Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Drugs for sex gang is jailed
Fury after MP repeated sick gag
FOUR illegal immigrants who plied girls as young as 13 with drugs in return for sex have been jailed.
The gang, from Iraq and Iran, were found guilty of sexual exploitation and drugs charges at Newcastle crown court for offences between 2007 and 2014.
Palla Pour, 25, got 12 and a half years, Ribas Asad, 29, nine and a half years, Soran Azizi, 28, six years, and Saman Obaid, 29, four years nine months. They face deportation after jail. LABOUR’S Harriet Harman provoked fury and disbelief by repeating a shameful “joke“about the Holocaust on live TV.
And she clashed with BBC host Andrew Neil for suggesting he would find it “perfectly all right”.
The former acting party leader claimed she was using the gag to illustrate complaints she had made in the past about offensive material.
Appearing on This Week alongside Tory Michael Portillo, she said: “I’ve long been accused of being a humourless feminist. I’ll give two examples I have protested about.
“This was a Guy’s Hospital rag magazine back in the day and people like Andrew say these things are perfectly all right. One was how do you get 100 Jews into a Mini? One in the driving seat, 99 in the ashtray. That is not funny.”
Neil interrupted, saying: “We won’t bother with a minute’s silence that you would dare to think what I would think of that. Because you have no knowledge of that at all.” He later tweeted he was “appalled”.
Simon Jenkinson of the Jewish Leadership Council called for Ms Harman to apologise for her “staggering error of judgment”.
But Labour’s Chi Onwurah supported her fellow MP, saying: “I remember those kind of jokes. Very isolating for minority/female students like me. Good on you, Harriet.”
Ms Harman, 67, later tweeted that it was “no laughing matter” and that such jokes “perpetuate discrimination & hatred”.