Boris’s wrestler opponent fights dirty
SLAPPING an opponent around the face and then kicking him between the legs, this is the Labour candidate who is trying to oust Boris Johnson.
Ali Milani fights dirty – if images from his wrestling days are anything to go by. The 25-year- old is campaigning in Uxbridge, west London, to wrest away Mr Johnson’s majority and unseat the Prime Minister.
He is already embroiled in a storm of controversy over anti-Semitic comments that he once posted online.
The Labour candidate is no stranger to confrontation, as an extraordinary video of him taking part in a wrestling match in 2013 shows. As self-styled ‘Prince Ali’, Iran-born Mr Milani struts around the ring and squares up to his Greek opponent ‘Kosta Kebab’.
Before the match even begins, there is a clue for Mr Johnson that it might not be a clean fight ahead – as Mr Milani snubs an offer of a gentlemanly handshake from his foe and instead slaps him around the face. The bizarre video, filmed at a community hall in Chingford, east London, shows Mr Milani getting a drubbing in return.
At one point, the wrestling pair tumble from the ring and Mr Milani slams the other man’s head into a wall. Back in the ring, he props him on the ropes and kicks him hard between the legs. Keen wrestling fans have reason to suspect the match was rigged.
As the bout continues, Mr Milani theatrically yells ‘Shut it!’ at members of the crowd cheering for Kosta Kebab. Last night, Mr Milani and Momentum activists hosted an ‘Unseat Boris’ rally in the Uxbridge constituency. Dozens turned out to help launch their crusade to ‘make Boris Johnson the first British Prime Minister to lose their seat while in office’. They are targeting voters from ethnic minorities – who make up 30 per cent of the local population – and their Facebook page brands Mr Johnson ‘a nasty piece of work’ who once compared women wearing burqas to letterboxes.
Among Mr Milani’s archived posts, he suggested he would like to ‘go to war’ with Israel and used the hashtag ‘Jew’ to mock someone being tight with money. In a tweet in 2012, he apparently wrote: ‘I want to be the President of Israel. They have a selfdestruct button, right?’ In another, a year later, he seems to have written: ‘Israel has no right to exist.’
Talking to Iran’s Press TV four years ago, Mr Milani was asked about having an ‘armed struggle’ with Israel and pointedly did not rule it out. He also claimed the September 11 terrorist attacks on America were ‘false flag’ operations, suggesting the US government was behind them.
Mr Milani has insisted he is sorry about his previous remarks.
Last night, referring to his 9/11 tweets, he said: ‘As I have said many times over the years, as a teenager we often fell into silly theories like this. I was 17 when I tweeted this. I myself have been on the receiving end of racist 9/11 conspiracies, with racists superimposing my face on pictures of the 9/11 planes that hit the twin towers.’