He wrote: “First time I’ve heard of this”.
The former first minister said the world’s richest man was only drawing attention to cases involving “migrants, people of colour, or indeed Muslims”
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Kriss Donald was abducted from Kenmure Street in the Pollokshields area of Glasgow by a gang of five Asian men.
Their leader, Imran Shahid, had allegedly been attacked by a rival gang in a nightclub the week before and was looking to find a “white boy” to take revenge.
Donald — who had no connection to the attack on Shahid — was kidnapped and driven to Dundee and back, before he was stabbed multiple times near Celtic Park, doused in petrol and set alight.
Daanish Zahid was found guilty of Kriss Donald’s murder on 18 November 2004 and convicted for a racially-motivated murder, the first such conviction of its kind in Scotland.
A second man, Zahid Mohammed, was sentenced to five years for his involvement in the abduction and for lying to police.
Three other suspects, Mr Shahid, Zeeshan Shahid, and Mohammed Faisal Mushtaq, had all fled to Pakistan which had no extradition treaty with the UK.
Following an intervention by the then Glasgow Central MP Mohammed Sarwar, the country agreed to extradite the men to face trial.
All three were convicted, with Imran Shahid given a 25-year minimum term, Zeeshan Shahid a 23-year minimum and Mushtaq receiving a recommended minimum of 22 years.
Mr Yousaf spoke about the case during an interview with LBC’s Tonight With Andrew Marr show.
He said: “Typical of Elon Musk to suddenly amplify that case because he, of course, is only interested in highlighting cases that involve, it tends to be migrants, people of colour, or indeed Muslims.
“The Kriss Donald murder was a dreadful murder where a young, innocent white male inside Glasgow, in the Pollokshields area, was kidnapped, tortured, killed, murdered in one of the most brutal ways by a gang of Scottish Asian youth.”
He continued: “And (the killers) almost evaded justice. If it wasn’t, in fairness, for the efforts of Mohammad Sawar MP, the first Muslim MP ever to be elected to the House of Commons, who went over to Pakistan, rattled a lot of cages to his credit, and managed to bring the perpetrators back to Scotland to face the full force of the law.
“And I should say on the Kriss Donald murder, it was in fact Kriss Donald’s mother Angela, who made a plea at the time that her son’s murder not be used to inflame racial tensions. That is exactly what Elon Musk is trying to do.”
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Mr Yousaf was asked about the next that John Swinney is considering leaving. He said he would not be following suit, and that he would not be “bullied off” the social media platform owned by Mr Musk.
“I think a lot of us were there first, and I’m not going to allow Elon Musk, as dangerous as he may be, to force me off a platform.
“I’ll take measures to protect myself. I’ll only see notifications from those people I follow, for example. I don’t need to see the myriad of abuse that I get from racist and Islamophobic trolls.
“I’ll only look at the content I want to look at, but what we’ve got to do is really confront Elon Musk. The danger with Elon Musk is that he is the world’s most powerful man who has no accountability and is trying to quite literally subvert democracy and using a social media platform to spread this information to help them to do that.
“So, I don’t intend on going anywhere on X. Of course, it’s for others to make that decision for themselves.”
Mr Yousaf said the tycoon, who looks set to be part of Donald Trump’s administration, was “one of the most dangerous men on the planet.”
He added: “He’s not only used his billions to muscle his way into was arguably the most powerful office in the entire world, he’s now quite incredibly, trying to overthrow the democratically elected Prime Minister of the UK and subvert democracy.
“It is astonishing, and that’s why, actually, we have to confront Elon Musk, not just pander to him.”