The Labour party today suspended one of its peers over claims he blamed a Jewish conspiracy for being jailed for dangerous driving.
Lord Ahmed was imprisoned for three months for sending texts minutes before his car was involved in a fatal crash on the M1.
But Britain’s first male Muslim peer has blamed his prison sentence on pressure placed on the courts by Jews ‘who own newspapers and TV channels’, The Times reported.
The 55-year-old allegedly told an Urdu-language broadcast in Pakistan that the judge who jailed him for 12 weeks was appointed to the High Court after helping a ‘Jewish colleague’ of Tony Blair during an important case.
As the controversy emerged, the Labour party moved to suspend him from the party and condemned ‘any sort of anti-Semitism’. Labour leader Ed Miliband is Jewish.
In 2009 Lord Ahmed of Rotherham admitted in court sending and receiving five messages at 60mph on the M1.
The last was sent two minutes before the former magistrate's Jaguar speeded into Slovakian father-of-two Martyn Gombar, 28, who died.
Sentencing Ahmed, 51, at Sheffield Crown Court, Mr Justice Wilkie accepted his texting had not caused the crash.
But he said the 'prolonged, deliberate and highly dangerous driving' of the peer meant only jail time could be justified.
According to the Times, Lord Ahmed used an interview to claim it should have been sentenced by a magistrate.
‘My case became more critical because I went to Gaza to support Palestinians,’ he said.
‘My Jewish friends who own newspapers and TV channels opposed this.’
He claimed that Jewish-owned media groups put pressure on the courts to charge him with a more serious offence.
He also alleged Mr Justice Wilkie rose to prominence during Tony Blair's premiership in ‘an important case involving a Jewish colleague of ours’.
The interview, given during a visit to Pakistan, is thought to have been aired in April last year.
Today a Labour spokesman said: ‘The Labour Party deplores and does not tolerate any sort of anti-Semitism. Following reports in The Times today we are suspending Lord Ahmed pending an investigation.’
In 2009 Lord Ahmed was jailed for 12 weeks for dangerous driving after sending and receiving text messages minutes before his car crashed into a stationary vehicle on the M1 near Sheffield on Christmas Day 2007.
He was freed by the Court of Appeal after serving only 16 days of his prison sentence and later supported an AA/Populus poll into mobile phone use among motorists, saying he had 'learnt the hard way' about the problem.
He joined the Labour Party in his teens and was made a life peer in 1998.
Lord Ahmed was suspended from the Labour Party for three months last year over reports that he offered a 10 million-dollar 'bounty' for the capture of US President Barack Obama and his White House predecessor, George Bush.
The peer denied having made the comments, published in a Pakistani newspaper, and was reinstated after an investigation by Labour Lords Chief Whip Lord Bassam after it was found he had been misquoted.
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