George Galloway's PA, her police officer husband and claims of 'dirty tricks'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/oct/18/george-galloway-pa-police-husband

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Even given his own talent for hyperbole, the claim George Galloway made on Sunday night was extraordinary: that he had discovered his secretary was working as an "agent" for a Metropolitan police counterterrorism officer who was running a "dirty tricks" campaign against him.

It was a serious allegation. "A direct attack on not just me but on democracy," the MP said. He complained to the police, who promised an investigation, voluntarily referring the matter to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. And he wrote to Theresa May, the home secretary, demanding an inquiry, saying he had "incontrovertible evidence" that the duo had set up fake email addresses to spread "rumour, disinformation and downright lies".

But Galloway's now former secretary, Aisha Ali-Khan, is fighting back. She says she is married to Afiz Khan, whom Galloway correctly identified as a detective inspector in the Met's counter-terrorism unit, SO15.

She says the two wed in a Muslim ceremony in 2009 and have had an on-off, hush-hush relationship ever since. She is furious that their relationship is being presented as somehow illicit.

"Not only have I lost my job and my credibility but I've been branded this tart sleeping with random police officers."

Suspended on full pay but not expecting her job back, Ali-Khan has filed a complaint with the Met, accusing Galloway of either hacking into her private emails or ordering someone else to do so. She believes there can be no other explanation for how he was able to quote verbatim, in his letter to May, from emails she and her husband had written to each other. Galloway says he was given the emails by his lawyer.

Ali-Khan believes she has been "thrown to the wolves" because she was disliked by certain male figures in Bradford's Respect party who wanted her out, and because Galloway wanted to deflect attention from a story about his personal life which he believed was about to hit the papers.

She says Galloway must have known about the marriage – she listed Khan as her spouse on the security clearance questionnaire she filled in to gain a parliamentary pass when she began her job in April, after Galloway's sensational win for Respect in the Bradford West byelection. Her marriage certificate was included in the forms Galloway signed.

"If I signed a questionnaire, I would not have read who her husband was," said Galloway on Thursday, insisting he had once been introduced to a different man in Bradford who Ali-Khan said was her estranged husband, presumably the father of her nine-year-old son. "If I had read it, I would have assumed it was the person I met in Bradford."

Ali-Khan, a trained teacher who gave up her job mentoring young Muslims in order to work for Galloway, says she was upfront about her spouse's sensitive day job in the Muslim contact unit. "It was never an issue," she insisted.

Galloway has claimed that the couple "had been sleeping in my house, and without permission, while I was abroad". He says he discovered this following a break-in, when Ali-Khan's parliamentary laptop was stolen from Galloway's home in Streatham, south London, where she lived for a few months while the constituency office was being set up in Bradford.

"[Khan] had to tell the officers investigating the burglary that his fingerprints would be found in the house. I asked the local officers informally to report on this to his bosses. I heard no more and neither have I heard any more about the burglary. I should, of course, have dismissed [Ali-Khan] but foolishly I gave her a second chance," he wrote in his letter to May.

Ali-Khan insists Khan never slept in the house, but simply "popped in to use the loo" one night before the break-in, and so warned officers investigating that they might find his prints. She says the emails Galloway has seized on as evidence of a plot against him are nothing of the sort. And that far from showing a police handler and his spy, they show a couple making "silly jokes".

Galloway has pointed to one particular email as proof of foul play, in which Khan used his police account to tell Ali-Khan: "I think there was an election fraud. I found out the printer of the election voting cards is a member of Respect. The postman for the postal votes was also a member of Respect party. And finally there was a rush of new voters with the name of Ali. There were 450 voters apparently all staying at the Midland. And finally the gypsies came in to support GG via the Westfield site."

Ali-Khan dismisses any talk of conspiracy, saying this was an example of a number of "running jokes" the couple shared about conspiracy-prone Respect, the ubiquity of her maiden name (Ali) and the fact that party activists spent weeks camped out in caravans at the building site where a Westfield shopping centre was supposed to be built.

She admitted asking Khan to set up a fake email address so that she could email the Guardian when she found out the paper was planning to do a report on Galloway and Respect six months on from the byelection victory. He did it for her, she says, "because I'm not that literate with computers". (A "laughable" claim, according to Galloway.)

After Galloway's claims about the secret police investigation, the Guardian asked to see the "incontrovertible evidence" about the spy plot. His office sent over five screen grabs showing email conversations between Ali-Khan and Khan, who used both his police address and a Hotmail account. The screen grabs did not show the complete conversations, making it impossible to establish the context in which the remarks were being made. Ali-Khan claimed Galloway had deliberately shorn them of their context in order to present the conspiracy theory which would get him the sort of media attention he craves.

One message, entitled "update", has been described by Galloway as "an extensive email on tactics she should employ and which defamed several members of staff and volunteers". Ali-Khan says the message is her husband giving her a pep talk after she told him in a three-hour phone conversation that she wanted to quit her job.

Some men in Respect hated the fact that she was a non-hijab-wearing Muslim woman, she says. "The atmosphere around Respect was so hostile to women. I was seen as an outspoken, opinionated woman who had ideas, who made things happen, who organised events and the guys didn't like it at all."

She says she had poured her heart out to Khan, who sent her an email suggesting how to cope in the hostile environment of the constituency office. In the email, he reminds her that "all [Galloway's] previous PAs have had short shelf lives" and that the fact that his last PA, also called Aisha, had refused to talk to her was "always an indication".

He added: "You know that GG will do whatever to protect his name and an easy time [sic]." Knowing she was thinking of leaving, he warned her: "Be CAREFUL that u don't go from the frying pan into the fire. There were already issues within the Respect Brad[ford]."

Why would Galloway make such bold claims against her? "For political gain," says Ali-Khan. "For newspaper mileage as well. Also, in his mind, he believes that if he discredits me, and makes me out to be a complete slag, then his supporters, the majority of whom are men, will not believe anything that comes out of my mouth … Also, I think it was a form of intimidation. However way you look at it, George has seen my private emails when he had no right to do so. Not only has he seen my private emails, he has then published them on the internet. So my question is: how did he get hold of those emails?"

Galloway strongly denies hacking or authorising anyone else to hack emails on his behalf, and stands by his story, saying: "The police investigation will no doubt establish the truth."