Muslim Found Guilty Of Threatening To Behead A UKIP Candidate

A man has been found guilty of threatening to behead a UKIP candidate in the lead up to May’s general election.

Aftab Ahmed, 45, decided to call the Ukip candidate for Newcastle East after receiving a UKIP leaflet through his letterbox during the election campaign.

“He said ‘your government has been supporting the bombing of our Muslim brothers in the Middle East'”, David Robinson-Young, a 62-year-old barrister from Newcastle, told magistrates today.

“At first he was very conversational and said that six months ago he would have voted Ukip,” Mr Robsinson-Young told the court, ITV report.

Continuing: “When I asked him why he would no longer vote for us he said that he was fed up with my government portraying Muslim people in a poor light.”

The call then descended into a “torrid of abuse”, Mr Robsinson-Young claims.

Despite Ukip standing firmly against the war in Iraq and the disastrous recent intervention in Libya, the constituent, who identified himself as a Muslim, became “irate” as he explained that he was angry with the government for their foreign policy.

Mr Robinson-Young asserted that he would hang up the phone, the court heard, at which point Ahmed said: “If you don’t f*ck off then you will be the next one to get beheaded.”

The Ukip candidate said threat “left him cold” and he was unable to leave the house for the rest of the day, adding: “We were all familiar with what happened with the beheadings at home and abroad so I was terrified.”

Ahmed, of Winchcombe Place, Heaton, was arrested three days later after police traced the number back to his parents’ house.

He denied making threats to behead Mr Robinson-Young, claiming he did not hold any extremist views. He will be sentenced at Newcastle Magistrates Court later this week.

When charges were brought in June, Mr Robsinson-Young explained to the Daily Mail: “The response I have been getting on the doorsteps I have visited has been overwhelmingly supportive.

“I am a discrimination lawyer, I have strong links to various ethnic communities and I have represented victims of discrimination all over the country.”