Top aide to Labour’s Khan quits after sick tweets and gun boasts
AN AIDE to Labour’s candidate for London mayor quit yesterday as it emerged he had posted photos of himself online posing with a gun.
Sadiq Khan had already been under mounting pressure to sack Shueb Salar following revelations that the speechwriter had made a series of offensive comments online.
They included a claim Fusilier Lee Rigby’s murder may have been faked, abusive comments about women, homophobic jibes and insults to Bengalis.
The 24-year-old, who previously worked for a solicitor’s firm specialising in human rights, had toned down his comments after starting his role with former minister Mr Khan in November 2014. But he made references to being a ‘secret hitman’ in posts last summer.
The photos that emerged yesterday showed him brandishing air guns that look like shotguns and assault rifles.
In one, he grasps a gun onehanded, while in another he looked down the telescopic sight of the weapon.
On photo- sharing site Instagram, he described spending a weekend ‘shooting stuff with real guns, knives, crossbows and bows and arrows’.
He said he could ‘take care of someone’ and ‘make it look like an accident’.
Video footage showed him aiming at a target in a firing range.
Commons Leader Chris Grayling said: ‘The real issue here is about Sadiq Khan’s lack of judgment. If he really is surrounding himself with someone so unfit to be playing a role in public life then you have to ask whether he himself is fit to be mayor of London. Trivialising violence can never be justified.’ Tooting MP Mr Khan was accused of failing to act decisively by only suspending his aide when the earlier comments – which were publicly available on Twitter and should have been picked up during basic vetting – came to light.
Employment minister Priti Patel said that it suggested ‘the offensiveness of these views is open to interpretation’.
Salar referred to gay people as ‘faggots’ and said two homosexuals who were harassed for kissing on the London Underground may have ‘ deserved it’. Women were referred to as‘ hoes’ [whores] and ‘bitches’, and he suggested that the best way to ‘treat a lady’ was to ‘ buy her a nice iron and extend the kitchen for her’.
There were also jokes about rape and murder.
A post the day after the murder of Fusilier Rigby said: ‘I had the feeling the Woolwich killing was probably fake.’
He linked to YouTube footage of that showed killers Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale at the murder scene, with commentaries questioning whether it had been a hoax.
Another message said: ‘The guy sitting next to me at the barbers smells fully Bengali.’
Even after coming to work in Mr Khan’s Westminster office he was marking repellent comments made online by others as ‘favourites’.
A spokesman for Mr Khan said: ‘Sadiq acted immediately to suspend Shueb Salar as soon as he was made aware of these serious issues over the weekend.
‘Shueb Salar has now resigned from his role as a junior member of Sadiq’s parliamentary staff.’
Salar, who graduated in law from Bedfordshire University, described his duties for Mr Khan in an online profile as ‘assisting in the drafting of speeches, reports, press releases, briefings, parliamentary questions, letters and email correspondence’.
He refused to comment when approached at the £400,000 home owned by his family in Mitcham, South London.