Families fighting for shorter sentences for the jailed Bradford rioters are featured in a new BBC documentary next week.

'Trouble Up North' follows the campaigners who say five-year sentences were too long for their loved ones.

They say they should not have been charged with riot, which led to the long sentences imposed.

One woman says: "My little brother has gone for five years. What for? For throwing two stones."

But the Chief Prosecutor of West Yorkshire, Neil Franklin, hits back saying the charge of riot was fair.

"Terror reigned that night," he says during the 40-minute documentary due to go out on Monday, on BBC2 at 11.20pm.

"You cannot look at what one person does in isolation in a riot."

The programme was given a special screening in Bradford at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television yesterday for an invited audience.

It opened with flashbacks to the violence on the night of July 7, 2001, then followed the families of some of the arrested and jailed men who have set up the Fair Justice Campaign.

The programme shows the weekly protests outside Bradford Crown Court and a visit to London to hand in a petition to the Home Office.

Actor Art Malik turns out to support them.

Producer Faris Kermani, pictured, told the T&A: "I think that some of the sentencing is a bit harsh. But I think the people responsible should be punished for what they did.

"I have tried to draw a fine balance between putting across the families' views and those affected by the sentencing and the line of the police and the judiciary.

"For the violence that happened after 7.30pm in Oak Lane there was no justification - not in Britain. There are other ways of protesting to make yourself heard.

"But nobody expected that type of sentencing. People had given themselves up, they had no police record and perhaps the courts should have had a more lenient view of that."

Executive producer Aaqil Ahmed, who has family in Bradford, promised to make the documentary after being invited to one of the campaigners' early meetings.

"There was incredible passion and a real sense of injustice," he says.

"I knew one of the men arrested and he was not a troublemaker. He just happened to be caught up in the events."

After the screening, campaigner Zahida Khan, whose brother was jailed for four years in May this year, accused the Crown Prosecution Service of being the "bad guys" and said it needed to meet the families and explain its decision.

"We handed our lads in, no-one came knocking at the doors, there were no big searches. But we didn't get justice," she said.

The campaigners are currently drawing up a group appeal against the sentences for a judge to consider.

Little Horton ward councillor, and Labour Group leader, Ian Greenwood said: "It was a balanced film which indicates the pain the families are in. I hope we have all learned lessons for the future."