It was the image that divided social media in the hours after the Westminster terror attack as a Muslim woman apparently walked past victims whilst looking at her phone.

Now it can be revealed that one of the accounts which prompted the misleading image to go viral and fueled a racist backlash was actually a troll backed by the Russian Government.

It is one of a series of tweets from 2016 and 2017 which show for the first time how a network of Kremlin-backed accounts posted a number of anti-immigration and pro-Brexit messages around the time of the referendum and in the wake of major terror attacks.

In the case of the Westminster Bridge attack, the user @SouthLoneStar, who claimed to be a "Proud TEXAN and AMERICAN patriot", posted just one of a series of images of the women in a hijab with the message: "Muslim woman pays no mind to the terror attack, casually walks by a dying man while checking phone #PrayForLondon #Westminster #BanIslam".

The account has now been identified by Twitter in evidence to the US congress as being backed by the Russians.

The reaction that the tweet provoked at the time of the attack in March, in which five people were killed by Khalid Masood before he was shot dead by armed police, prompted the woman release a statement through Tell Mama, a group which monitors hate incidents against Muslims.