Police attacked by TV watchdog over C4 mosque expose

Broadcasting watchdogs have cleared Channel 4 of wrongdoing over the controversial documentary about Muslim extremism.

The programme featured footage of preachers at a number of mosques, including one who praised the Taliban for murdering British soldiers.

Scroll to the bottom of the page to watch shocking scenes from the documentary...

West Midlands police rejected calls to take action against the preachers for stirring up racial hatred – and turned on the film-makers.

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Three months ago, the police, backed by the Crown Prosecution Service, made a formal complaint to Ofcom, alleging that the way 50 hours of videotape had been edited was 'distorted'.

But The Mail on Sunday has been told Ofcom has backed Channel 4's claim that the film was fair and has criticised the police response.

The programme, Undercover Mosque, broadcast in January, featured TV footage of an Islamic preacher praising the death of a British soldier.

At a meeting in a Birmingham mosque, the cleric said: "There was an individual killed in Afghanistan recently.

"Do you know what was written in a newspaper? Hero of Islam! The hero of Islam is the one who separated his head from his shoulders!"

Abu Usamah, a preacher at the Green Lane mosque in Birmingham, was secretly filmed saying:

"If I were to call homosexuals perverted, dirty, filthy, dogs who should be murdered, that is my freedom of speech isn't it?"

Mr Usamah later said the programme was a "poor attempt at fair journalism" and claimed his remark was "taken out of context – without any explanation".

Comments by other imams in the film were: "Take that homosexual man and throw him off the mountain", "those whom the wrath of Allah is upon, is the Jew and the Christian", and "it takes two witnesses of a woman to equal the one witness of the man".

Explaining the decision by West Midlands police to call for an Ofcom inquiry, Assistant Chief Constable Anil Patani said in August:

"As a result of our initial findings, the investigation was extended to include issues relating to the editing and portrayal of the documentary.

"The priority for police has been to investigate the documentary and its making with as much rigour as the extremism the programme sought to portray."

Crown Prosecution Service lawyer Bethan David said: "The splicing together of extracts from longer speeches appears to have completely distorted what the speakers were saying.

"We have been dealing with a heavily edited television programme, apparently taking out of context aspects of speeches, which, in their totality, could never provide a realistic prospect of any convictions."

The film prompted the Saudi Arabian government to complain directly to the Foreign Office.

The Dispatches documentary claimed the Saudis recruited young Muslims in the UK, trained them in Saudi Arabia and sent them back to the West to spread a "radical ideology of intolerance and bigotry" through British mosques and Islamic organisations.

Last night, both Ofcom and Channel 4 declined to comment.