Reid triggers outrage with speech to Muslims

Mr Reid was speaking in Leytonstone, east London, when a member of the invited audience of Muslims stood up and challenged him as he listed past terrorist attacks carried out around the world.

But Abu Izzadeen insisted that he was "very irate" and asked how Mr Reid could "dare" come to a Muslim area after "over a thousand" Muslims had been arrested in an act of "state terrorism by British police.

"You are an enemy of Islam and Muslims," added Mr Izzadeen, who is a member of the extreme Islamist Al Ghuraba organisation, which has been proscribed by the government.

The Home Secretary looked on as he was taken from the building by police and stewards.

Respect MP George Galloway later revealed that Mr Izzadeen was the same man "who led a group of fanatic thugs in the brief 'hostage-taking' of myself, my daughter and several innocent members of the public during a general election meeting last year."

In a letter to Mr Reid, he wondered "how this man, at this sensitive time, was allowed to hijack your Potemkin Village performance today."

He asked whether police and security services were guilty merely of "fantastic incompetence" or had been part of a scheme to engineer a confrontation to "portray the Muslims of Britain in the most aggressive, violent and extreme way possible."