Court annuls Livingstone's suspension over 'Nazi' jibe

A judge has quashed a four-week suspension slapped on London Mayor Ken Livingstone for comparing a Jewish journalist to a Nazi concentration camp guard, officials said.

High Court judge Lawrence Collins overturned the suspension on Thursday regardless of ongoing deliberations on whether the remark, to a reporter from London's Evening Standard, breached the Greater London Authority's code of conduct.

"I have made it clear the suspension will be quashed," he said.

At the start of the hearing, the judge said it would be wrong to suggest Livingstone was "anti-Semitic."

"I don't want anyone to suggest that Mr Livingstone is anti-Semitic. There has never been any indication of that. That is absolutely clear," judge Collins told the High Court in London.

Livingstone originally made the comments in February 2005, but later claimed they were fueled by his dislike of Associated Newspapers, which owns the Evening Standard, and its sister national paper the Daily Mail.

During World War II, the group's then proprietor, Lord Rothermere, met Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and expressed admiration for Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

An administrative tribunal ruled in February that Livingstone's remarks were "unnecessarily insensitive and offensive" and ordered his suspension from office for four weeks.

But only a week later a judge at the High Court order the suspension to be delayed pending Livingstone's appeal.

Livingstone, nicknamed "Red Ken" for his socialist views, was re-elected mayor of western Europe's most populous city in June 2004 under the banner of Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party.