Galloway's former aide rejects MP's 'dirty tricks' claim. 19 October 2012Last updated at 08:51 ET Mr Galloway has urged the police to fully investigate the allegations A former aide to Respect MP George Galloway has denied his claim that she plotted a "dirty tricks" campaign against him with a Met police counter-terrorism officer.
Mr Galloway alleges the two tried to discredit him in the media and used his home to conduct an illicit affair. But ex-aide Aisha Ali-Khan told the Guardian she is married to the officer and the MP must have known this. E-mails between the two were "jokes" not evidence of a plot, she added. She has filed a complaint with the Metropolitan Police, accusing Mr Galloway of hacking into her private e-mails or asking someone else to do so.
Mr Galloway said the e-mails, which he describes of "incontrovertible evidence" of a plot, had been obtained by his lawyer. 'Lost credibility' He accused Ms Ali-Khan, his then assistant, of acting as the officer's "agent" in his constituency office. 'Not IT literate' George Galloway - George Galloway and the Oil-for-Food scandal. Islamic radicals 'infiltrate' the Labour Party. Nothing better than fascists fighting each other: SWP vs Galloway. Respect, the coalition which has won greater electoral success than any left alternative for decades, is facing a deep crisis.
It is a political crisis about the direction of the left in Britain which requires an urgent response. Socialist Worker has never been one of those papers obsessed with the manoeuvres of left groups. But the present division in Respect is so important it demands comment. We also have to speak out because Socialist Worker has been approached by two major news programmes who say they are going to broadcast allegations against the SWP over this affair. Respect began as a radical product of the anti-war movement. Proud We proudly situated Socialist Worker as the paper which carried the reports about Respect, organised supporters to push it forwards and celebrated its victories. As part of this, Socialist Worker defended George Galloway against right wing attacks, even when it was unpopular.
Alternative Such tactics are not about honest debate inside a coalition. Calling George Galloway's bluff. - By Christopher Hitchens. Just before my last exchange with George Galloway, which occurred on the set of Bill Maher's show in Los Angeles in mid-September, I was approached by a representative of the program and asked if I planned to repeat my challenge to Galloway on air.
That challenge—would he sign an affidavit saying that he had never discussed Oil-for-Food monies with Tariq Aziz? —I had already made on a public stage in New York. Maher's producers had been asked, obviously by a nervous Galloway, to find out whether I had brought such an affidavit along with me. I replied that this was not necessary, since his public denial to me was on the record and had been broadcast, and since it further confirmed the apparent perjury that he had committed in front of the U.S. Senate on May 17, 2005.
That day has now been brought measurably closer by the publication of the report of the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. For George Galloway, however, the war would seem to be over.