BNP leader cleared again of race-hate charges

British National Party (BNP) leader Nick Griffin has been cleared for the second time this year of inciting racial hatred.

He emerged from court yesterday to football-style chants of "freedom" from flag-waving supporters and noisy protests from a smaller group of opponents.

Surrounded by shaven-headed minders and dozens of police, he rounded on the police and the BBC for their role in bringing him to court.

"I will continue to speak the truth in plain, blunt terms," he said. "They cannot take our freedom."

Mr Griffin, 47, and BNP head of publicity Mark Collett, 26, were cleared of using words or behaviour intended to incite racial hatred by a jury at Leeds Crown Court.

They were cleared of similar charges at a trial in February. Mr Griffin was charged after the BBC secretly filmed a speech he gave in 2004 during which he told supporters Islam was a "wicked, vicious faith" that was turning the country into "a multi-racial hell-hole".

Outside court, Mr Collett said the political establishment and the BBC were "cockroaches". Mr Griffin called for the resignation of the Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police, Colin Cramphorn.

The Crown Prosecution Service defended its decision to bring the case.

"The CPS was satisfied there was sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction," said CPS lawyer Helen Allen.

Judge Norman Jones, the Recorder of Leeds, had stressed to the jury that it was not the BNP on trial, and that the alleged crime was racial, not religious, hatred. "This is not about whether the views of the BNP are right or wrong," he said before the jury retired to consider its verdict on Thursday.

"This is not about whether assertions made about Islam are right or wrong, this case is about allegations of the commitment of a crime."

He told the jury stirring up racial hatred did not mean creating racial hatred, but inflaming or exciting it.

Mr Griffin maintained throughout the trial that his comments were not racial, but were attacking religion, and were designed to stir his audience to political activity.