(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-02-03 10:11

LONDON -- London police bugged a British Muslim lawmaker as he met with a constituent in prison, a newspaper reported. A government minister has ordered an inquiry, it said.

The Sunday Times said the Metropolitan Police's anti-terrorist squad used a hidden electronic listening device to record two conversations that legislator Sadiq Khan had in 2005 and 2006 with Babar Ahmad, a jailed constituent who is facing deportation to the United States under new extradition laws. At the time, the two men were discussing personal and legal matters, the paper said.

Khan, 37, a lawyer and rising star in Prime Minister Gordon Brown's ruling Labour Party, has tried to help the party win the support of Britain's Muslim minority. Khan is also a former chairman of Liberty, a human rights group, and once served as a legal adviser to the Muslim Council of Britain.

Jack Straw, the government's justice secretary, was quoted by The Sunday Times as saying that he has ordered an immediate inquiry and that it would be "unacceptable" for such a bugging operation to take place.

In an interview with the paper, Andrew Mackinlay, another Labour lawmaker, called the reported bugging "dangerous" and "an affront to democracy that has all the hallmarks of a totalitarian regime."

Mackinlay said that a member of Parliament's right to privately discuss a constituent's liberty should be as sacrosanct as that of a lawyer discussing a legal case with a client.

The US government has accused Ahmad of running a website that raised funds for Taliban and Chechen extremists in the late 1990s. Ahmad faces no charges in Britain, but is wanted in the United States because his website is registered there, The Sunday Times said.

London police secretly recorded both his conversations with Khan at the Woodhill prison in Milton Keynes, a town west of London, the paper said.