MP warned he’d be ‘put in grave’ at friend’s funeral

A former Conservative MP has described his horror when a man threatened to put him “in a grave” while he was attending the funeral of a family friend.

Rehman Chishti, said he was approached during the burial in Kent when he was an MP in 2023 by Farris Wilson who wanted to to talk about the conflict in Gaza.

When Chishti declined, he said Wilson had pointed at the grave, and told him “get me a ceasefire in Gaza, Palestine, or I will be putting you in that grave”.

Wilson, 42, from Maidstone, has been sentenced to 18 weeks in prison and disqualified from holding public office for five years at Medway Magistrates’ Court after making what was described in court as a death threat.

The incident happened in December 2023, when Chishti was the MP for Gillingham and Rainham, in Kent.

Chishti said Wilson had told him he had been to his office before and would visit it again.

‘Totally unacceptable’

He said the exchange, which took place in Chatham Cemetery, had left him “fearful for his safety” and caused him “instant alarm”.

“You don’t know what’s going through that individual’s mind. You don’t know the security risk that you’re in,” he said.

“You can hold politicians to account, but intimidating them, threatening them, threatening to cause them harm is totally and utterly unacceptable.”

Wilson was found guilty in April of using threatening, abusive, or insulting words or behaviour intended to cause harassment, alarm or distress.

Sentencing Willson, Judge Stephen Leake said that while he had been found guilty of a public order offence, he believed it could be properly characterised as “violent intimidation” of an MP by “making a death threat”.

He told Willson: “You made a death threat to him which was intended to endure beyond the moment by referring to your future attendance at his office.”

On Monday, the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said she would review the security guidance given to former MPs after counter-terrorism police took over the investigation into the suspected murder of Ann Widdecombe.

Widdecombe was the Conservative MP for Maidstone from 1987 until 2010 but later joined Reform UK and was the party’s Immigration and Justice spokesperson.

Two serving MPs, Jo Cox and Sir David Amess, have been killed in the last ten years.

WIlson, who was a parish councillor on Tovil Parish Council, also stood as a candidate for the Green Party of England and Wales in elections for Maidstone Borough Council in 2024 but was unsuccessful.

A spokesman for the local party told BBC South East that he had been suspended from the party when the charges were made and had “left the party shortly after.”

Chishti was the Conservative MP for Gillingham and Rainham between 2010 and 2024.

Tovil Parish Council has been approached for comment.

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