YouTube Withdraws Cleric`s Videos
Last week, a British official pressed for the videos to be removed and a New York congressman, Anthony Weiner, sent YouTube a letter listing hundreds of videos featuring the cleric. The requests took on greater urgency after two powerful bombs hidden in cargo planes were intercepted en route from Yemen to Chicago on Friday, with the prime suspect being the Yemen-based group Mr. Awlaki is affiliated with, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
In an e-mail, Victoria Grand, a YouTube spokeswoman, said that the site had removed videos that violated the site`s guidelines prohibiting “dangerous or illegal activities such as bomb-making, hate speech and incitement to commit violent acts,” or came from accounts “registered by a member of a designated foreign terrorist organization,” or used to promote such a group`s interests.
Ms. Grand said that Google, YouTube`s owner, sought to balance freedom of expression with averting calls to violence. “These are difficult issues,” she wrote, “and material that is brought to our attention is reviewed carefully. We will continue to remove all content that incites violence according to our policies. Material of a purely religious nature will remain on the site.”
In an interview, Mr. Weiner said that YouTube gave him a “bureaucratic” response at first, but seemed to take his request more seriously after the bombs were found. “It has become increasingly clear that this guy is an international terrorist that is using their service to do illegal things,” he said.
Britain`s concern over Mr. Awlaki and his group rose sharply on Wednesday with two developments. A young woman who had embraced his cause and watched dozens of hours of his videos was sentenced to life in prison for the attempted murder in May of a prominent legislator, and Theresa May, home secretary in the government of Prime Minister David Cameron, announced that a member of the Yemeni Qaeda group had been arrested earlier in the year in a previously undisclosed bombing plot against the country.
British officials had warned with increasing urgency of the hazards of allowing the al-Awlaki videos to remain posted on YouTube.
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