In a penetrating BBC TV documentary See You In Court (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b010hkr1/See_You_in_Court_Episode_3/)
the trustees of Finsbury Park Mosque, previously North London Central Mosque, were shown successfully defending the good name of the mosque against a false allegation of distributing extremist literature in a report by the influential right wing think-tank Policy Exchange. Had the allegation been true it would have been especially damaging to the mosque because of the mosque’s unhappy history before the present trustees brought to an end the extremist influence of Abu Hamza and his supporters in February 2005.

Although eventually the mosque trustees were unable to conclude a libel claim against Policy Exchange in court because of a legal technicality the mosque nevertheless secured a published clarification from Policy Exchange which went a long way to retracting the false allegation. As the documentary revealed this was a significant climb-down by Policy Exchange that would not have been achieved without the determined efforts of the trustees and the expert guidance of libel lawyers. For the BBC documentary the case was an example of a local mosque being prepared to challenge the weight of a leading think-tank and to restore its good name.

NLCM statement, 16 April 2011