Amazon row over 'rape' T-shirt

Amazon has yet to respond to a BBC request for a comment

Internet retailer Amazon is continuing to list clothes from a US firm despite a row over a T-shirt printed with the message: "Keep calm and rape a lot."

On Friday, US company Solid Gold Bomb apologised for selling the T-shirt and removed it from sale, saying a listing was automatically generated in error.

Earlier on Saturday the firm had T-shirts for sale with messages including "keep calm and hit her".

An Amazon statement said later "those items are not available for sale".

The T-shirts are based on the World War II wartime propaganda slogan "keep calm and carry on".

Among the 8,425 T-shirts still offered for sale by the company on the Amazon site at 12:00 GMT on Saturday were those with the slogans "keep calm and knife her" and "keep calm and grope a lot".

By 14:00 GMT, all items listed for sale by Solid Gold Bomb were unavailable to buy with visitors unable to click on the "add to basket" button.

Solid Gold Bomb said any offensive items were "certainly in the deletion queue and will be removed as soon as the processing is complete".

'Mellow-harsher'

The sale of the T-shirts has been criticised by former Labour deputy leader Lord Prescott, who said on Twitter: "First Amazon avoids paying UK tax. Now they're make money from domestic violence."

Times journalist and author Caitlin Moran tweeted: "Wow. Keep Calm & Hit Her T-shirts on Amazon. What a massive mellow-harsher."

In Friday's statement, Solid Gold Bomb said it had been "informed of the fact that we were selling an offensive T-shirt primarily in the UK".

It added: "This has been immediately deleted as it was and had been automatically generated using a scripted computer process running against hundreds of thousands of dictionary words."

The company said it accepted "the responsibility of the error and our doing our best to correct the issues at hand.

"We're sorry for the ill-feeling this has caused."