A Tory MP has denied racially abusing an alleged torture survivor who he is said to have told “go back to Bahrain”.
Bob Stewart, MP for Beckenham and Bromley, was charged with two public offences last month following a heated confrontation with Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, 37, outside the Foreign Office’s Lancaster House in central London.
Mr Alwadaei, the director of the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, complained to the Metropolitan Police, after the 74-year-old allegedly told him to “go back to Bahrain”.
Mr Alwadaei, who claims he was tortured in the Gulf state in 2011, said the comments amounted to racial abuse and reported the incident to the Conservative Party and Scotland Yard.
At Westminster Magistrates Court on Wednesday morning, Mr Stewart standing in the well of the court, wearing a dark suit, grey tie and a blue shirt, confirmed his name and date of birth to the court.
He pleaded “not guilty” to the two following charges.
Using threatening or abusive words or behaviour or disorderly behaviour and the offence was racially aggravated.
And using threatening or abusive words or behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress.
Mr Alwadaei watched the proceedings unfold from the public gallery.
Paul Goldspring, Chief Magistrate, set a provisional trial date of November 3 which is expected to last one day at the same court.
He described the case as “factually straightforward”. Mr Goldspring told the MP: “You need to be at court by 09:30 [for the following hearing. I am not placing you on unconditional bail, I am simply going to adjourn”.
Mr Stewart confirmed he would attend.
In a statement issued at the time of the incident in December 2022, Mr Alwadaei, said: “I don’t believe I would have been told to ‘go back’ to the country that violently tortured me if it weren’t for the colour of my skin.”
Mr Stewart, a former British Army officer who was stationed in Bahrain in 1969 and has represented Beckenham since 2010, is the chair of the all-parliamentary group on Bahrain.
Following the incident he apologised and issued a statement in which he said: “I meant go back to Bahrain, which is a perfectly safe place, and protest there. If anyone thinks I’ve been racist I honestly didn’t mean to be, and I apologise if they think that, and I wasn’t.”
He was allowed to keep the Tory whip.