One is a billionaire businessman and former prisoner from Uzbekistan who is the second largest shareholder in Arsenal Football Club.

The other is the Conservative MP for Henley-on-Thames Boris Johnson, who hopes to be Mayor of London.

In a chilly blast of censorship the lawyers of Alisher Burkhanovich Usmanov yesterday stifled his arch enemy Craig Murray, the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan. But in the process, the ebullient Mr Johnson found himself silenced too.

The seemingly irrepressible Tory became an innocent victim of a bitter internet war between Mr Usmanov and Mr Murray.

Mr Usmanov’s libel lawyers Schillings have spent weeks warning websites and journalists about repeating Mr Murray’s blog allegations about their client’s past. Now the web server has cut off the former ambassador’s link to the wider world. Caught in the collateral damage are a host of opinion formers’ websites including Bloggerheads by Tim Ireland and the Sandwell Labour councillor Bob Piper.

Mr Murray yesterday emailed the gossipy Iain Dale’s Diary: “Craigmurray.co.uk has vanished after the server has been ‘pulled’ by services management company Fasthosts Internet Ltd of Gloucester. Fasthosts have done this in response to legal threats from libel lawyers Schillings, acting on behalf of Alisher Usmanov, the Uzbek oligarch and friend of Putin currently trying to buy Arsenal Football Club.”

Mr Johnson was furious: “This is London not Uzbekistan. It is unbelievable that a website can be wiped out [by] some tycoon. We live in a world where internet communication is increasingly vital, and this is a serious erosion of free speech.” But Mr Usmanov’s spokesman blamed a technical glitch by the web host. “There were certain statements on one individual site which we asked were removed because they were potentially defamatory.”

Fasthosts Internet said: “The customer was repeatedly advised of the breach and upon failing to permanently remove the content in question their customer account was terminated, the unfortunate result being the possible downtime of other unrelated websites of which we understand boris-johnson.com was one.”

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