By Dominic Casciani BBC News Online community affairs reporter

Relatives of more than 100 Asian men jailed over the 2001 Bradford riots are asking the home secretary to explain why so many of their sons or husbands have received such severe sentences.

Mothers, sisters and wives protested outside the Home Office in London on Tuesday, saying Bradford's Asian community was reeling from the number of men who were now behind bars.

Families want to know why the courts are doing this to a community which thought that it was helping in delivering justice

Zahida Khan, campaigner

Some 1,500 relatives are now involved in the Bradford justice campaign after Mr Blunkett labelled the jail men "maniacs" who should stop "whining".

The riots, mirrored across a number of cities, caused a reported �25m of damage and resulted in injuries to up to 300 police officers.

Approximately 140 sentences have been handed out in Bradford. The average sentence is between four and five years with the maximum so far being eight and a half years.

At least another 100 men are expected to come before the courts.

Zahida Khan: "Families want answers"

Zahida Khan, whose brother Aftab Ahmed, 31, was jailed for four and half years, said families had been devastated by the severity of the sentencing.

"My brother is married with three young children and a fourth on the way," said Mrs Khan. "He was the family bread winner for his family.

"He handed himself in because he was full of remorse, just as many other men did.

"He pleaded guilty to having thrown stones but he has been jailed for such a long time.

"Families want to know why the courts are doing this to a community which thought that it was helping in delivering justice."

'Disproportionate sentences'

The families say that the sentences have proved disproportionate because the majority of those involved had no criminal record and co-operated with the police.

They warn the men will leave prison embittered by the experience, exacerbating strained relations in Bradford.

Lord Herman Ouseley, former chief of the Commission for Racial Equality and an author of one of the Bradford reports, has publicly backed the campaign.

Some 40 cases are heading for the Court of Appeal after it cut a four-year sentence to 18 months in the case of one 17-year-old Imran Ghafoor, one of the first to be jailed.

"The community is not saying that these people should not have been dealt with by the courts," said Mrs Khan.

"But they should have been dealt with proportionately in a way that the men who rioted in Brixton or Manchester at others times were dealt with. The courts have seemingly ignored the fact that there was far-right provocation in the run-up to the rioting."

Home Secretary David Blunkett attacked the campaign earlier this month, saying the "maniacs" who were jailed should stop "whining".

But Suresh Grover of the National Civil Rights Movement, accused Mr Blunkett of prejudicing the cases of the men yet to be tried.

The reports into the rioting in the northern cities said that a disturbing picture of segregated communities living in fear of each other was one of the major sparks for the violence last summer.