Tory MP Bob Stewart admits making 'mistake' after telling human rights campaigner to 'go back to Bahrain'
20 December 2022, 10:08 | Updated: 20 December 2022, 10:33
Tory MP Bob Stewart has admitted making "a mistake" after he was caught on video telling a campaigner to "go back to Bahrain".
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In video footage, Sayed Alwadaei, human rights campaigner and director of the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (Bird), takes the Tory MP to ask outside the Foreign Office's Lancaster House on Wednesday, after an event hosted by the Bahraini embassy.
Mr Alwadaei asks, "How much did you sell yourself to the Bahraini regime?", in reference to a trip paid for by the country's government ahead of its elections.
Mr Stewart responds: "Get stuffed. Bahrain's a great place. End of."
Mr Alwadaei adds: "You were paid by them recently."
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Mr Stewart then says: "Go away, I hate you. You make a lot of fuss. Go back to Bahrain."
When asked "how much did you sell yourself to the Bahraini regime" again by Mr Alwadaei, the MP says: "I didn't, now you shut up you stupid man."
When Mr Alwadaei asks again, "how much", Mr Stewart replies: "You're taking money off my country, go away!"
Mr Stewart told Sky News he is "not racist".
Admitting the that it was him in footage, the Beckenham MP told the outlet: "I was goaded into a response, a mistake on my part. I'm not [taking money], never have been."
He added: "It's a lovely country, I'm chair of the All Party Country Group. I've watched it become an extremely nice place to live."
The veteran parliamentarian stressed he had "never taken a personal penny" from the Bahrain authorities for his role as APPG chair.
Mr Stewart continued: "I'm not racist, it really hurts, I lived in the Middle East."
'I don't believe I would have been told to 'go back' if it weren't for the colour of my skin'
Mr Stewart is an ex British Army officer who was stationed the Middle Eastern country in 1969.
Mr Stewart registered flights, accommodation and meals worth £5,349 during a four-day trip to Bahrain in November 2021, paid for by the country's ministry of foreign affairs, parliamentary records show.
A separate entry covered by the its government shows another trip to attend an air show and meet the Bahraini foreign minister being worth £1,245.56.
In a complaint to Conservative party chairman Nadhim Zahawi, Mr Alwadaei said Mr Stewart's comments violated the party's code of conduct on 'minimum standards of behaviour'.
The activist also seeking legal advice to make a complaint before the police.
He said in a statement: "I don't believe I would have been told to 'go back' to the country that violently tortured me if it weren't for the colour of my skin."
"No one should be subjected to racial abuse, particularly for holding an MP to account for accepting lavish gifts from one of the world's most repressive regimes.
"Stewart is acting as a mouthpiece by publicly denying its notorious and extensively documented human rights abuses, abuses which have been condemned by the United Nations."
Mr Alwadaei claims he was imprisoned and tortured for participating in a pro-democracy uprising in 2011, and that after he was sentenced he sought political asylum in the United Kingdom in 2012.
The 36-year-old says his citizenship to the West Asian nation was revoked following a protest against King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa's attendance at the 2013 Royal Windsor horse show.
A Conservative party spokesperson said: "We have an established code of conduct and formal processes where complaints can be made in confidence. This process is rightly confidential."
