A girls’ primary school has suspended its deputy headteacher after concerns were raised over a series of offensive tweets that emerged in the man’s name.

Imam Abdullah Patel is at the heart of a controversy after his appearance on the BBC debate last night with candidates vying to be the next prime minister.

He questioned Conservative leadership hopefuls over the issue of Islamophobia.

However, the BBC has faced criticism over his appearance after a series of tweets that have been attributed to him emerged and were criticised as being anti-semitic.

Now Al-Ashraf Primary School, in Gloucester, has announced that Mr Patel has been suspended from his role as deputy head.

A statement on the school’s website from the chair of the Al-Madani Trust, Yakub Patel, said: “Following some of the comments attributed to Mr Patel in the media this morning, the trust has decided to suspend him from all school duties with immediate effect until a full investigation is carried out.

“The school and ‘trust do not share the views attributed to him.”

‘Extremely disturbing’ tweets

The school’s website says that Al-Ashraf Primary School has been providing national curriculum-based education in keeping with Islamic morals and ethics to primary school students since September 2006.

Tweets attributed to Mr Patel said: “Every Political figure on the Zionist’s payroll is scaring the world about Corbyn. They don’t like him. He seems best suited to tackle them!”

He also shared an image endorsing the relocation of Israel to the US as a way of solving the Israel/Palestine conflict.

Rob Burley, who edited the BBC programme, said Mr Patel’s Twitter account had been deactivated ahead of his appearance on the BBC debate - meaning his tweets could not be read.

He said: “It was AFTER the show that Mr Patel reactivated his account, revealing his tweets.

“We wouldn’t have put him on the programme if these were public before broadcast, but they were not. We also carried out a number of other routine checks which didn’t uncover anything untoward.”

Mr Patel has taken down his Twitter account again after the past tweets came to light.

Earlier today, BBC Radio 5 Live presenter Nicky Campbell, who had Mr Patel on his breakfast show, apologised and said the imam had made “extremely disturbing” remarks on Twitter and that he was “sorry” the broadcaster had not checked beforehand.

Campbell tweeted: “I would like to apologise. We had the Imam from the BBC Tory leadership debate on our programme this morning.”