Asian police chief says: 'Muslims are radicalised'

Britain's most senior Asian police chief has warned that Islamophobia has helped to create a generation of angry young Muslims who are vulnerable to extremists.

Assistant commissioner Tarique Ghaffur, of the Metropolitan Police, also said that the misuse of stop and search tactics and other tough anti-terrorist measures were at risk of criminalising minority communities. Mr Ghaffur called for an independent judicial inquiry yesterday into the radicalisation of young Muslims in the wake of the July 7 bombings in London last year.

In a speech to the National Black Police Association conference in Manchester, he said tighter anti-terror laws had indirectly discriminated against Muslims, while recent controversies over the Stockwell shooting and the Forest Gate counter-terror raid in London had eroded the "confidence and trust" of minority communities in the police service.