UK Asks US to Ban Al-Qaeda YouTube Clips

Several UK officials are calling on the US to censor Anwar al-Awlaki’s videos on YouTube, after a would-be assassin cited them as a key ingredient in her radicalization. More than 5,000 of Anwar al-Awkali’s sermons can be found on YouTube, exhorting the faithful to take up terrorism. “Jihad today is obligatory on every capable Muslim,” the American-born al-Qaeda cleric declares in one. Police think those videos radicalized Roshonara Choudhry, who was convicted yesterday of stabbing Labour politician Stephen Timms.

Now Britain’s Home Office tells the Daily Telegraph that it’s pressuring the Obama administration to remove the videos. Security Minister Baroness Neville-Jones even flew to Washington last week to call on the Obama administration to “take down this hateful material” saying it would “categorically not be allowed in the UK.” The American-born Awlaki has been linked to several attacks, and is on the CIA capture-or-kill list (see his story grid here). YouTube says it’ll investigate, and remove videos that break its policies. (More Anwar al-Awlaki stories.)