Update on Dispatches

Keeping an eye on the Dispatches follow up amidst the Jade obsession

The Birmingham mosque exposed in a Channel 4 documentary as a Mecca for extremist Muslims is being investigated by police after calls from an MP for police to intervene.

Eight MPs have signed an early day motion condemning the preacher's views.

Labour MP Roger Godsiff wrote to the West Midlands Chief Constable asking for an investigation, and police have confirmed they are studying the documentary.

"I am delighted the police are looking into this. I will see what conclusions they draw," Mr Godsiff said, according to ITN.

"If the police or Director of Public Prosecutions decide these comments were not racist, I think they are going to have a very difficult time"

Also:

THE firebrand Midland Islamic preacher at the centre of a controversial TV documentary was questioned by the FBI in America about alleged links with an al Qaida operative, the Sunday Mercury can reveal.

Abu Usamah At-Thahabi, who was secretly taped by undercover reporters as he delivered extremist lectures at a Birmingham mosque, was quizzed by US agents just months after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.

The New Jersey-born Muslim convert was an imam at the Islamic Center of Peoria in Illinois when federal agents swooped in December 2001 and arrested Qatari student Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, who was a regular worshipper.

Abu Usamah was questioned by federal agents who believed he may have had
some influence on the student - but he was never arrested.