Labour Councillor Resigns Over Claims She Called Hitler ‘the greatest man in history’

A Labour councillor resigned this morning over claims she posted a series of shockingly offensive anti-Semitic tweets.

Among the most offensive remarks on Aysegul Gurbuz’s Twitter profile was a claim that Hitler was the “greatest man in history”.

The discovery of the Luton councillor’s vile comments – revealed by the Mail on Sunday – was the latest in a series of anti-Semitic scandals to hit the Labour party.

She was suspended by the party at the weekend but this morning she quit as councillor. She said her offensive tweets were made when she was “just 16 or 17” and were “ill judged and offensive”.

She also said “multiple people” had access to her Twitter account.

The 20-year-old student is also alleged to have said she hoped Iran would use a nuclear weapon to “wipe Israel off the map”.

One tweet, written in January 2013, said: “The Jews are so powerful in the US it’s disgusting.”

Another post, in October 2012, said: “Ed Miliband is Jewish. He will never become prime minister of Britain.” And Adolf Hitler was praised as the “greatest man in history” in a tweet in October 2011.

Gurbuz, who is Muslim, became Luton’s youngest councillor when she was elected to the High Town ward last year.

This morning she said in a statement: “Multiple people had access to my account and the tweets made do not reflect what I believe, but I take full responsibility for what was spoken in my name,” she said.

“I believe it is the right thing to acknowledge the pain I have caused and have resigned.”

The Labour party suspended Gurbuz on Saturday night after the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism found a series of disturbing posts on her Twitter account from 2011 to 2014.

Gurbuz initially denied she had written the tweets and claimed her sister may have posted them.

A Labour spokesman said: “Councillor Gurbuz has been suspended from the Labour Party pending an investigation.”

The suspension was the latest anti-Semitism probe within Labour ranks. Labour peer Baroness Royall is already leading an inquiry after Oxford University Labour Club’s co-chairman resigned, claiming a “large proportion” of its members had “some kind of problem with Jews”.

In the past weeks, Labour has twice suspended the deputy chairman of its Woking branch, Vicki Byrne, for posting anti-Semitic tweets, and suspended councillor Khadim Hussain, former Lord Mayor of Bradford, for sharing a Facebook post that said: “Your school education system only tells you about Anne Frank and the six million Zionists that were killed by Hitler.”