Tory MP Bob Stewart pleads not guilty to racist abuse of human rights campaigner and insists he is a ‘friend of the Bahraini people’

Conservative MP Bob Stewart, 74, who represents Beckenham in south London, is accused of telling a human rights campaigner Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei to “go back to Bahrain” during an incident on December 14 last year.

Stewart is charged with racially aggravated harassment, alarm, or distress under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, and a second allegation of using threatening or abusive words or behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress.

It is said he told Mr Alwadaei, the director of the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, to “get stuffed” and to “go back to Bahrain” after he challenged the MP over donations from the Bahraini government.

Mr Alwadaei claims Stewart also said: “Now you shut up you stupid man” and accused him of “taking money off my country”.

Mr Stewart, a former NATO military commander who served in Bosnia, was elected in 2010 and serves on a number of parliamentary committees, including the Intelligence and Security Committee.