FORMER Bolton MP Ruth Kelly is believed to be one of the 395 MPs named on a website which encouraged Muslims to kill them because of their support for the war in Iraq.

Police yesterday arrested a 23-year-old student in Birmingham in connection with the internet blog which influenced a student who tried to kill MP Stephen Timms.

The blog, which was removed from an extremist website last week after the Home Office urged the US to act against it, listed all the MPs which voted in favour of the invasion of Iraq and urged supporters to “raise the knife of Jihaad” against them.

Parliamentary voting records show that Ms Kelly, who served in the Cabinet under then-Prime Minister Tony Blair, voted in favour of the Iraq war.

She voted in favour of a motion, in March 2003, which said the government “should use all means necessary to ensure the disarmament of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction”.

Officers from the West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit conducted a search of the man's home address in the Dunstall area of Wolverhampton and arrested him under section one of the Terrorism Act 2006, West Midlands Police said.

The site was among those cited as an influence by Roshonara Choudhry, aged 21, who was jailed for life on Wednesday last week for stabbing East Ham MP Mr Timms twice in the stomach.

Ms Kelly became MP for Bolton West in 1997 and stood down at May’s General Election.

Ms Kelly was last night unavailable for comment last night.