The Tories clearly have no issue with appointing someone who served in the regime of a brutal dictator, to a senior post within their party or accepting his money.
A former minister in the brutal regime of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has donated £5million to the Conservative Party to help them fight the next election.
Mohamed Mansour, who served as transport minister under the late Mubarak, said he believed that in Rishi Sunak the country has a ‘very capable Prime Minister’. Expanding on his reasons for the donation, he wrote in the Telegraph: “I believe that this country has a very capable prime minister. One who understands how growth is generated in the modern economy. He gets the importance of technology and innovation. He can make the modern economy work for all UK citizens.
“My confidence in the prime minister is why I was proud to become a senior treasurer of the Conservative Party last December.
“I want to give him the best chance of having a full five-year term and so have donated £5m to the party’s election fighting fund. I look at what he has achieved in his first months in office and think what he could do in five years.”
Mansour is the chair of the Mansour Group multinational corporation, which he owns with two of his brothers. Through another of his companies, Unatrac, he has previously donated about £600,000 to the Tories.
After Mansour was made a senior treasurer of the Conservatives in December, Labour said Sunak could not claim to stand up for integrity when there was “a billionaire who was a part of Hosni Mubarak’s autocratic regime being put in charge of drumming up donations”.
The Tories clearly have no issue with appointing someone who served in the regime of a brutal dictator, to a senior post within their party or accepting his money. Amnesty International have reported a ‘litany of abuses’ which were committed during Mubarak’s 30 year rule, including torture, a crackdown on free-speech and any political opposition and widespread human rights abuses.
Philip Luther, Middle East and North Africa Research and Advocacy Director at Amnesty International previously said of Mubarak’s rule: “The signature policies of Hosni Mubarak’s rule – mass torture and arbitrary detention – remain a daily reality in Egypt. Mubarak was never held to account for the litany of abuses he oversaw.
“Hosni Mubarak’s legacy lives on through the tools of repression he created, most visibly in the unaccountable security services that maintain an iron grip on the country nine years after his fall.”
Amnesty also stated: “At least 840 people were killed and 6,000 injured during 18 days of protest that finally toppled Mubarak. In addition, victims of prolonged arbitrary detention, torture and other ill-treatment during his 30 years of rule have yet to see any semblance of truth, justice or reparation.”
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
To reach hundreds of thousands of new readers and to make the biggest impact we can in the next general election, we need to grow our donor base substantially.
That's why in 2024, we are seeking to generate 150 additional regular donors to support Left Foot Forward's work.
We still need another 124 people to donate to hit the target. You can help. Donate today.