, has a limousine. He claims he has now given it up, but this appears to be only for the election period.

28) Rahman has also spent large sums of public money on taxis for himself, including one purported fare of £71 to travel a distance of 400 metres and another £28 fare from a local McDonald’s to his office.

29)Rahman is accused by the Government of practicing “divisive community politics” and the “mismanagement of council staff and resources.”

30) Neither of the neighbouring boroughs, Hackney and Newham, will work with Rahman. The Labour mayor of Newham, Sir Robin Wales, describes Rahman as “very bad news” and as creating a form of apartheid in his area.