

Shams-Ul-Huda Khan Misbahi on ITV's Exposure

CLERICS from four of Britain’s mosques are under investigation after being caught on camera agreeing to conduct secret marriage ceremonies involving girls as young as 14.

They include a senior Muslim leader who has advised police on community cohesion and publicly denounced forced marriage and an imam based at the country’s second largest mosque in Birmingham.

Campaigners believe that thousands of British girls, mostly of south Asian origin, are coerced into marriage each year with many sent abroad for the ceremonies.

Undercover reporters from ITV’s Exposure programme have discovered, however, that imams in the UK were also willing to marry underage girls.

Posing as the mother and brother of a 14-year-old girl who they wished to marry to an