Fancy dress shops slammed for selling twisted Halloween costumes including Taliban bombers, Gestapo officers and mental patients
For £26.99 tasteless customers can get a full Taliban costume complete with a tunic, waistcoat and bomb belt from online firm Fancy Dress
FANCY dress companies ready to cash in over Halloween are selling costumes which include Taliban bomber, "sexy burqa" and mental patient outfits.
Online firm Fancy Dress offers a Taliban costume complete with a tunic, waistcoat and bomb belt for £26.99.
They also sell World War II German Gestapo uniforms, and those who want to dress up like former Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi can buy costumes online.
eBay is selling "sexy burka" outfits through online vendors, as well as online giant Amazon, which was forced to remove some offensive outfits on sale.
UK National Defence Association CEO Andy Smith said: “This is tasteless in the extreme. I cannot imagine what goes through the minds of the people who produce and sell these costumes.
“We are engaged in a long war against Radical Islam, and people are dying now at the hands of these despicable jihadist terrorists. Thousands have been slaughtered in the name of this Islamist jihad and there are many British families who have lost loved-ones in this war, which we did not start but is being waged against us by these fanatics.
“The shops selling this costumes should have the common decency to withdraw them from sale and apologise for the insult to the families of Radical Islam's victims.”
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eBay also hosts costumes that campaigners argue show people with mental health conditions as "dangerous".
There is a range of Halloween costumes and displays involving strait jackets, asylums and "mad"; people.
One £17 outfit offered by a shop using the site is called “white strait jacket psycho mental serial killer fancy dress”.
Sue Baker, Director of Time to Change the mental health anti-stigma campaign run by Mind and Rethink Mental Illness, said: “Depicting mental illness in this way fuels some of the worst myths that those of us with mental health problems are ‘scary’ or ‘dangerous’.
“We are finally starting to see attitudes shift, but this will only serve to set us back by reinforcing sad old stereotypes.”
Three years ago supermarket chains Tesco and Asda withdrew Halloween outfits after they were criticised for stigmatising people with mental health issues.
Both stores apologised and agreed to make donations to Mind.
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