Mayor Livingstone – refused to apologize
Photo: Sky News
London mayor rapped for Nazi jibe
Ken Livingstone suspended for month after comparing Jewish reporter to Nazi guard
London's Mayor Ken Livingstone was found guilty on Friday of bringing his office into disrepute for comparing a Jewish reporter to a concentration camp guard.
A spokeswoman for the Adjudication Panel of England said the body, which hears complaints against local authorities, would decide what penalty to impose after a three-man panel ruled against Livingstone in a complaint brought by a Jewish group.
Later it was announced Livingstone will be suspended for a month, effective March 1.
Livingstone sparked the rumpus when reporter Oliver Finegold of the city's Evening Standard newspaper cornered him outside a private party in February 2005.
When the reporter identified himself as working for the Standard, a paper loathed by the mayor, Livingstone asked: "Have you thought of having treatment?" And then: "What did you do? Were you a German war criminal?"
Finegold said he was Jewish and found the remarks offensive, to which Livingstone replied that by trailing him, the reporter was acting "like a concentration camp guard - you are just doing it because you are paid to."
Livingstone, a left-wing maverick, became mayor in 2004 after leaving Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party and defeating Blair's candidate in a subsequent mayoral election.He later returned to the party, but has frequently clashed with Blair.
He was widely praised last year for guiding a successful bid for the 2012 Olympics. But he has long taken on the press and had a particularly prickly relationship with the Evening Standard.
Livingstone refused to apologize for the Nazi jibe, arguing that the Standard's owners, the Daily Mail group, had a history of anti-Semitism, and that the reporter's aggressive questioning was offensive and unnecessary.
