Yousaf set up Holyrood meeting with ex-Hamas chief

HUMZA Yousaf arranged a meeting with a former commander of an Islamic terrorist group in the Scottish parliament, he admitted yesterday.

The frontrunner to replace Nicola Sturgeon confirmed he arranged a 2008 meeting with Mohammad Sawalha when he was 22.

Mr Sawalha had been named by the BBC’s Panorama programme two years earlier as having masterminded much of Hamas’s political and military strategy.

But Mr Yousaf dodged questions about whether he had met him since 2008, or other Hamas leaders. He claimed he was only being asked because he is a Muslim.

Ex-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who faced questions about his own links to Hamas leaders, also faced criticism for meeting Mr Sawalha in the Lords in 2005.

Mr Yousaf insisted he was not aware of Mr Sawalha’s Hamas links at the time he arranged the Holyrood meeting as an aide for then MSP Bashir Ahmad. Mr Sawalha attended as an Islam Expo representative.

Scottish Tory chairman Craig Hoy said: ‘It was a careless mistake by Humza Yousaf not to check the background of this individual before inviting him to a meeting at the Scottish parliament.’

Details of the meeting emerged yesterday in the Jewish Chronicle. Asked about it by the Mail, Mr Yousaf said: ‘It gets quite tiring whenever a Muslim goes for political office that somehow one of the first accusations that come is they are somehow sympathetic to extremism.’

Pressed on whether he was aware of Mr Sawalha’s links to Hamas, Mr Yousaf said: ‘No, of course I wasn’t. I was arranging a meeting as a parliamentary aide.’

Asked if he had met Mr Sawalha or anyone else with links to Hamas since then, he said: ‘It is incredible you are asking me whether or not I have met people from Hamas.

‘Just think about that. Would you ask anybody else of any other faith?’