Suspended Ukip Candidate Anna-Marie Crampton: I was Hacked

A Ukip candidate for East Sussex who was suspended for posting anti-Semitic comments online has told the party she had been hacked and did not write the offending comments.

Anna-Marie Crampton ,who was due to stand in the 2 May local elections, was suspended after online comments in her name claimed that World War II was financed by bankers and "engineered by the Zionist Jews".

A second post added: "Only the Zionists could sacrifice their own in the gas chambers. It was thanks to them that six million Jews were murdered in the war."

Crampton denied making the comments, saying that she had "clearly been trolled". The 35-year-old told Ukip she had been the victim of hacking.

Ukip said it was investigating the incident. A spokesperson added: "If she was hacked, we will apologise for suspending her."

Before her suspension, Crampton tweeted: "I'm not anti-Semitic. I never said I do not believe in the Holocaust. I've clearly been trolled. I do post on Zionism as a political movement.

"Further, my great grandmother was Jewish on my mother's side."

Her account has since been deleted.

Ukip said Crampton's name will still be on the ballot paper at the election but she will not be representing the party pending investigation results.

On the day of her suspension, Ukip leader Nigel Farage told The World at One that the party lacked sufficient resources to check all 1,735 candidates who will be standing in the 2 May elections and admitted there were some "we'd rather not have had".

He said: "When it comes to the general election and the European elections we have put in place a very rigorous testing procedure. I'll be honest with you - we don't have the party apparatus to fully vet 1,700 people.

"I have no doubt that among these 1,700 one or two will have slipped through the net that we'd rather not have had."

He made the comments after it emerged that candidate Susan Bowen, from Boscastle in Cornwall, had been thrown out of the party when she was exposed as a former member of the BNP.

READ: George Galloway: 'Some Ukip members will be racist'