March 01 , 2006
London's mayor Ken Livingstone has won a legal bid against his suspension from office, which was due to begin on Wednesday. A High Court judge in London, sitting in private, ruled that Livingstone should have the controversial four-week suspension stayed pending a statutory appeal. On Friday, the Adjudication Panel for England unanimously found the mayor guilty of being "unnecessarily insensitive and offensive" in comparing Jewish newspaper reporter Oliver Finegold to a Nazi concentration camp guard. The tribunal decided that he had brought his office into disrepute and breached the Greater London Authority code of conduct. Livingstone said the stay of suspension was "a very welcome development. In my view, the ruling of the case tribunal to suspend me from office when there is no suggestion that I have acted unlawfully strikes at the fundamental principles of democracy."