Police investigating a city councillor for sending an allegedly racist message on social media have dropped their case against him.
Dipu Ahad, who represents Newcastle’s Elswick ward, was quizzed by Northumbria Police after members of the public complained he had retweeted an image racially targeting the far-right English Defence League. But the case was dropped over a lack of evidence and Mr Ahad denies the tweet had racist overtones.
He said: “I’m glad that the Crown Prosecution Service have seen sense and they realise what I do in the community and that the tweet wasn’t racist. I’m not saying that I didn’t retweet it, but sometimes you tweet something and it comes up as a link and the picture doesn’t come up. This has been a campaign against me from the far right. It is sad that the police have questioned me over this.”
The message is alleged to have been shared on Twitter by the Muslim father-of-two on March 10 and contains an image of a loaf of bread containing the words ‘white’ and ‘thick’ on its packaging. Shortly afterwards, he was questioned by the police and spoken to by senior staff at Newcastle City Council after two members of the public complained.
The trust that runs schools at the centre of claims of a Islamist “plot” in Birmingham says it has received hate mail after a series of leaks purporting to come from Department for Education and Ofsted investigations were published in the media.