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Police probe claim Ken broke law with Hitler-Zionism remark
Officers interview a man alleging incitement to racial hatred against Jews by the ex-mayor of London
Officers from the Metropolitan Police have interviewed a man who complained that former London Mayor Ken Livingstone broke the law by making his comments about Hitler and Zionism.
Andrew Lavery, who quit the Labour Party last year, made an official complaint to police on Wednesday, alleging incitement to racial hatred against Jews, and was interviewed on Friday.
Lavery made his complaint the day after Labour’s National Constitutional Committee found Livingstone guilty of bringing the party into disrepute, issuing a sanction of two years’ suspension. Jewish leaders said he should have been expelled.
“I find his alt-truth repugnant and extremely denigrating,” said Lavery, a nurse currently unable to work due to ill health. “It is an insult to friends and former patients, and deeply offensive to me.”
He added: “His position is untenable and one of simply inciting racial hatred. He clearly has a pathological hatred of Jews and the Jewish state of Israel. Why else would proceed when repeatedly told it causes extreme distress?”
During radio interviews last year Livingstone said Hitler supported Zionism before “he went mad and killed six million Jews”. He has stood by his claims as being historically accurate, and several Jewish historians have supported him in this.
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