Delivery sent to office in Westminster and Sajid Javid receives racist letter, days after four Muslim MPs sent packages

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The communities secretary, Sajid Javid, has become the latest MP to receive a ‘Punish a Muslim’ letter, of the kind previously sent to four Muslim Labour MPs.

Police and ambulance crews were called to parliament on Thursday after a suspicious package was delivered to an office, days after investigators found four Labour MPs were sent similar packages with anti-Islam messages and a “low-level noxious” substance.

Javid, who is believed to be the first Conservative MP to receive such a letter, tweeted a picture of it with the hashtag #fanmail.

The development comes a day after Javid, the MP for Bromsgrove, told the Guardian in an interview on Wednesday he had not received a letter, but intimated it may be a matter of time and called it “sick”.

“You get a lot of stick in this job, and I don’t mean political opposition that is part of your job, but real abuse,” he said. “And unfortunately if you are from an ethnic minority, that may include racial or religious abuse.”

A Metropolitan police statement said officers were called to Westminster just before 10.15am on Thursday after reports of the suspicious package.



“Specialist officers are on scene and the package is being assessed,” it said. “London ambulance service is on the scene. A woman is being assessed as a precaution. Inquiries continue.”



A parliamentary statement later said police had found nothing harmful in the package, and that two people had gone to hospital as a precaution.

During Monday and Tuesday, the four Muslim Labour MPs were sent packages including copies of the letter, which advocates violent acts against Muslims.



The MP for Ealing Central and Acton, Rupa Huq, was the last of the four to receive the letter, copies of which are also understood to have been opened by staff for Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) and Mohammad Yasin (Bedford).

A fourth package was sent to the Manchester Gorton MP, Afzal Khan, but was not opened.

A parliamentary spokeswoman said: “Today a suspicious item of mail in the Palace of Westminster was investigated by the Met police and was found not to be harmful.

“The immediate area was evacuated as a precaution but access to the building was otherwise unaffected. Two people have attended hospital as a precaution. We cannot provide any further details while the Met police investigation is ongoing.”

A member of Huq’s staff was taken to hospital as a precaution after opening the letter, which the MP said contained a “sticky substance” that the police had described as “low-level noxious”.



On Monday two people were taken to hospital, also as a precaution, when a package leaking a suspicious liquid was sent to Yasin’s office.

Tell Mama UK, which monitors anti-Muslim hate crimes, said it had received reports of people in Bradford, Leicester, London, Cardiff and Sheffield getting the letters.

Iman Atta, the director of Tell Mama, said: “The Punish a Muslim Campaign seems to have emanated from the Sheffield area, and this was evident through the postmark on the envelopes.



“The modus operandi and the targeting of Muslims and Muslim institutions, all emanating from the Sheffield area and where the language and symbolism is also similar, means that we could be looking at the same set of people who have been involved.”