Corbyn’s four-fingered salute at mosque was a pro-democracy gesture, say Labour chiefs

JEREMY CORBYN was showing support for pro-democracy campaigners killed by Egyptian security forces when he used a fourfingered salute during a visit to a mosque, Labour has said.

The Daily Telegraph published a picture of the Labour leader,

inset, making the Rabbi’ah sign, which it said was linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, during a visit to the Finsbury Park mosque his north London constituency in 2016.

But Labour said the gesture was actually widely known as a symbol of solidarity for the victims of the 2013 Rabba massacre, when security forces killed hundreds of protesters demonstrating against the overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi in a military coup.

“Jeremy was standing up for democracy, justice and the right to protest in Egypt after the military had staged a coup against an elected president,” a spokesman said.

“The four-fingered gesture is a well-known symbol of solidarity with the victims of the 2013 Rabaa massacre in Cairo, in which over a 1,000 people were estimated to have been indiscriminately killed and many thousands of peaceful protesters injured by the Egyptian security forces.” Mr Morsi, who led the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, was elected president in 2012 following the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in a wave of popular protests, only to be deposed a year later by the military. Separately, the Labour Party leader on North Lincolnshire Council has defended a councillor caught up in an anti-semitism row.

Coun Dave Oldfield has been given a formal warning by the national party and told to attend mandatory training following a comment he made on social media – however, his opponents have now taken their complaint to the authority’s standards board.

It centres around a now-deleted reply to a Facebook post regarding anti-semitism in his party to which Councillor Oldfield wrote: “It must be an MI5 Tory Government plot to cause havoc in our party.”