Move comes weeks after new gov't measures intended to stop extremists from entering the country.
By JONNY PAUL, JPOST CORRESPONDENT, LONDONIbrahim Mousawi 248 88(photo credit: Courtesy)
The British Home Office is under fire for allowing Hizbullah spokesman Ibrahim Mousawi to again enter the country. The visit comes only weeks after the home secretary announced new measures to prevent extremists from entering the United Kingdom.
Mousawi spoke at a week-long conference on political Islam at London University's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) that ended on Friday. Last December he was also allowed to enter the UK to address a conference which was organized by a group with an anti-Israel agenda.
"The program has a wide range of speakers with diverse specialisms," a spokesperson for SOAS said. "Mousawi was invited to participate in the program as he is a leading expert on Hizbullah. He had no problems in entering the UK."
On Tuesday, Mousawi addressed the conference on "The cases of Hamas and Hizbullah" in which he spoke about the history, strategy and ideology of the terrorist organizations and on Hizbullah's current politics vis-Ã -vis the US-Iranian confrontation.
Mousawi was previously editor of Al-Manar, Hizbullah's television channel, and is currently editor of the weekly Hizbullah newspaper al-Intiqad.
In 2005, Al-Manar broadcast a program that portrayed Jews killing a Christian child to use its blood for matza. When French satellite television banned the channel for airing a 29-part Ramadan special which quoted extensively from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Mousawi said the ban resulted from "political pressure by the Jewish lobby."
In 2002 he allegedly told The New Yorker magazine that Jews are "a lesion on the forehead of history."
The Conservative Party condemned the government for allowing Mousawi's entrance, saying they are actively going out of the way to engage with extremists.
"This is alarming and betrays the fact that Labor does not have a clue about keeping undesirable people out of this country," Shadow Security Minister Pauline Neville-Jones, said. "It is outrageous that instead of seeking to engage with all moderate communities in Britain, the government is actively going out of its way to engage with extremists."
"It is extremely troubling that Mousawi was allowed into Britain and that he should then lecture on a university campus," said Mark Gardner, communications director at the Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that provides security, training and advice for the protection of British Jews and represents British Jewry to police, government and media on anti-Semitism and security issues. "The government's strong words on anti-extremism need to be backed up with equally strong actions, or else they will count for nothing," Gardner added.
"When the world is busy with fighting terrorism, I'm convinced that it annoys the citizens of the UK, and certainly the Israelis and Jews around the world, that a man such as Mousawi is allowed to enter the UK while the terrorist agenda of the organization which he represents is overlooked," Lior Ben-Dor, press spokesman at the Israeli Embassy in London, said.
Last month British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced new measures to prevent extremists from entering the UK. The tougher rules were designed to stop so-called preachers of hate from stirring up tension and prevent neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers and religious extremists from entering the country.
The Foreign Office denied reports that the incident has caused divisions in government and the Home Office told The Jerusalem Post that it does not comment on individual cases.
"The home secretary may decide to exclude or deport an individual who is not a British citizen if she considers that their presence in the UK is not conducive to the public good.
"The UK will not tolerate the presence of those who seek to justify any acts of terrorist violence or express views that could foster inter-community violence," a Home Office statement said.
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