19 June 2019

Everything you need to know about row over Gloucestershire Imam who quizzed Boris Johnson and other Tory candidates on live TV

A Gloucestershire Iman sparked a major row after attacking Boris Johnson on TV on Tuesday night.

Reporters descended on Gloucester after it emerged that one of those chosen to question the five candidates competing to be the next Prime Minister had a history of controversial tweets.

This all you need to know about the row.

.... Mr Abdullah Patel appeared from the Bristol studios to ask the sixth question which was about Islamophobia.

He said anti-Islamic political rhetoric caused problems for his community and asked the candidates directly if he believed words had consequences.

.... Radio 5 Live host Nicky Campbell tweeted: “I would like to apologise. We had the imam from the BBC Tory leadership debate on our programme this morning. His social media comments have been extremely disturbing. We should have checked. We didn’t. I’m sorry.”

A BBC statement said: "We carried out background research into the online and social media profiles of all our questioners for last night's debate.

"Following the debate one individual reactivated a public Twitter account he had previously deactivated, whose tweets were not visible during our research period. [Gloucestershire Live] Read more