Minister condemns 'hateful' terror videos

Wednesday, 3 November 2010 12:00 AM

By Peter Wozniak

YouTube's failure to take down videos by an Al-Qaeda terrorist has been lambasted by the security minister.

Pauline Neville-Jones condemned the fact that the "hateful" videos by Anwar al-Awlaki, a suspect in the cargo bomb plot, remained on the site and were not removed.

In private remarks about al-Awlaki during a visit to the Brookings Institute in Washington last week the security minister was quoted by the Telegraph and the Reuters news agency as saying: "The websites which feature his terrorist message would categorically not be allowed in the UK."

The videos instruct viewers on 'ways to support Jihad' and are said to have been the inspiration for the stabbing in May of MP Stephen Timms by Roshinara Choudry.

Ms Choudry was convicted of attempted murder yesterday at the Old Bailey, when thousands of the videos remained accessible on YouTube.

Youtube argued it had guidelines in place to remove videos which promote illegal activity or incite hatred, but stated it was looking into the al-Awlaki case.

Dame Neville-Jones was claimed this morning by the Telegraph to be pushing US authorities to take action over the issue.

The remarks in Washington were delivered before Ms Choudry was convicted.

Contradicting the Telegraph report as "slightly misleading", a Home Office spokesman insisted the reported comments from the visit to Washington were not "quite what she said".

The Home Office added: "We are determined to tackle extremism and always press for the removal of jihadist material on the Internet.

"Where sites are hosted abroad our ability to close them down is limited. Nevertheless, we work with our overseas counterparts to encourage them to remove them."

Tags:
• crime
,
• domestic policy
,
• foreign policy
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• terrorism