{"id":651686,"date":"2025-12-24T03:21:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T03:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/651686\/"},"modified":"2025-12-24T03:21:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T03:21:15","slug":"manchester-man-with-links-to-senior-labour-figures-banned-from-entering-united-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/651686\/","title":{"rendered":"Manchester man with links to senior Labour figures banned from entering United States"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imran Ahmed has been accused of leading ‘efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose’<\/p>\n

George Thompson<\/strong>, Ted Hennessey<\/strong> and Peter Hennessy<\/strong><\/p>\n

00:41, 24 Dec 2025<\/p>\n

\"SecretarySecretary of State Marco Rubio(Image: Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)<\/p>\n

The head of a campaign group with links to senior Labour<\/a> figures will be barred from entering the United States, a State Department official has said.<\/p>\n

Imran Ahmed is one of five Europeans accused of leading \u201cefforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose\u201d, according to US secretary of state Marco Rubio<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mr Ahmed, from Manchester, is the chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). The organisation has previously listed Sir Keir Starmer\u2019s<\/a> chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, as a director.<\/p>\n

Mr Ahmed previously told the Triggernometry podcast that the origin of CCDH came while working as an adviser to Labour MP Hilary Benn, who was shadow foreign secretary at the time.<\/p>\n

He has said he was inspired to start the organisation after seeing the rise of antisemitism on the left in the UK and the murder of his colleague, Jo Cox MP, by a white supremacist, who was radicalised, in part, online.<\/p>\n

Records at Companies House show Mr McSweeney resigned from CCDH in April 2020, the time at which Sir Keir became leader of the Labour Party<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Elon Musk also declared \u201cwar\u201d on the CCDH in October 2024, branding it a \u201ccriminal organisation\u201d. At the time, Mr Ahmed told the Guardian they were going to \u201ctirelessly\u201d continue their work.<\/p>\n

Clare Melford, another British-based executive who runs the Global Disinformation Index, was also identified as one of the five Europeans who will be barred from entering the US by Sarah Rogers, the US government\u2019s under secretary of state for public diplomacy.<\/p>\n

The action to bar them from the United States is part of a Trump administration campaign against foreign influence over online speech, using immigration law rather than platform regulations or sanctions.<\/p>\n

In a post on X, Mr Rubio said: \u201cFor far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Imran Ahmed has been accused of leading ‘efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose’…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":651687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8813],"tags":[748,393,4884,2465,16,15,49],"class_list":{"0":"post-651686","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manchester","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-manchester","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-united-states"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115772397003695201","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=651686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/651687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}