A LABOUR member has said he will fight his expulsion just a week after his election to its local party executive.

Riad El-Taher said he is seeking legal advice over his ejection because of the prison sentence he served for bribes made to Saddam Hussain’s regime between 2000 and 2002.

Rehabilitation charities have backed Mr El-Taher, claiming the sentence he served during 2011 was now spent and urged the Labour Party to reconsider.

Labour officials said party rules were fully compliant with UK law and Mr El-Taher’s past conviction was a clear breach of membership conditions.

The 77-year-old was elected to Hove Constituency Labour Party executive committee on Wednesday, March 2 but received an email last Thursday informing him he had been expelled.

Mr El-Taher was jailed for ten months for paying bribes of £310,000 to Iraqi government ministers in return for oil worth £31 million in breaches of UN sanctions.

He said he was “absolutely dismayed” by the “totally unexpected” decision to throw him out of the party.

He added: “I will fight it because it’s unfair and an abuse of power by an element within the Labour Party intent on destroying the Labour Party.

“The behaviour has been very authoritarian. I’ve seen less behaviour from the Saddam regime.”

Mr El-Taher said he was not quizzed by party officials about his background after applying to rejoin the party or standing as a candidate for the Hove CLP.

He resigned from Labour in protest at Tony Blair’s support of sanctions against Iraq but was inspired by the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader to rejoin.

Mr El-Taher, a chartered engineer who worked for decades in the oil industry, said: “I made no secret about my background if somebody asked but I did not really publicise it.

“I never even thought it would be a consideration, it was not something I was hiding.

“I had not read the party rulebook but I put my membership in writing and no one questioned it.

“I wasn’t a member of the Labour Party when I was involved in the alleged payment of the surcharge or when I was sent to prison, the judgement on my behaviour should be from last year on when I rejoined.”

In sentencing him, Judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith said Mr El-Taher’s “primary motive was financial” with records showing he asked for more money than the Iraqi government were prepared to give.

High-profile supporters of Mr El-Taher, including two former directors of the UN’s humanitarian programme and Labour MP Sir Tam Dalyell [corr], claimed he made the payments to maintain contact with senior Iraqi figures and passed on information to MI6 contradicting claims of the existence of weapons of mass destruction.

Mr El-Taher said: “My prison sentence is political, it is a trial of vengeance.

“10,000 people worldwide were involved in payment of the surcharge but nobody was brought to justice apart from me and somebody else in the US and both of us had political connections with Iraqi government.”

Last week Ivor Caplin, former Hove MP and defence minister during the Iraq War, called on Mr El-Taher to “do the right thing” and stand down prior to his expulsion.

Mr Caplin said any figure seeking election to any office needed to be “open, honest and transparent”.

A Labour spokeswoman said: “The party’s rules are compliant with all areas of UK Law. The Labour Party is an unincorporated association; its rulebook is its contract with its members.

“The party’s rules and procedures have been followed rigorously in this case. Mr El-Taher’s conviction on four accounts of making funds available to Iraq except under the authority of a license granted by the Treasury makes him ineligible for membership of the Labour Party, in breach of 2.I.4.D.”