Overview
- The 60-year-old is standing in May’s Birmingham council elections for the Independent Candidates Alliance, a grouping backed by Akhmed Yakoob and Shakeel Afsar that plans roughly 20 candidates.
- A Yemeni court in 1999 found him guilty of forming an armed gang and conspiring to bomb the British consulate, an Anglican church and a Swiss-owned hotel, and he served a five-year sentence.
- Coverage notes no record of the conviction being quashed, and election rules cited in reports indicate his past sentence does not disqualify him from standing now.
- Butt has faced online backlash over urging young Muslims to “learn to fight” and over comments at protests around Aston Villa vs Maccabi Tel Aviv, where he said, “If somebody comes into your face, you knock his teeth out.”
- He is campaigning on youth support, tackling drugs and antisocial behavior, and cleaner, safer streets, says he is not antisemitic but opposes Zionism, and acknowledges a violent past including links to Birmingham’s Lynx gang.