Britain urges action over extremist US website

"Jihadist content" on a US-based website calling for action against British lawmakers who backed the Iraq War has been removed after Britain contacted US authorities, police said on Friday.

The RevolutionMuslim.com website printed the details after Roshonara Choudhry was jailed for life on Wednesday for stabbing former minister Stephen Timms twice during an advice surgery in east London in May in revenge for his support for the war.

Choudry, 21, said she had been radicalised by sermons and teachings she had read on the website, particularly those of Anwar al-Awlaki, a preacher based in Yemen who is wanted by Washington for links to al-Qaeda.

After her conviction, the website published a list of all 395 members of parliament (MPs) who voted in favour of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and how to track them, British media reported.

"We ask Allah to raise the knife of Jihad against those who voted for the countless rapes, murders, pillages and torture of Muslim civilians as a direct consequence of their vote," said an entry on the website, according to the reports.

Britain's home office (interior ministry) said it had contacted US officials asking them to deal with the material as it could not take action directly against websites hosted outside the country.

"We should all stand up against extremists, we have raised this with our overseas counterparts to encourage them to remove this content from the website," the Home Office said.

"We are determined to tackle extremism and always press for the removal of jihadist material on the internet."

Britain's Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit, a specialist police squad set up to deal with such online issues, said the material had now been removed from the website.

The content had been referred to them and was assessed to be in breach of British law, a spokesperson for the unit said.

RevolutionMuslim.com says on its site that it provides Islamist news and analysis to "counter the mainstream propaganda."

It said "in no, way, shape or form do we call for war against the US government or adhere to the enemies of the United States elsewhere".

Awlaki, and other propagandists of the Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), have urged followers in the West to attack whatever targets they can find with whatever weapon is available.

Yemen on Tuesday launched a major operation to capture Awlaki, who has also been linked to a failed bombing of a US-bound plane in December 2009 claimed by Yemen's al-Qaeda wing and to a US army major who killed 13 people in a shooting spree last year at Fort Hood in Texas.

Two parcel bombs intercepted last week on cargo planes in Britain and Dubai are also thought to be the work of AQAP, US and British officials say.