When he wasn’t busy suspending the whip from sex pest MPs, Jeremy Corbyn found time to attend a MEND event in Parliament last week. MEND brands itself as an ‘anti-Islamophobia think tank’, but has been described as a group of “Islamists posing as civil libertarians”. The evidence for this? The litany of hate spewed by senior MEND figures, who have praised Al-Qaeda, attended speeches by al-Qaeda hate preachers, and attempted to justify the murder of British troops. Despite this, and notwithstanding the fact that other MPs pulled out of the event, Corbyn turned up and gave the keynote speech. How deep are the connections between Corbyn and MEND?

Meet Azad Ali, formerly a director of MEND and now the group’s Head of Community Engagement. Ali denied the Westminster Bridge attack was an act of terror, calling it a “lone wolf” event. He has written of his “love” of Al-Qaeda operative Anwar Al-Awlaki (a terrorist connected to a string of plots and attacks including 9/11, the Fort Hood shooting, the underwear bomb plot). He was suspended from his civil service job at the Treasury after he attempted to justify the murder of British troops. He has also admitted attending speeches by Al-Qaeda hate preacher Abu Qatada (spiritual guide to 9/11 hijack leader Mohamed Atta). Quite a CV, and the sort of person you’d think a party leader would run a mile from…

But check out this speech Ali gave in praise of Jeremy Corbyn just this summer. Ali hints that Corbyn’s own views are more extreme than the Labour leader owns up to in public:

“I actually applaud Jeremy Corbyn for giving a break to the Muslim community, you know he took a lot of the blame and flack. You know when he got called a ‘terrorist sympathiser’ and all of this kind of stuff I was thinking, you know, I’ve known Jeremy from before he became leader and I was thinking you know what, wait until they find other things about him.

“And they tried to smear him day in, day out… but not only that, recently after Manchester, what did he say? ‘We need to talk about foreign policy’. So the opening is there for us.”

“Wait until they find other things about him”…