The mayor of Enschede has described this weekend’s campaign against plans to build a mosque by far-right group Pegida as being like the work of the Klu Klux Klan.

Onno van Veldhuizen told news agency ANP he is looking into legal options after the anti-Islam movement circulated a video of someone dressed as a priest, spreading pigs blood at the site where a mosque will be built in a fake religious ceremony.

‘This is disgusting. This is not our ethics,’ Van Veldhuizen said. The action is like something that the Klu Klux Klan, he said. ‘If you behave like this with a cross in the early morning, then that is what it reminds me of.’

Mosque spokesman Ferhat Ceri told broadcaster NOS the organisation would not be taking any legal action. ‘We don’t to make more of it than it is, because that is what Pegida wants,’ he said.

Last year, five local men were jailed for throwing a Molotov cocktail at another mosque in the city in what judges said was a terrorist act. Some 30 people, including children, were inside the mosque at the time. No-one was hurt and the mosque was barely damaged.