British blast Facebook page dedicated to killer

By Zhang Wen

A debate raged in Britain Thursday over whether Facebook should take down a page dedicated to a murderer who committed suicide last week after a six-hour standoff with police.

British Prime Minister David Cameron led the condemnation of the tribute page to Raoul Moat, which now has more than 36,000 members, and lawmakers and the media also echoed his call for Face-book to remove the page.

The Internet site has refused, insisting the group, "R.I.P. Raoul Moat You Leg-end!" is a legitimate forum for debate about Moat, who died Saturday after one of Britain's biggest-ever manhunts.

Moat was wanted for killing his ex-girlfriend's boyfriend, gun attacks on her and on a policeman.

According to AFP, Cameron said in the House of Commons on Wednesday that "It is absolutely clear that Raoul Moat was a callous murderer, full stop, end of story. I cannot understand any wave, however small, of public sympathy for this man."

He was responding to a question from Conservative lawmaker Chris Heaton-Harris, who repeated his call Thursday for Facebook to remove the group.

"We don't want to set laws on Facebook at all, but we do want people who are hosting these sites and other pages to have some responsibility," Heaton-Harris told BBC radio.

Britain's top-selling daily, The Sun, dismissed in an editorial the "Facebook morons" idolizing Moat.

The Daily Mail also questioned whether the Facebook page meant "a moral vacuum at the heart of modern Britain."

Michael White, assistant editor at the Guardian, wrote in his blog Thursday that "Clearly, Moat was dangerous and had to be captured, but the scale and media-frenzied tone of the police hunt made me uncomfortable."

Earlier, Angus Moat, Moat's brother, described his horror at the public nature of the fugitive's showdown with police, which was followed live by television networks.

"It was a public execution," the 39-year-old told the BBC. "I'm probably the only person who has ever watched his brother die on live national television in the United Kingdom."

Agencies contributed to this story