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Conservative MP Bob Stewart has been found guilty of a racially aggravated public order offence after he told a campaigner to “go back to Bahrain”.
The Tory MP for Beckenham, south-east London, was found to have racially abused Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, a Bahraini activist living in exile in the UK, during an argument in December last year.
Chief magistrate Paul Goldspring found Stewart guilty of a racially aggravated public order offence, and fined him £600. The MP was also ordered to pay legal costs that brought the total to £1,435.
The incident occurred outside Lancaster House, a Foreign Office building in Belgravia, central London, where Stewart, 74, had been attending a reception hosted by the Bahraini embassy.
Alwadaei, who was protesting, shouted at the MP: “Bob Stewart, for how much did you sell yourself to the Bahraini regime?”
During a heated exchange, Stewart replied: “Go away, I hate you. You make a lot of fuss. Go back to Bahrain.”
In footage played during a trial at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Friday, Stewart also said: “Now shut up, you stupid man.”
Alwadaei, director of the non-profit group Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, has said he was tortured in the Gulf state after taking part in anti-government protests.
He said he felt “dehumanised” by Stewart’s comments and made to feel like “someone who is not welcomed in the UK”.
Stewart said earlier that he was “not a racist” and had spent his “whole life, in a way, defending minorities and people of different colours”.
The MP had told the court that he had “no idea” who Alwadaei was when the incident occurred and claimed he had been “goaded” and “embarrassed” by the activist.
He made no comment when he left the court building.
A former British Army officer who served in Northern Ireland and Bosnia, Stewart has been an MP since 2010 and sits on the House of Commons intelligence and security committee, as well as the Northern Ireland affairs committee.
He is also chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Bahrain. He received hospitality worth £1,245 from the Bahraini state last year, according to his entry in the register of MPs’ financial interests.
A visit to the Bahrain International Airshow and a meeting with a foreign minister were cited as the purposes of the trip.
The Conservative party did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
