Solihull Councillor Suspended For Sharing Anti-Muslim Tweets

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Conservative councillor Jeff Potts has been suspended by his party over allegations he shared anti-Muslim tweets.

Mr Potts has also been suspended by the Tories from Solihull Council’s religious education committee.

“Deport and repatriate all Muslims from the UK or watch terrorists kill innocent people for generations to come,” read one of the tweets.

Another read, “You’ve clearly not experienced the Pakistani hospitality, having a daughter raped by men who think she’s “white trash”.”

The councillor, who represents Knowle, also asked “anybody surprised?” while retweeting negative stories about immigrants on Twitter.

Bob Sleigh, Tory council leader said Mr Potts had been suspended while an investigation took place.

Mr Sleigh said the matter was brought to his attention following a complaint to the council last week, and said he took immediate action.

“I saw one retweet which raised enough concern to suspend him immediately from the Conservative group,” he said.

Mr Sleigh said retweeting suggested people were associated with the views expressed.

He added that the matter has been passed to the council’s monitoring officer to be dealt with under the code of conduct procedure.

Mr Potts has also been suspended from sitting as a Conservative on groups such as the licensing committee and Safer Solihull board, and from his role as vice-chairman of the council’s planning committee.

Mr Sleigh suggested he could still “technically sit as an independent” on the committees.

The council’s Green Party leader, James Burn, called for Mr Potts to resign, saying, “When you start retweeting things about deporting all Muslims you are publicising views that are very close to crossing a legal line and encouraging hatred,” though Mr Sleigh said such action was unnecessary as an investigation is needed first.

Sabir Hussain, trustee of the Solihull Muslim Community Association, said, “There is, in any community, religion or sect, bad apples. The Muslim faith is not exempt from that. To retweet something that suggests all are like that is unfair.

“Retweeting something like that only inflames community relations that we have worked very hard to fuse together.

“Solihull is a very nice place to live. I have lived there for 35 years and have very good friends among various religions.”

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