West Midlands Police have told victim investigations and info from Twitter make former MP its main suspect behind account harassing former staffer. Keir Starmer repeatedly ignored whistleblower’s protected disclosures about abuse of women
West Midlands Police officers have told Elaina Cohen that their investigation into her complaint of religiously aggravated malicious communications has led them to consider former Birmingham Perry Barr MP Khalid Mahmood to be their main suspect as the operator of an account that trolled and harassed Cohen over an extended period. The account frequently attacked Cohen while she was (and continues to be) in litigation with Mahmood, who wrongfully dismissed her after she blew the whistle on alleged ‘sadistic’ and ‘criminal’ abuse of vulnerable Muslim women by Mahmood’s then-staffer and alleged girlfriend.
Mahmood did not contest the sworn evidence given by a victim during the employment tribunal case about the abuse she and others had suffered.
Cohen says that she long thought that the alleged abuser was behind the troll account was Mahmood’s alleged lover, but it appears that information from Twitter and the account’s access to information that was only available to a limited number of people have pushed Mahmood to the top of potential culprits. Barbara Dring, a Birmingham City Councillor who was in Cohen’s car when she received the update call from the police force confirmed to Skwawkbox that Mahmood had been mentioned as the main suspect.
Skwawkbox also understands that West Midlands Police’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has re-opened its ‘Operation Aureus’ investigation into the abuse on which Cohen blew the whistle and that video recordings of the victims giving testimony – including one who alleges she was raped – have been found by CID after long being ‘lost’ by the force. Officers have expressed surprise that the allegations were not pursued in the original investigation given their seriousness. Ms Cohen has previously accused the force of refusing to act on her allegations.
Mr Mahmood was contacted directly last Thursday for comment about the police’s investigation, but had not responded by the time of writing five days later. The Labour party was also asked for comment at the same time but did not respond. Mahmood has not yet been charged or convicted with any offence in connection to the matter.
Shortly after Skwawkbox’s enquiries the malicious account, which had been active since 2022, was deleted from Twitter/X:
Emails obtained by Skwawkbox in 2021 proved that Ms Cohen had repeatedly made both Keir Starmer and Labour general secretary David Evans aware of her protected disclosures about the abuse, which included sexual abuse, blackmail, orders to shoplift and to take penalty points they didn’t incur. Mahmood himself also admitted during the tribunal case that he had told Starmer about the allegations.
Neither Starmer nor Evans took any action and Mahmood remained on Starmer’s front bench until he chose later to step down over political differences. Despite this cover-up, Starmer has continued to claim to be a champion of domestic violence victims and has claimed he will halve violence against women. In March last year, Cohen was blocked from standing for Labour because she had blown the whistle on abuse of women. She subsequently quit the party in disgust at Labour’s protection of abusers and racists.
Ms Cohen told Skwawkbox today that:
I should have been shocked by what the police said but I’m just saddened. Keir Starmer is out there claiming he’ll protect women and prevent abuse, but he took no action when Khalid was on his front bench. I hope new Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood [no relation] puts something in place to protect whistleblowers, because my experience has been awful and I’ve been involved in litigation against Khalid for wrongful dismissal after being sacked for making protected disclosures to protect vulnerable women.
For all Mr Starmer’s proclamations about protecting women, Khalid Mahmood remains a Labour member and is only out of Parliament because Perry Barr voters rejected him. How long will Labour let him remain a member? This is another twist in a sorry tale that puts women at risk.
Despite the seriousness of such a cover-up by the then-Leader of the Opposition – and Mahmood’s acceptance of the victim’s sworn evidence without dispute – the so-called ‘mainstream’ press has resolutely ignored the issue. It remains to be seen whether this will continue now Starmer is in Number 10.
The cover-up of the Perry Barr abuse is far from the only problematic issue in Keir Starmer’s appalling track record regarding the protection of women. Starmer sheltered at least two alleged sex pests in his Shadow Cabinet – and took no action against disgraced MP Chris Matheson after he was placed under investigation and ultimately found guilty by Parliament of sexual harassment. Matheson instead resigned after the finding. Likewise, Starmer took no action when a female MP reported one of his front bench team to the Metropolitan Police for alleged sexual harassment and allowed a ‘senior staffer’ to keep his job despite two separate investigations finding he had sexually harassed an intern. The victim of that assault said that sexual harassment is rife in Starmer’s party.
Starmer also welcomed Bermondsey and Old Southwark MP Neil Coyle back into the party last year, despite Parliament finding Coyle guilty of at least one count of sexual harassment and of making racist remarks – and his lackeys tried to silence two female party staff to protect an alleged ‘senior’ sex pest.
And when Muslim MP Apsana Begum faced malicious prosecution by allies of her abusive councillor husband for supposed housing fraud, Starmer offered her no support, even after she was rightly acquitted – but found time on the day of her acquittal to tweet about the Tokyo Olympics. Instead, efforts to remove her continued – ultimately unsuccessfully.
More information will follow on the Operation Aureus investigation in due course.
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Oh lordy!! The old bill have ‘found’ previously ‘lost’ evidence. Who’s mahmood upset in the local constabulary, then?
.
OR
It could well be that mahmood is now surplus to requirements and has outlived his *ahem* usefulness to keef?
And it’s probly why we’ve heard very little from the resident gobshite. (and TFFT)
Nevertheless, the enlightenment team must be on double time with days in lieu. Far too serious a matter to be briefing volunteer gobshites to churn out their filth for them, no matter how piss-poorly they do so.
Have @peston, kuenssberg, derbyshire et al, been informed of these latest events ?
I suggest those with the means to, ought to.
PS. No mention in the article of allowing that convicted paedophile to resign the seat, rather than being dismissed a d disowned outright, skwawky?!
Wouldn’t surprise me in the least to hear that the degenerate is still involved with that shower o’ shite in some capacity or other.
Khalid Mahmood become a ‘former’ Perry Bar MP because he lost his seat at GE24 by 507 votes to a former LibDem, Ayoub Khan (12,796 to 13,303 ).
WM Labour must be quaking in its rightwing boots.
Jess Phillips won her Yardley seat by only 693 votes (well done Workers Party candidate Jody McIntyre who received 10,582 votes).
“WM Labour must be quaking in its rightwing boots”
But not, as matters stand, for another five years. In which time an awful lot of not just damage, but suffering is in the offing.
Leaving aside the unstinting support for unwinnable wars of choice to impose a single system of exploitation on the majority of the planet whilst, as Jonathan Cook’s recent article details, fanning the flames of scapegoating anyone not pure bred white English or Caucasian with dog whistle policies, we have the economic illiteracy of Reeves which is intent of doing a Gordon Brown tribute act with more unworkable and expensive PFI and deregulation of the parasitic finance sector which is pauperising the populace.
As Richard Murphy explains here:
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/08/13/rachel-reeves-is-planning-on-repeating-all-the-mistakes-gordon-brown-made/
“Reeves is looking at using a private finance initiative (PFI) approach to funding a £9 billion new road scheme that will create a new Thames crossing….
…..there is the obvious point to be made that if the City can find £9bn to fund this PFI scheme, it could just as readily find £9bn to deposit with the government to do it….
….the government does not actually need to borrow funds to do a scheme like this. The decision to issue gilts to cover deficits is a purely political one. They can as readily be covered by taking more National Savings and Investments deposits. Or they could not be covered at all: the Bank of England could cover the funding. But what is not required is easily the most expensive and risky option for the government, which is a private-sector partnership deal, where the cost of funding alone will be considerably in excess of what the government itself would pay.
We have to presume more disasters of this sort are in the making.
Then there is Rachel Reeves’ other gaffe in the making to consider, which more than demonstrates she had learned nothing at all from the debacles of the Gordon Brown era. The FT is reporting that:
‘Reeves, speaking on the margins of a trip to New York last week, said: “We are pushing the regulators to demonstrate that they are taking seriously the competitiveness of our financial services sector.
“One of the commitments is to go through the rule book and tear up rules that are unnecessary or duplicative and we’re determined to do that,” she added.’
In particular, the Treasury, clearly with political approval, is questioning whether a new consumer compensation scheme for those impacted by consumer banking fraud should go ahead this October because it might reduce the competitiveness of the City. In other words, the cost of bank failure is to be borne by the victim in the Treasury view, presumably endorsed by Reeves, and not by those whose failings let it happen. This is so reminiscent of the worst of Brown’s ‘light touch regulation’ that I have horrible feelings of déjà vu.”
What Murphy is clearly alluding to here is the previous result and outcome of this folly of indulging the lobbyists who pay politicians like Reeve, Starmer et al. to cater for their needs at the expense of the rest of us. Which was the 2007-06 Great Financial Crash.
An event which Reeve’s policies will bake in to be repeated.
Not content with waging forever wars, the political and media class are also intent on waging forever austerity.
As Toffee notes, above, the know nothing ignorant and arrogant cheerleader who revels in imposing such suffering on others and lecturing us on how wonderful this all is from his (alleged) bolthole has suddenly gone very quiet. Let’s hope it’s permanent.
That should read “2007-08 Great Financial Crash”
F’ing Hell Dave! Reeves is inviting the financial capitalists that had a massive haemorrhage in 2008 to PFI her road building ventures? . She’s a better friend to crony capitalism than even G Brown ever was.
That would be this……
https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-politicians/gordon-brown-net-worth/
…..Gordon Brown
Staying in the West Midlands, meanwhile:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/aug/13/birmingham-council-to-sell-off-athletes-village-homes-at-more-than-300m-loss
“Hundreds of empty homes in Birmingham, originally designed as an athletes’ village for the Commonwealth Games, will be sold by the council at a loss of more than £300m to the taxpayer.
Ayoub Khan, the independent MP for Perry Barr where the apartments are located, said it was an “absolute scandal” that the Labour-led authority had agreed last week to sell more than 700 homes to a private company in a deal forecast to result in a multimillion-pound loss.
Birmingham city council, England’s largest local authority, declared itself effectively bankrupt last year due to a financial crisis largely caused by an equal pay claim bill and a failed IT system update.
It is also facing a housing crisis, with 23,000 households on the waiting list for social housing in the city, and 450 new applications every week.
The new-build Perry Barr estate, described by local people as a ghost town, with many flats standing empty for more than a year, was intended to be an athletes’ village for the Commonwealth Games, which Birmingham hosted in 2022.”
Among the questions arising must surely be that if this area had a Labour MP, instead of an Independent MP, would this have been said? One suspects not.
As tax expert Richard Murphy asks:
“……why haven’t these homes been used for social housing?”
Moreover:
.”……..what sort of madness in local authority administration requires this? Is Labour really acquiescing in this when Birmingham City Council is effectively under government control? What does that say about its own housing targets? And why not just fund a housing association to take them over if need be?
This is incomprehensible.”
A Government which claims there is a £20 billion black hole and which has a stated policy of providing 300,000 houses a year for the next five years is throwing away nearly a third of a billion pounds in the middle of an affordable housing crisis by selling empty properties at a loss is beyond incomprehensible.
The Country is run by shysters, whoever you vote for.
*Scratches head, rolls eyes, and sighs heavily*
As can be seen below from the verdict of Cohen’s Employment Tribunal the finding of Unfair Dismissal was on very limited grounds, most of the many claims she made were dismissed.
[this extract is a direct quote]
“(1) The claim of unfair dismissal pursuant to section 94 & 98 of the Employment
Rights Act 1996 succeeds, any award to be subject to deductions for
contribution to her dismissal and under “Polkey” to be determined.
(2) The claim of detriment because of a protected disclosure pursuant to section
47B of the Employment Rights Act 1996 succeeds in respect of the allegation
that she was marginalised and isolated in the period January 2020 until her
dismissal.”
[All the following complaints were dismissed]
(3) All remaining claims are not well founded and are dismissed:
a. The claim of automatic unfair dismissal pursuant to section 103A of
the Employment Rights Act 1996;
Case Number: 2203775/2021
– 2 –
b. All other claims of detriment because of a protected disclosure
pursuant to section 47B of the Employment Rights Act 1996;
c. Claims of direct discrimination because of race and religion or belief
brought under section 13 and section 39 of the Equality Act 2010;
d. Claims of harassment because of race and religion or belief brought
under section 26 and 40 of the Equality Act 2010.
You should read the full document – the evidence about Ms Cohen’s various actions regarding the concluded police investigations and her general conduct make for an informative and interesting read
https://www.gov.uk/employment-appeal-tribunal-decisions/ms-elaina-cohen-v-mr-khalid-mahmood-mp-2023-eat-144
and here is how the Telegraph reported Ms Cohen’s employment tribunal compensation hearing.
The former shadow cabinet member [Khalid Mahmood] – an MP for more than 20 years – dismissed Ms Cohen, whom he had previously dated for several years, for disrespect and trying to intimidate him.
But an employment tribunal ruled that by overseeing the disciplinary process himself and deciding to fire her, the 61-year-old had treated Ms Cohen unfairly.
In addition, Mr Mahmood’s decision to stop communicating with Ms Cohen after she accused one of his parliamentary staff of being involved in illegal activity made her feel isolated, the panel ruled.
Ms Cohen was originally awarded more than £50,000 in compensation for her treatment after successfully suing Mr Mahmood.
However, that has been reduced by 75 per cent to £11,729 in compensation by the tribunal because of her “blameworthy” conduct.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/07/03/labour-candidate-ordered-to-pay-ex-girlfriend-adviser-11000/
As has already been explained to you on previous occasions, Billy, the main elements of the case were successful. The IT found Cohen to have been unfairly dismissed and, as previously reported by Skwakbox, a number of key allegations were not challenged by the other party and were indeed accepted by the accused and their legal representative(s) as being accurate.
Reflecting badly on those whose behavior you are seeking to mitigate by going after the victim in this case.
For those of us who have actual experience of Industrial Tribunals and who have actually been through the process it is unsurprising that any case brought forward will seek to involve as many provisions available in the expectation that some will succeed and others will not. It is also unsurprising that those who do not have any knowledge, expertise, or experience in these matters to think, in their ignorance, that just because some of the provisions used were not successful that this somehow negates the outcome.
However, it is one thing to be ignorant but quite another to continually wallow in that ignorance in the vain hope that continued repetition of that ignorance will somehow persuade the unwitting to prefer the warped interpretation of that ignorance over the objective reality.
The bottom line is that the IT – which rarely finds in favour of unfair dismissal – found Cohen had been unfairly dismissed. Your agenda to defend the behavior of those who lost the case and smear the victim could not be any clearer, Billy.
We see you for the bad faith actor and cheerleader for The Official Narrative that you are.