Police investigators are looking into claims that the popular BlackBerry Messenger had a role in the riots that have besieged London for three days.

Scotland Yard vowed to track down and arrest protesters who posted "really inflammatory, inaccurate" messages on the social media service and other social networking Web sites including Twitter and Facebook.

A number of politicians and members of the police force have suggested that rioters used BlackBerry Messenger and Twitter to organize the riots.

Patrick Spence, the managing director regional marketing at Research In Motion, confirmed that Research in Motion, BlackBerry's manufacturer, would cooperate with any police investigation,

"We feel for those impacted by the riots in London. We have engaged with the authorities to assist in any way we can," Spence said. He added that the company would comply fully with British legislation on the interception of communication.

Unlike Twitter's visible feeds, BlackBerry Messenger is a private social network where the messages are encrypted meaning that authorities can't track down who sent them. Authorities believe this is the first time that a riot was organized using BlackBerry Messenger.

RIM can legally be ordered to hand over private user details to police but the manufacturer has insisted that even it cannot decrypt user messages when sent on the devices.

Evidence of rioters inciting people to join were posted on various social networks and seemed to originate from BBM. A BBM text posted last night urged protesters to go to Stratford and join the looters.

"If you're down for making money, we're about to go hard in east london tonight, yes tonight!!" it said. "I don't care what ends you're from, we're personally inviting you to come and get it in. Police have taken the piss for too long and to be honest I don't know why its taken so long for us make this happen. We need a minimum of 200 hungry people. We're not broke, but who says no to free stuff. Doesn't matter if the police arrive cos we'll just chase dem out because as you've seen on the news, they are NOT ON DIS TING. Everyone meet at 7 at stratford park and let's get rich."

"Social media and other methods have been used to organise these levels of greed and criminality," said Steve Kavanagh, deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police in a press conference. He added that the inflammatory messages on Twitter were to blame for the riots. He also said that those behind the messages should be arrested and an investigation was already under way.