The UK Government minister responsible for security, Baroness Neville-Jones was in Washington and is reported to have requested the US to order American websites hosting al-Qaeda videos to remove them citing that the sites incite murder and would be banned in the UK.

A student Roshonara Choudhry, 21, was said to have been inspired by a cleric linked to the air cargo bomb plot. She was found guilty of attempting to murder MP Stephen Timms and awaits sentencing.

Choudhry, who was angry over the Iraq war, was said to have watched online sermons by Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American Muslim cleric of Yemeni descent. More than 5,000 videos featuring Mr Awlaki are available on YouTube.

According to the Daily Telegraph, Ministers were angry that the US failed to regulate American-based sites that hosted the extremist videos, including YouTube.

More than 5,000 postings featuring Awlaki's videos were available on YouTube. In one sermon, titled 44 Ways to Support Jihad, he tells followers: "Jihad today is obligatory on every capable Muslim."

Baroness Neville-Jones called on President Barack Obama's administration to "take down this hateful material" in cases where servers were based in the US. She said websites that "incite cold-blooded murder" would "categorically not be allowed in the UK".

YouTube says it was looking into the Awlaki videos and would “remove all those which break our rules”.

He said the website had “community guidelines that prohibit dangerous or illegal activities such as bomb-making, hate speech or incitement to commit specific and serious acts of violence”.

The firm removed all videos from accounts “registered by a member of a designated foreign terrorist organisation”.

A Facebook page set up in the name of Awlaki had been taken down.

Update

A search of You Tube for Anwar al-Awlaki now only returns "about 4590 results". This may suggest that some clips have been removed after review by You Tube censors.

I can see that headline now "You Tube Censor Goes Postal" ...