by Patrick Sawer, Telegraph
Eric Firkins says Shahid Butt is not fit to stand for Birmingham council seat after jail time for conspiring to bomb a British consulate
With a Kalashnikov pointed at his chest, Eric Firkins thought his time was up, only for the gunman to suddenly lower the weapon and flee.
Mr Firkins will never know how he came to survive being kidnapped by an Islamist terror gang.
Others were not so lucky. Four of Mr Firkins’s fellow tourists were murdered by the gang as Yemen’s armed forces mounted a rescue operation to free them.
Now, years after his ordeal, the former chemistry teacher has been left deeply troubled to discover that one of the men responsible for his kidnapping is campaigning to be elected as a local councillor in Britain.
Shahid Butt, who was jailed for five years in 1999 for conspiring to bomb the British consulate and other targets in Yemen, is standing as an independent in Birmingham’s Sparkhill ward next month.
It was Butt’s freedom that the gang who kidnapped Mr Firkins and 15 others were demanding.