Over at his Telegraph blog, Andrew Gilligan responds to Bob Lambert’s recent Al-Jazeera article.

Gilligan sneers at the role of the Metropolitan Police’s Muslim Contact Unit in helping to oust Abu Hamza al-Masri from the North London Central Mosque in Finsbury Park, claiming that one gang of terrorist sympathisers was merely replaced by the present management which itself has “close links with another designated terrorist organisation, Hamas”.

NLCM can answer for themselves about the nature of their supposed “close links” with Hamas. But it is worth pointing out that Hamas is in fact a political party with mass support – it won a majority on the Palestinian Legislative Council through democratic elections in 2006, with 44% of the vote – and is not a proscribed terrorist group in the UK. It is the Izz al-Din al-Qassem Brigades that is proscribed. But when has Gilligan ever been interested in accurate reporting?

Gilligan also provides a link to his earlier piece attempting to associate NLCM with Anwar al-Awlaki and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Given that this allegation has been shown to be nonsense, you might have thought an apology to NLCM from Gilligan would be in order. But the day when Gilligan admits he was wrong, even after his misreporting has been thoroughly exposed, is yet to dawn.