|
|
| By: Associated Press |
| Published: March 1, 2006 |
| |
A judge put Mayor Ken Livingstone's four-week suspension from office on hold Tuesday, giving him time to appeal the punishment a disciplinary panel imposed on him for comparing a Jewish reporter to a Nazi camp guard.
The embattled mayor defended his comment, saying it had been blown out of proportion, and accused Britain's main Jewish group of complaining about the remark because it did not like his public criticism of Israel.
Livingstone's suspension, ordered last week by the government-appointed Adjudication Panel for England, had been due to take effect Wednesday. The High Court granted the mayor's request to put it on hold while he appeals the sentence.
His lawyers will have 28 days to make their case. They filed initial appeals papers Monday.
Livingstone's lawyer Tony Child has said the mayor's team would dispute the panel's finding that his actions had brought disrepute on his office.
The lawyers also planned to argue that the panel's decision breached the mayor's right to a private life and to freedom of expression, both guaranteed under the European Convention on Human Rights, Child said.
Livingstone argues that it is antidemocratic for an unelected body to suspend a politician chosen by the voters. He won a second term in 2004.
The panel's ruling against him meant he would have to pay own costs in the case, estimated so far at more than 80,000 pounds (US$175,000). He said Tuesday he was willing to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on further appeals if necessary.
Livingstone said at a news conference that the furor over his remarks was based on the "unstated allegation, the implicit suggestion, that my comment was anti-Semitic."
He said that suggestion, which he vehemently denied, had been "used to give weight to charges that would otherwise be too trivial to merit the gigantic fuss that has been made about this brief private exchange."
Livingstone accused Britain's main Jewish group of filing the complaint that led to his suspension because of his criticism of Israel.
"If the issue hadn't been this, it would have been something else," the embattled mayor said at a news conference. "This was the general displeasure of the Board of Deputies (of British Jews) about my views on the Middle East."
He said allegations of anti-Semitism are often made against those who criticize Israel, and called such an attitude "McCarthyism updated for a new age."
He said the Board of Deputies, whose complaint to the disciplinary panel helped lead to his suspension, had long been unhappy with his criticism of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.
Jon Benjamin, the board's chief executive, said Livingstone's accusation that it filed the complaint because of an ulterior motive was "completely false."
He said the board had been one of many organizations to complain to the disciplinary panel about Livingstone's comments and his refusal afterwards to apologize for the offense they had caused.
"We never alleged anti-Semitism, we never called for any particular sanction, we simply said we felt this fell short of the standards of behavior expected," Benjamin said. "It's now just a smokescreen to say well, there's some vendetta and the Jews are out to get him."
Livingstone accused Associated Newspapers, owner of the Evening Standard, whose reporter Oliver Finegold the mayor made the remark to, of opposing those efforts and said it had a history of anti-Semitism and support for fascism before World War II.
Doug Wills, managing editor of the Evening Standard, said the group had no comment on those charges. It has denied similar allegations from Livingstone in the past and said the pro-Nazi editorial line one of its papers took in the 1930s is irrelevant today.
Livingstone was leaving a dinner for a gay politician when Finegold approached him, and he apparently believed the reporter intended to write an anti-gay story. |
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
Click on the blue headline to read a Talkback comment and respond to it. Click on the  icon to send a private email to the talkback writer. The icon appears only if the writer has decided to be contacted. If no popup window appears, please make sure your popup blocker allows israelinsider.com.
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
