Kilroy was here... BBC suspends daytime host

The BBC suspended Robert Kilroy-Silk's morning discussion programme yesterday while investigating a newspaper article in which the presenter described Arabs as "suicide bombers, limb amputators and women repressors".

Mr Kilroy-Silk's remarks, in a column for the Sunday Express, outraged race campaigners and members of the Arab community.

The BBC acted after discussions with the former MP, who presents Kilroy every weekday morning. Greg Dyke, the director general, and Jana Bennett, the director of television, were consulted.

A statement said: "The BBC strongly dissociates itself from the anti-Arab views expressed in an article by Robert Kilroy-Silk in the Sunday Express ... We stress that these comments do not reflect the views of the BBC. The BBC is taking the Kilroy programme off air immediately while we investigate the matter fully."

Guidelines introduced in December last year in the wake of the Hutton inquiry state that freelance writing by staff "should not bring the BBC into disrepute".

A BBC spokeswoman said, although a head of department "should normally" vet articles by staff and freelancers which could present a conflict of interests, this did not appear to have been done in the case of Mr Kilroy-Silk.

The presenter apologised last night saying: "I greatly regret the offence which has been caused by the article published in last weekend's Sunday Express."

He said the article was first written and published in April last year and had been "republished last weekend in error. "When the article was originally published last year, it caused no comment or outcry and, I was told at the time, generated only a couple of letters to the paper.

"I would never have wished it to be republished in this manner and it is not what I would have said today."

He said the article had caused offence because it had been taken out of the context in which he wrote it. "It was originally written as a response to the views of opponents to the war in Iraq that Arab States 'loathe' the West and my piece referred to 'Arab States' rather than 'Arabs'," he said.

"Out of that context, it has obviously caused great distress and offence and I can only reiterate that I very deeply regret that," Mr Kilroy-Silk said.

The Commission for Racial Equality referred the article to the Metropolitan Police to consider whether it was an incitement to racial hatred.

Trevor Phillips, the head of the CRE, said he was pleased that the BBC had taken "prompt and decisive action". "I will be very surprised and disappointed if Robert Kilroy-Silk reappears on the BBC in the near future," he said.

"It would be clear to anyone who read the article that it was abusive and offensive, the sort of rant you would not expect even on a bad Friday night out at the Dog and Duck.

"There are standards of journalism which involve not abusing people who have done nothing wrong or misusing the power as a columnist. I am very pleased Greg Dyke has done this. Something is very wrong at Express Newspapers. This should never ever have gone to print."

Iqbal Sacranie, the chairman of the Muslim Council of Britain, said the suspension was welcomed by British Arabs and Muslims as well as the wider community. Mr Sacranie said: "All right-thinking people in this country will be relieved that the BBC is treating this matter in a prompt and serious way. Robert Kilroy-Silk brought the BBC into disrepute with his gratuitous and racist anti-Arab rant."

This weekend the Sunday Express will print an answer, by Inayat Bunglawala, the media secretary of the MCB, to Mr Kilroy-Silk's article.