the times | Monday May 23 2022 2GM 11
News
A senior Conservative MP who
apologised for claiming that a colleague
convicted of molesting a 15-year-old
boy had been the victim of a miscar-
riage of justice has repeated his claim.
Crispin Blunt, 61, said that Imran
Ahmad Khan, who resigned as MP for
Wakefield after he was found guilty of
sexual assault, “did not get a fair trial or
anything remotely like that”.
Last month a jury took five hours to
convict Khan, who is gay, of groping the
boy in 2008 after hearing how he had
plied him with gin and tonic, led him
upstairs, thrown him on a bed and
asked him to watch pornography.
Khan, 48, is appealing against his con-
viction and is due to be sentenced today.
Blunt, the Tory MP for Reigate since
1997, drew criticism when he published
a defence of Khan’s conduct on his
website last month. In the post Blunt
said that the court’s decision relied on
“lazy tropes about LGBT+ people” and
was an “international scandal”.
In the face of widespread outrage and
calls for him to quit his role as chairman
of the all-party parliamentary group on
LGBT issues and stand down from the
Tory party, Blunt retracted his state-
ment and apologised for the “significant
upset and concern”. He said: “To be clear
I do not condone any form of abuse and
I strongly believe in the independence
and integrity of the justice system.”Tory reignites row
over molester MP
George Grylls However, Blunt, who only attended
certain days of the trial, said yesterday
that there had been “a serious miscar-
riage of justice”. He told BBC1’s Politics
South East: “I know what decisions were
made within the trial, which meant
that, in my judgment, he did not get a
fair trial or anything remotely like that.”
Blunt, who was not in court when the
witness gave evidence, was asked if he
thought he knew more about the case
than the jury. “Yes inevitably, because
quite a lot of the trial was conducted
without the jury being present,” he said.
He added: “Of course, the justice pro-cess is not complete, because... Imran
has the opportunity to appeal the con-
viction. And I remain very confident
that a justice system worthy of the
name will restore his good name.”
After the trial Khan, who took Wake-
field for the Tories in 2019, faced further
allegations that he had offered oral sex
to a 16-year old boy in 2015. His lawyers
said that Khan could not comment
“bearing in mind the ongoing criminal
proceedings” against him. A by-election
will be held in Wakefield on June 23.Crispin Blunt said
that he knew more
than the jury hadCharlbi Dean, with whom he appears in the black comedy Triangle of Sadness, were among stars on the red carpet at Cannes
ANDREAS RENTZ/GETTY IMAGES; STEPHANE MAHE/REUTERS; SPREAD PICTURES/MEGA