NHS chaplain triggers outrage as he poses with the Taliban while on his summer holidays from a London hospital including the regime’s foreign minister who once warned the west of ‘serious consequences’ if Osama Bin Laden was killed
- Suliman Gani visited regime’s leaders while on annual leave from job in Tooting
Posing with the Taliban, this is an NHS chaplain on his summer holidays.
Suliman Gani visited the brutal regime’s leaders while on annual leave from his job at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, south London.
He and other British clerics stood alongside the Taliban’s foreign minister, Mullah Amir Khan Muttaqi, who once warned the West of ‘serious consequences’ if Osama Bin Laden was killed.
Yesterday a source at the hospital said NHS bosses had been unaware of the nature of Mr Gani’s holiday. It was understood he was taking part in a humanitarian mission, in a private capacity, to deliver ‘essential aid’ to Afghanistan.
But in a propaganda coup for the Taliban, Mr Gani and his group appear in several official photos with the regime’s leaders. Mr Gani, a Muslim chaplain at St George’s for ten years, was branded a ‘useful idiot’ for the fanatics last night.
The hospital refused to confirm or deny suggestions it was taking ‘safeguarding measures’ following the revelations. Professor Anthony Glees, a security and intelligence expert at the University of Buckingham, said: ‘This is all part of the Taliban’s ‘out-reach’ programme.
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‘It might be that [Mr Gani] is misguided, and his aid mission is being exploited by the Taliban. If that is the case, then he is a useful idiot for this regime. As for the hospital, they should consider if this chaplain needs some guidance.’
Richard Drax, Tory MP for South Dorset, said: ‘I am not sure this is a wise or appropriate move. Mr Gani would be better placed taking care of those who really need it at St George’s Hospital.’
Afghan TV said the group met the ‘minister of vice and virtue’, with a spokesman saying the clerics ‘wanted to see the Taliban government with their own eyes’ and had found the Western media’s portrayal ‘different to the reality’.
The report said they also met the justice minister, with a statement attributed to him saying the delegation ‘expressed British Muslims are very happy with the rule of Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan and pray for its survival’. Mr Gani’s awareness of the identities of the people he was meeting is unknown, and it is unclear if he attended all of the meetings.
Yesterday there was no answer at Mr Gani’s home in south London and callers to his phone were told he was in Afghanistan. Mr Gani, also an imam at a mosque in Croydon, wrote on a fundraising website a week ago that he was ‘delivering essential aid’.
In 2016, then defence secretary Michael Fallon had to apologise to Mr Gani after making ‘entirely untrue’ claims the cleric had supported the Islamic State terror group.
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