British diplomat Rowan Laxton arrested for alleged Anti-Semitic outburst while watching the news of Israeli war crimes in Gaza

 

News Code: 347331

GMT: 2/9/2009 11:52:34 AM

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British diplomat arrested for ‘anti-Semitic’ outburst

London, Feb 9, IRNA – A high-ranking British diplomat has been arrested over an ‘anti-Semitic’ outburst he made while watching television reports of Israeli massacres in Gaza.

Rowan Laxton, who is head of the South Asia Group at the Foreign Office, is alleged to have shouted profanities against Israel and Jews, including that Israeli troops should be “wiped off the face of the earth.”
According to the Daily Mail Monday, the incident happened while 47-year old Laxton was using an exercise bike at a London gym. He was said to have been arrested after complaints were made to the police.
He has been charged and bailed until late next month for inciting religious hatred through threatening words and behaviour, which carries a maximum sentence of seven years imprisonment.
The Foreign Office said it was “too early to comment in detail” on a matter that is currently the subject of police enquiries. The diplomat was said to be working normally at his London office.
“We take extremely seriously any allegation of inappropriate conduct on the part of our staff and continue to follow developments closely,” a Foreign Office spokesman was quoted saying.
But when contacted by the Daily Mail, Laxton was said to have denied his comments were anti-Jewish while refusing to answer when asked if they were anti-Israeli.
The career diplomat previously ran the British High Commission in Pakistan for three years before moving as deputy ambassador to Afghanistan in 2001 for two years. He was said to have married a Muslim woman in 2000.
The case comes ahead of the Foreign Office hosting a two-day international conference of parliamentarians from 35 countries next month to combat what is said to have been identified as the “escalating global threat of anti-Semitism.”
Publicity about the event, co-organised by the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Anti-Semitism, is being boosted by the attendance of several British cabinet ministers and members of the US Congress.
On Saturday, a British Jewish professor suggested to his co-religionists that the best way to prevent the rise of so-called anti-Semitism was to stop sanctioning Israel’s imprisonment and massacre of Palestinian civilians.
“The simplest, most effective and most moral method to combat anti-Semitism is for British Jews, many of whom are unhappy about shameful Israeli policies, to disassociate themselves publicly from those policies,” said David Mond from Warwick University.
“It will help put paid to the truly dangerous falsehood that what Israel is doing is somehow inherent to Judaism,” the professor of mathematics said in a letter to the Guardian.
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End News / IRNA / News Code 347331