A British civil servant is in the eye of a controversy for claiming that 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks were not an act of terrorism. Azad Ali, a Treasury official “got into trouble with his Treasury bosses after using his blog to deny that last November’s Mumbai attacks were an act of terrorism,” The Sunday Times reported.

Ali, who has used his internet blog to praise al-Qaeda leaders, sits on a Whitehall counter-terrorism panel that provides advice to Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions. He was investigated earlier this year over his controversial views on the Iraq war and was forced to deny that he sympathised with the killing of British troops.

Ali, an IT worker, has also defended Hizb ut-Tahrir, the radical group intent on creating an Islamic caliphate, and has condemned some moderate Muslims as “vultures feeding on the dead flesh of the Palestinians.”

The report noted that the appointment of a man with such radical views to help guide government policy on terrorist prosecutions had raised concern among some of Starmer’s senior legal colleagues.