UK Islamist named in leaked list of Ashley Madison members

The name of a radical preacher who is known for his conservative positions on sexual morality and homosexuality has appeared on the leaked list of Ashley Madison members.

Islamic preacher Hamza Andreas Tzortzis, however, denied he was a member of the website, designed to find partners for infidelity – and claims to be the victim of a conspiracy by hackers.

Clarifying the embarrassing accusation in a Facebook post, Tzortis wrote, "It has come to my attention that my details are on the Ashley Madison data leak. This includes my name, address, and bank card details."

Outlining his plans to contact police over the hack, he added, "I am not ruling anything out at the moment, including the possibility of my phone being illegally hacked. Retrospectively speaking, it has shown signs of being hacked.

"It seems that the first transaction was made in Australia when I was there for lectures and courses. It could have been someone who knows me, someone who hates me, or a malicious person who found out who I was. It could be one person or two, they could be working locally, from abroad or both."

Tzortzis is best known for his debates with atheist Richard Dawkins, but he had also made a number of highly controversial statements in the British media in recent years. He has claimed that those who leave Islam ''should be killed'' as well as arguing that beheading is painless. He had also argued in favour of setting up an Islamic caliphate.

But Tzortzis' reasoning has not convinced all his followers. Critical comments on his Facebook started disappearing late on Saturday night and breitbart.com claimed to have taken screenshots of some of the more critical ones before they disappeared altogether, which most had as of Sunday morning.

In screen shot dated 2015-08-23 at 10.51.03, one critic said, ''So Hamza, you are claiming that some guy knew all of your private information and wanted to screw with you so he created a fake account on Ashley Madison. This guy then paid hundreds of dollars to maintain the account for 9 months. This account was then used to make transactions at locations where you were also present at the time. Then the ultimate plan was to hack the Ashley Madison database and release 40 million users so you could be exposed. Am I getting this right?''

Hackers have dumped online personal details of over a million users of infidelity website AshleyMadison.com after the latest high-profile cyber attack, threatening to strain relationships across the globe.(See: Hackers dump details of over a million users of AshelyMadison.com online).