by Allison Pearson and Gordon Rayner, Telegraph
Bradford panel chairman accused of ‘inflammatory’ comments after speaking out over Islamist’s attack on synagogue
The chairman of a policing scrutiny panel was sacked after she complained that officers were avoiding the “elephant in the room” of Islamist extremism in a meeting about an anti-Semitic terrorist attack.
After last October’s attack on a synagogue in Manchester, the woman accused West Yorkshire Police of trying to appease Muslims rather than focusing on the Jewish community.
She was told she was being removed as chairman of the Bradford Hate Crime Scrutiny Panel because of her “divisive and inflammatory” comments, which had prompted complaints from Muslim police officers taking part in the meeting.
It followed another incident in which she was accused of “hate speech” by members of the police force for defending the public’s right to criticise the Prophet Mohammed.
The woman, a retired academic in her 60s, told The Telegraph that the letter informing her of her removal from the security panel “sounded like a threat” because the senior officer who wrote it implied that complainants had been demanding her personal details and that consideration had been given to whether she had committed a hate crime.
She suggested the letter had been written “for the Muslim men who complained to get him to shut me up – and he did as they asked”.