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Labour withdrew support from Azhar Ali, its candidate in the Rochdale by-election to be held on 29 February, after a recording was published of him claiming Israel had ‘allowed’ the deadly attack by Hamas gunmen on 7 October, which had given them ‘the green light to do whatever they bloody want’. He was suspended from the party pending an investigation, but electoral law made it impossible to remove his name and party from the ballot paper. At first Labour stood by him when he said he wished to ‘urgently apologise to Jewish leaders for my inexcusable comments’. The next day Labour suspended a former MP, Graham Jones, who was going to stand for parliament at the next election; it was alleged he had said that Britons who travel to Israel to fight for the IDF should be ‘locked up’. Four boys aged between 12 and 14 were arrested on suspicion of rape of a ‘young female’ in the Newbold area of Rochdale, police said.
The Foreign Office announced sanctions against four named ‘extremist Israeli settlers’ who, it said, had ‘committed human-rights abuses against Palestinian communities in the West Bank’.
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