By SAM GREENHILL
Last updated at 12:34 AM on 21st March 2009
All homosexuals should face stoning to death, a Muslim preacher of hate declared yesterday.
Anjem Choudary, the firebrand cleric who wants to see Britain ruled by Sharia law, said such a regime was the only way to fix the country's ills.
Under it, adulterers and homosexuals would be killed by stoning. Asked if that would include anybody - even a Cabinet minister such as Business Secretary Lord Mandelson - Choudary responded with an astonishing diatribe.
Hate, hate and more hate: Anjem Choudary (centre), flanked by two cohorts, prepares to give a press conference on Friday in which he says homosexuals should be stoned to death
He said: 'If a man likes another man, it can happen, but if you go on to fulfil your desire, if it is proved, then there is a punishment to follow. You don't stone to death unless there are four eyewitnesses. It is a very stringent procedure.
'There are some people who are attracted to donkeys but that does not mean it is right.'
Choudary was speaking at a press conference in London arranged by Muslim extremists to justify their protest in Luton last week against soldiers returning home from Iraq.
His incendiary remarks immediately prompted calls for him to be investigated by police. Tory MP Patrick Mercer said: 'These statements show the depravity of this man's beliefs. They must incite hatred and encourage terrorism, and I would encourage the Metropolitan Police to investigate them as rigorously as possible.'
The Rev Sharon Ferguson, chief executive of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, said: 'This is appalling. The police should look very closely at what has been said to see if there is any action they should be taking.'
Contempt: Muslim protesters hurl insults at the homecoming parade of British soldiers in Luton
Police were not at the press conference but a Scotland Yard spokesman said officers would investigate if a complaint was made.
Only last week, Choudary, a self-styled 'judge of the Sharia Court of the UK', was defending the shameful protests against soldiers parading through Luton after a tour of duty in Iraq.
Yet a week ago, the Daily Mail exposed fundamentalist Choudary's student days when he was pictured swigging beer, cavorting with women and puffing on a cannabis joint - offences for which he would be lashed and stoned under his version of Sharia law. Yesterday he sheepishly confessed:
'Yes, I was not always practising Islam. Certainly in my student days I was not a practising Muslim.'
Wake-up call: Omar Bakri has warned of another 7/7-style attack
Yesterday Choudary, 42, was flanked by two fellow firebrands at the press conference at the Express by Holiday Inn Hotel in Chingford, East London.
It started with warning from fellow hate cleric Omar Bakri, who warned that Britons should 'wake up before it is too late' or suffer another 7/7 terror attack.
The preacher threatened that ordinary Muslims living here would rise up and retaliate for the 'evil' acts of British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Bakri, banned from Britain four years ago, broadcast his threats from his Lebanon bolthole over a speakerphone.
In London, sitting alongside Choudary was Ishtiaq Alamgir, another ringleader of the Luton protests, who accused British soldiers of torture, rape and murder. He said: 'Those British soldiers have blood on their hands.'
A third firebrand, Abu Abdullah, 30, branded the British Government 'tyrannical' and warned: 'Do not relax, do not recline, or you will be touched by the fire of hell.'
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