Conservative MP Bob Stewart has pleaded not guilty to racial abuse.
Stewart allegedly told Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, the director of the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (Bird), to “go back to Bahrain”.
Mr Alwadaei was involved in a confrontation with Mr Stewart outside a reception hosted by the Bahraini embassy at Lancaster House on December 14, 2022.
The Beckenham MP told the human rights activist to “go back to Bahrain” and to “get stuffed”.
Mr Stewart said he regretted the comments but insisted he was “not being racist in any way”.
Mr Alwadaei is heard in video footage of the argument asking Mr Stewart about a trip paid for by the Bahraini government in the run-up to its elections. He said: “How much did you sell yourself to the Bahraini regime?”
Mr Stewart replied saying “Bahrain’s a great place. End of.”
He added: “Go away, I hate you. You make a lot of fuss. Go back to Bahrain.”
On Wednesday, Mr Stewart appeared at Westminster magistrates’ court to plead not guilty to the charge.
The MP also denied an alternative count of using threatening or abusive words or behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress. A one-day trial has been fixed for November 3 at the same court.
The second charge is to allow the court discretion on the racial element of the allegation and does not relate to a separate incident, the Met said.
Mr Stewart will appear at trial on November 3.
Who is MP Bob Stewart?
Colonel Robert Alexander Stewart was born on July 7, 1949 and has been a member of Parliament for Beckenham since 2010. He was an army officer and a United Nations commander in Bosnia. This earned him the nickname “Bosnia Bob”.
Mr Stewart was privately educated at Chigwell School, later attending the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.
He worked his way up the regimental ranks, first becoming second lieutenant, then lieutenant, before being promoted to captain.
Mr Stewart served extensively in Northern Ireland from 1977. He was the army’s incident commander at the time of the Droppin Well bombing in Ballykelly, which killed 17 people in 1982, and received a personal commendation for his actions on the day.
Mr Stewart later openly discussed his use and authorisation of the now-forbidden deep-interrogation techniques during his time in North Ireland.
He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and promoted to colonel before retiring from the army in 1996.
Political career
As Mr Stewart was a former commander of the 1st Battalion of the Cheshire Regiment, he considered for the safe Conservative East Cheshire seats of Macclesfield and Congleton in 2009 but did not get on to the shortlists. In the summer of 2009, he was shortlisted for Beckenham, one of the safest Tory seats in the country. On December 6 of that year, he was selected as a Tory candidate there after winning an overall majority on the second ballot and won the seat in the 2010 general election.
He sits on the Northern Ireland affairs committee and has previously sat on the arms control and defence committees in the House of Commons.
Voting record
Mr Stewart has voted against financial incentives for low carbon emission electricity generation methods; equal gay rights; greater regulation of gambling; investigations into the Iraq war; and on restrictions on fees charged to tenants by letting agents.
He has voted for higher taxes on plane tickets; greater restrictions on campaigning by third parties, such as charities, during elections; selling England’s state-owned forests; for fewer MPs in the House of Commons; and for greater regulation of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to extract shale gas.
