Sadiq Khan shared platform with five Islamic extremists

Sadiq Khan shared a platform with five Islamic extremists at a political meeting where women were told to use a separate entrance, the Evening Standard can reveal.

Labour’s candidate for Mayor of London took part with an activist who has threatened “fire throughout the world”, a supporter of terror group Hamas, a preacher who backs an Islamic state and a Muslim leader accused of advocating attacks on the Royal Navy if it stopped arms being smuggled into Gaza.

Invitations said “all welcome” but made clear that women would be segregated at the door, stating: “Ladies’ entrance on Lessingham Avenue next to the snooker club.”

Also on the platform was a controversial Surrey vicar and conspiracy theorist who has claimed Israel could have been responsible for the terrorist attack on New York’s Twin Towers.

Mr Khan was billed on the list of speakers as Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Tooting, despite his insistence that he attended “as a human rights lawyer”.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, then a backbench MP, was also on the list but his office said he “was not present at that meeting”.

The three-hour conference, headlined “Palestine — the suffering still goes on”, took place on September 19, 2004 at Tooting Islamic Centre.

It was organised by a pro-Palestinian group called Friends of Al-Aqsa, which made headlines this January when its bank account was closed without explanation by the Co-op Bank.

The disclosure comes at a critical time for Mr Khan’s mayoral ambitions, with his campaign dogged by questions about his past willingness to share platforms with radical figures.

Speakers on the bill included Daud Abdullah, who led a boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day in 2005 when he was deputy secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain.

In 2009 Dr Abdullah signed the Istanbul Declaration — a document that was widely interpreted as calling for violence against Israel and condoning attacks on British forces.

Defending himself in a letter to the Guardian, Dr Abdullah said: “I do not advocate attacks on any religious community, including Jewish communities, and I do not advocate attacks on British military forces.”

Another speaker was Ibrahim Hewitt, who wrote a notorious pamphlet that branded homosexuality a “great sin” and suggested adulterers should be “stoned to death”.

Mr Hewitt spoke as chair of Interpal, a charity that says it provides humanitarian and emergency aid to people in the Middle East. However, in 2003 Interpal was designated as a “global terrorist” organisation by the US Treasury which claimed it was “utilised to hide the flow of money to Hamas”.

The designation remains in force in the US, although Interpal and Mr Hewitt strongly deny the allegations. Dr Azzam Tamimi, another speaker, has said he wants Israel destroyed and replaced with an Islamic state.

In 2006 he was among speakers who used blood-curdling language at a protest in London against the publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed. Dr Tamimi told Sky News: “Fire will be throughout the world if they don’t stop.”

Next on the bill was radical Tooting imam Suliman Gani, who has called women “subservient” to men and has condemned gay people.

Mr Khan told the Evening Standard debate last night that he “fell out” with Mr Gani, who recently posted selfies with Tories including mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith, minister Jane Ellison and MP Tania Mathias.

Mr Khan has said it is only natural that he engaged regularly with an imam in his constituency.

After him was Ismail Adam Patel, the founder of event organiser Friends of Al-Aqsa, a group that has published work by Paul Eisen, whom the Guardian has called a Holocaust denier.

Mr Patel was a leading supporter of controversial “blood libel” cleric Raed Salah, who won an appeal against being deported from Britain in 2012, according to the Jewish Chronicle, and has said that “Hamas is no terrorist organisation”.