Campaigners claim it is the fifth programme on the subject produced by the BBC in three years presented by a pro-euthanasia campaigner or sympathiser.

BBC: Sir Terry Pratchett unswayed by assisted suicide film

Correspondents say Mr Babitsky's in-depth reports on the Chechen situation have long angered the Russian authorities, who have accused him of being a rebel sympathiser and collaborator.

BBC: Babitsky speaks of 'Russian captivity'

The feeling that he is a Labour sympathiser has been strengthened by the fact that his wife is standing as a Labour candidate in the local elections in London.

ECONOMIST: The campaign in Buckingham

Elizabeth Dole, Mr Bush's closest competitor, has been similarly obvious, but can at least prosper by association with her husband, Bob Dole, who is a long-time sympathiser with the Kosovo Albanians.

ECONOMIST: Suddenly, a pre-primary electability indicator

That came just a month before his marriage to Sally Illman - a Labour sympathiser to whom he became engaged earlier in the year - and two months before his 40th birthday.

BBC: Profile: John Bercow

Mr Connerly's detractors have accused him of everything from McCarthyism to self-hatred to being a Ku Klux Klan sympathiser, but he seems untainted by the paranoid self-righteousness that is so common on the American right.

ECONOMIST: Ward Connerly��s trumpet blast