The former employee and lover of a Labour MP has accused him of being a "racist bully" who dumped her for refusing to enter a polygamous marriage with him.
Elaina Cohen told an industrial tribunal on Thursday how Birmingham Perry Barr MP Khalid Mahmood was a "womanising crook" who sacked her in 2020 for raising serious concerns about another member of staff.
Cohen testified in support of her unfair dismissal claim against the MP on the first day of the tribunal, which is expected to run for four days in total.
She said she had begun a relationship with Mahmood in 2004, a year after she began working for him. But that ended in 2005 after she refused to become his second wife in an Islamic nikah marriage ceremony.
"Khalid had misled me into believing his previous marriages were dissolved but I discovered in 2005 this was a lie", Cohen said. "I was distraught at his false promises of marriage to two women at the same time".
She continued working for the MP after they split up, but said he "stalked" other women online.
"His nickname was Catfish Khalid. It was funny but rather apt. He wears it as a badge of honour, it is a nickname not an insult", Cohen told the tribunal.
"Catfishing" is a term for attempting to lure someone into a romantic relationship using a false online identity.
Cohen told Mahmood in WhatsApp messages that he would have made a "brilliant MP if he wasn't a womaniser".
'Sexual Exploitation'
Cohen also accused her former boss of ignoring concerns she raised about a fellow member of his staff many years later — allegations which the MP's lawyer claimed were borne out of jealousy.
In 2018, Mahmood employed Saraya Hussain, a former employee of Midlands domestic abuse charity the Amirah Foundation who blew the whistle on "financial irregularities" there.
But in February 2020, Cohen went to Mahmood after hearing allegations that victims at the charity where Hussain worked were "sexually exploited and blackmailed by her".
"I was told Saraya Hussain had put her speeding points on the licence of a woman by blackmailing her", she said.
Former Labour MP for Peterborough Fiona Onasanya was coincidentally jailed in 2019 for perverting the course of justice for trying to avoid two speeding penalties by falsely claiming her brother and a mystery Russian were driving the car on those occasions.
Cohen, who is Jewish, said Hussain also made anti-Semitic social media posts online.
She said Mahmood dismissed her concerns and "threatened to sack" her, saying: "He took no action on the protected disclosures. I was ignored".
"I was offended that he thought so little of me as a Jewish employee that he would not ask Hussain for the posts to be removed", Cohen said.
Mahmood's barrister Tom Perry accused Cohen of "making life difficult" for his other female staff, adding: "you do that when you see them as a threat to your position, a rival for your job".
Cohen denied that and said the MP, who was still her employer at the time, had begun "ghosting" her before she spoke to him about Hussain.
"So sorry to remind you that I am a member of your staff. I have not heard from you in relation to Parliament since the election", read one of her messages to Mahmood a year after the 2019 general election. "If this continues I will just do my own thing, as I have since 2005 when you decided I was surplus to requirements due to favours of new female admirers and girlfriends".
Mahmood was formerly shadow junior minister for Europe and later defence procurement. But he resigned from the front bench in April 2021, saying the party had been taken over by "a London-based bourgeoisie, with the support of brigades of woke social media warriors".
The revelations came the same day as another employment tribunal awarded a female ex-employee of disgraced former Labour MP Mike Hill a whopping £434,000 in damages for the sexual harassment he subjected her to.