Sharon Osbourne has been invited to run against a convicted terrorist who is standing for election in Birmingham.
Last week it was announced that Shahid Butt was running to be a local councillor in in Sparkhill in the upcoming May local elections.
However, in 1999 Butt was jailed in Yemen for playing a part in a terror plot which involved associating with armed groups, plotting murder and destruction, and owning weapons.
He was convicted as part of a gang of 10 men who had links to an Islamist group known to have kidnapped 16 westerners, four of whom were killed in the rescue mission.
Alleged targets in Yemen included the British consulate, a church, and a hotel.
Following backlash to news of his candidacy, Butt told BirminghamLive: ‘My actual charge was being a member of an armed gang and conspiring to commit violence, not terrorism as such.
‘The whole thing was about conspiring…nobody actually died, nothing happened at all.’
He added: ‘It was all just made up…the weapons were all planted.’
But after watching a video about Butt shared on social media by Great British National Protest founder Richard Donaldson, Sharon weighed in.
‘This has nothing to do with racism. I think I’m gonna move to Birmingham and put my name down for the ballot to be on the council,’ Sharon commented on Instagram, since picking up nearly 2,800 likes.
She later added: ‘I’m serious.’
A few days on, Butt has responded to Osbourne’s eagerness to run against him.
Speaking to SWNS, he said he welcomed her willingness to run, but added she ‘wouldn’t win’.
In the interview, Butt said he had lived in Sparkhill all his life and saw ‘all the issues going on within the area’ and ‘wanted to make a change’.
After calling himself a community activist, he responded to critics of his political aspirations.
‘The best way to answer the haters is by doing good actions. If I’m elected, you will see the difference I will make and I will prove everybody wrong,’ he said.
‘It’s not like I’ve ever hidden my past – I’ve spoken about it multiple times over the decades. You don’t let your past define you, but sometimes it can make you into someone better who has changed
Donaldson, whose video Osbourne responded to, is an ex-British Army soldier who has become a far-right campaigner. Last year he raised more than £30,000 in donations to help fund an anti-migrant movement calling for people to engage in protests outside every hotel housing asylum seekers ‘until they are all deported’.
The video he shared about Butt online was captioned: ‘Convicted TERRORIST who plotted to bomb British buildings is set to run in Birmingham’s May elections. Let that sink in!’
In the clip, he began by sharing: ‘I don’t even know where we go from here.’
Donaldson went on to say that Butt’s election ‘cannot happen’.
He then called on viewers to share and like his video to ‘spread the word’ and said those who were unwilling to do so were ‘part of the problem’.
Standing as an independent, Butt is being supported by Akhmed Yakoob, who founded the Independent Candidate Alliance.
Yakoob previously ran to be a MP against the current Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, losing by only 3,000 votes in the Birmingham Ladywood constituency. He’s since been charged with money laundering and is set to go on trial next year.
In an interview with the Birmingham Mail, Butt admitted to having ‘made mistakes’ in his younger years but claimed he was innocent despite his conviction.
The 60-year-old said his confession to being part of a terror gang had been extracted through torture and evidence and claimed evidence against him had been ‘planted’.
After being released from prison in 2003, Butt became a campaigner against extremism.
He previously told the Birmingham Mail he supported calls to stop the boats crossing the Channel. ‘I also don’t want any Tom, Dick or Harry coming over and living in our communities when we don’t know who they are. That is not being racist, that is being a good British citizen,’ he said.
Last year Osbourne’s husband Ozzy died aged 76 in July, four years after revealing he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
During an appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored in December she spoke about his final moments.
‘He had a heart attack. I ran downstairs, and there he was, and they were trying to resuscitate him, and I’m like, “Don’t — just leave him. Leave him. You can’t. He’s gone,’ she said.
‘I knew instantly he’d gone. And they tried and tried, and then they took him by helicopter to the hospital and they tried, and it’s like, “He’s gone. Just leave him”.’
She also admitted she wouldn’t have ‘gone with’ Ozzy when he died in July – if it weren’t for her children.
‘Grief has now become my friend,’ she said. ‘It is very weird to me, when you love someone that much and you’re grieving for them, it’s what I have to live with, and I’ll get used to it. I will, I have to, you know, things move on.
‘It’s an ache that you wake up with and you can’t get rid of that ache. It’s like a big hole inside of you and the kids feel exactly the same way, and it’s just, what do you do? It’s inevitable that it happens to all of us.
‘I would have just gone with Ozzy. I’ve done everything I wanted to do. But they’ve (Kelly, Aimee and Jack) been unbelievably, just magnificent with me, all three of them.’
Metro has contacted representatives for Sharon Osbourne for comment.
A version of this article was originally published on February 1, 2026.
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