NICK GRIFFIN, leader of the British National party, is planning to pour resources into Glasgow to exploit racial tensions after the murder of Kriss Donald, a white schoolboy, by three Pakistani gangsters.

Griffin, cleared on Friday of race hate charges, said one of the party’s main priorities now was to win a seat in the Scottish parliament next May.

He believes that Donald’s murder has highlighted a growing problem in Britain of racist attacks on white people and that it is an issue on which the BNP can pick up votes.

Griffin and Mark Collett, a BNP activist, walked free from Leeds Crown Court after being acquitted of stirring up racial hatred. A jury decided that a speech Griffin made in Keighley, West Yorkshire, in 2004, in which he claimed Muslims were drugging and raping white girls in a plot to make Britain an Islamic republic, did not break the law.

The party is now intent on campaigning for the Scottish election. It plans to field eight candidates in Glasgow, where it believes support has grown in the wake of Donald’s killing.

The 15-year-old, from Pollokshields, was abducted by a five-strong gang. He was stabbed 13 times, doused in petrol and set alight. His charred remains were found near the River Clyde.

On Wednesday Imran Shahid, 29, his brother Zeeshan, 28, and Mohammed Faisal Mushtaq, 27, were found guilty of racially aggravated abduction and murder at the High Court in Edinburgh. They were given 25, 23 and 22 years respectively. The fourth killer, Daanish Zahid, 20, was jailed for 17 years at an earlier trial in December 2004, together with a fifth gang member, Zahid Mohammed, who was given five years for his part in the abduction.

“Now the problem of racial attacks on whites is being taken very seriously, people will listen closer to what we are saying and it could encourage people suffering low-level racial harassment to come forward,” said Griffin.

“We are campaigning very, very hard in Glasgow. The mood is changing and Glasgow is a serious possibility for us to gain a parliamentary seat next year.”

Griffin, 46, provoked outrage when he visited Glasgow shortly after Donald’s murder in March 2004.

He drew comparisons between Pollokshields and Oldham and Bradford, where the party won seats in local authority elections.

Gordon Jackson, MSP for Glasgow Govan, said: “The BNP’s politics are abhorrent, horrible and disgraceful. They are racist and divisive. If they weren’t, why would they want to come to Glasgow in the aftermath of this murder? That very fact is a clear indication that you are dealing with people who have a clear racist bent and who are not good for our community.

“They came to Pollokshields at the time of the Kriss Donald murder and everybody just ignored them and they went away again. I don’t think they have any real support in Glasgow or Scotland.”

Meanwhile, Pakistani police have revealed the depths to which Donald’s killers stooped to avoid being extradited to Britain. Imran Shahid, the ringleader of the gang, had claimed at his trial that he had volunteered to return to Britain.

However, it has been revealed that, after his arrest in Lahore, Shahid falsely claimed that Donald and his gang had attacked and raped Muslim women. “He begged us to release him, saying it would ruin his life,” said a police source.

“He told us Donald and his gang members used to cheat Muslim girls, they used to trap them and rape them.”

A friend of the Donald family said: “Making up claims like these just demonstrates the appalling way that Shahid tried to justify his actions. He is an evil man.”

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