The ‘Caliph’ of East London AKA Mayor Luftar Rahman of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

Update:  I just watched the programme and will post on it later.  Although it didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know about Luftar Rahman and his general dodginess, but it will have opened the eyes of many who will have been unaware of the sheer scale of fiscal and political corruption and mismanagement that is going on in the Islamic Republic of Tower Hamlets.

The BBC’s flagship investigative current affairs programme Panorama is going to turn its attention tonight (20:30 BBC One) to London’s ‘Islamic Republic’ of Tower Hamlets.   There have long been concerns about what is happening in this London Borough which have been raised by bloggers and journalists alike. The ruling administration there is closely aligned with the Islamo-fascist group Jamaat e Islaami, some of whose members have been convicted of war-crimes that occurred during the Bangladesh War of Independence.

The Mayor, Luftar Rahman has created a personality cult around himself allegedly using taxpayers money to do so. The borough is riddled with extremist and separatist Islamic groups and grant money is regularily channelled to Mosques and other Islamic cultural organisations to the detriment of groups catering for members of other faiths and none.

It is good that the BBC is at last turning its attention to one of Britain’s most dodgy Islamic enclaves but there is a story behind the story here. However, it may well turn out that the making of the programme will end up as just as big a story as Luftar Rahman’s serial dodgyness.

The blogger Ted Jeory of the site Trial By Jeory has alleged that the production company which made the programme hired a Bengali student as a researcher who at interview stated that they were opposed to Luftar Rahman’s regime, but allegedly leaked confidential data from the programme making team to Rahman’s henchmen.

Trial by Jeory said:

“In January, Panorama reporter John Ware and the production company Films of Record (it’s a production company, not an undercover production company) hired a young Bengali broadcast journalist student). At her interview, she was highly critical of Lutfur Rahman and his administration.

They got her to do some research on some of the third sector organisations they were investigating as part of the programme’s focus on taxpayer grants. She was also asked to do some translating and she’d also been keen initially to do some undercover work.

She was only with the team for four days in mid-January and on the last day she was given access to a shared but restricted computer file.

After she started demanding more money, the team let her down gently and said thanks but no thanks. But then some six weeks later, the team were dropped with a bombshell. A dossier containing a significant amount of confidential material had been taken from the shared drive and handed to Mayor Lutfur’s office.

It is thought the council had this dossier for a number of weeks before their lawyers Taylor Wessing disclosed it to the BBC and Films of Record. This is important to note.

How this dossier was accessed is not yet fully clear. I understand the BBC is satisfied as to the involvement in handling the “dossier” of certain paid individuals in the Mayor’s office. Inquiries by the Corporation are progressing.

As to whether there is a criminal investigation into the BBC/Films of Record, my understanding is that is manifestly not the case. The BBC has told the Mayor this but he seems to have ignored it. Both the BBC and Films of Record quite rightly notified the ICO as soon as they were aware of the data breach. Note my point re the council’s actions above.

In my view, the journalist they hired should be ashamed of herself. She apparently claimed she had become concerned about the nature of the programme, that it was somehow trying to bring shame on Britain’s Bangladeshi community. Whether any pressure was exerted on her from external sources, I don’t know. I do know that many, many Bangladeshis are terrified about speaking out in public for fear of vilification in their own community. They’re quite happy to talk to journalists in private but very rarely go on the record. The few that do are brave.

What also galls is that this journalist now claims whistleblower status for betraying whistleblowers. It’s my understanding that she made not one attempt to raise apparent concerns about the programme with any of the Panorama team. As a journalist, she would have known the BBC has in place strict and confidential channels for such concerns.”

I would hope that this so called ‘journalist’ who broke her sacred professional duty to protect sources of information should never again be employed by any respectable news outlet in any way. It is possible that this persons family, either those resident here or in Bangladesh, could have been threatened by thugs who are supportive of the regime in Tower Hamlets but the point is that if there she had had concerns about the programme or if her or her family were being threatened there were ample opportunities to report this to both the BBC and the authorities.

Islamic rule in Tower Hamlets is being shown to be a disaster which is why it should be fought when it pops up elsewhere. If you don’t get out and vote then those who support Islamic communal interests will vote and when they achieve power they will rule for the benefit of themselves and their own and not for the benefit of all. Tower Hamlets is not just a London Borough, it is a warning of what can happen if Islamic communal interests are appeased and pandered to.