THE leader of the British National Party (BNP) predicted that Muslim extremists would attack a British city in a speech made 14 months before the July 7 London bombings, a court was told yesterday.

Nick Griffin told a BNP rally in May 2004 that “sooner or later there’s going to be Islamic terrorists letting off bombs in major cities”. He said that the perpetrators would be “asylum-seekers or second-generation Pakistanis living in somewhere like Bradford”.

Mr Griffin, 45, and Mark Collett, 24, a senior BNP member, are on trial at Leeds Crown Court accused of conduct intended or likely to stir up racial hatred. The charges are linked to speeches that the two men gave in West Yorkshire between January and May 2004 and which were secretly recorded by an undercover BBC journalist.

Footage of a speech made by Mr Griffin at Morley Town Hall, Leeds, was played to the jury yesterday. In it, standing on a stage before a desk draped with the Union Jack, the BNP chairman was greeted with applause and cheers.

He attacked the three main political parties, the police and the press, claiming that they were all part of a conspiracy to cover up the murder of whites by Asians. Mr Griffin contrasted the extensive coverage given to the fatal stabbing of Stephen Lawrence, a black teenager, with the alleged silence over “the forgotten white victims” of racist murders.

He listed incidents in Oldham, Colne, near Burnley, Manchester, Glasgow and Sunderland, where he claimed that “young Asians of the Muslim persuasion” had escaped justice after murdering white people.

“They’re free, they’re laughing and joking and telling their mates that you can kill a white boy and the papers won’t talk about it, the police won’t do anything about it, the courts won’t convict you.”

Mr Griffin said the Establishment knew that the country was “a tinderbox” but were “hoping against hope that if they shut up about it it will go away”. The mainstream parties, he said, could either “allow us to express the anger and the concern and the fear of the British people”, or they could “try and bottle it all up so it all bloody well goes bang”, in which case “there is going to be blood all over our streets”.

Later in the speech, Mr Griffin appeared to predict his own arrest and trial. “They will take our national and our local leadership and they will throw us into prison on the pretext that, ‘We’re having to arrest radical Muslims who are blowing things up, and if we only arrest them it’s going to upset their community and further radicalise their youth. So we’ve got to show we’re even-handed, so while we’re arresting Islamic terrorist bombers we’ll also arrest elected councillors of the British National Party’. ”

Also shown was a filmed speech by Mr Collett, at a Keighley pub in March 2004, during which he said that the BNP was engaged in a “battle for Britain”.

The jury has been told that it is not being asked to pass judgment on the politics of the BNP or of the defendants, but to decide whether the speeches went so far “beyond robust comment” that they revealed an intent to stir up racial hatred.

Mr Griffin, of Llanerfyl, Wales, denies two counts of using words or behaviour intending to stir up racial hatred and two alternative charges of using words or behaviour likely to stir up racial hatred.

Mr Collett, of Rothley, Leicestershire, denies four counts of the first offence and four of the alternative charge.

The trial was adjourned until tomorrow.

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