Shock jock Michael Savage on UK’s ‘least wanted’ list

The ultra-right-wing San Francisco talk radio host Michael Savage is one of 22 people the Home Office refused to allow to enter Britain in the five-month period between October and March, according to a list published today.

Savage, the pseudonym for Michael Alan Weiner, is the so-called 'shock jock' who has frequently denounced the notion of a multicultural American society. He has said, among other things, that women who wear the burqua are "hateful Nazis" and that "all the turbaned folks are going to find out all over again just how vicious the white male can really be. They keep provoking this nation, they're going to wind up with a mushroom cloud over their country."

The 'least wanted' list features 16 of the 22 people banned from Britain because they promote hatred, terrorism or other criminal activity. The other six undesirables have not been named for fear that doing so would reveal the sort of information being held on them.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said that by naming and shaming 16 of the unwanted characters the world would clearly

be able to see what sort of beliefs the British government will not tolerate. "Coming to this country is a privilege," Smith said. "We won't allow people into this country who are going to propagate the sort of views... that fundamentally go against our values."

The list, which reads like a Who's Who of hate, also names Ku Klux Klan leaders, neo-Nazis and Islamic and Jewish extremists. However it has sparked anger among some free speech campaigners, and the Muslim Council of Great Britain says the ban on certain speakers amounts to "mind policing".

"If they step over the line and break the law, it's at that moment the law should be enacted, not beforehand," a spokesman for the council told BBC Radio 5 Live. "If people are keeping their odious views to themselves, that's their business. We should not be in the business of policing people's minds."

BRITAIN’S LEAST WANTED

Michael Alan Weiner aka Michael Savage. Right-wing US author and radio talk show host whose 'The Savage Nation' programme has continuously courted controversy.

Abdullah Qadri Al Ahdal, Amir Siddique and Wadgy Abd El Hamied Mohamed Ghoneim. Extremist Muslim preachers.

Yunis Al Astal. Muslim Cleric and Hamas MP who gave a sermon in 2008 saying that Rome would become an Islamic outpost in the war against the West and in 2007 urged Palestinian women to become suicide bombers, calling Jews "the brothers of apes and pigs".

Samir Al Quntar. Lebanese militant and former member of the Palestine Liberation Front, notorious for the 1979 murders of an Israeli policeman and a father and his two young daughters. Released from an Israeli jail in 2008 as part of an Israel-Hezbollah prisoner exchange.

Stephen Donald Black. Former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard and leading member of the American Nazi Party who launched an attempted military takeover of the Dominican Republic in 1981. Founder and webmaster of white supremacy website Stormfront.

Erich Gliebe. Former boxer who occasionally fought under the name 'The Aryan Barbarian'. Now the leader of American fascist group, the National Alliance.

Mike Guzovsky. Also known as Ben Yaccov. Jewish extremist and former leader of the now outlawed Kahane Chai movement in Israel which declared its support for bomb scares in 1994 when explosives were placed outside the offices of American-Jewish groups who supported the Middle East peace process.

Safwat Hijazi. Muslim extremist who broadcasts on Egyptian television and has expressed his desire that Egypt should be turned into an exclusively Islamic state.

Nasr Javed. Accused of training Tamil Tiger suicide bombers in Sri Lanka.

Abdul Ali Musa. American former drug dealer who converted to Islam while in prison and has since suggested that Jewish extremists were solely responsible for the American slave trade and the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Fred Waldron Phelps Snr. Extremist Christian preacher and pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas which argues that ‘God hates fags’. Infamous for picketing the funerals of American soldiers.

Shirley Phelps-Roper. Daughter or Fred Waldron Phelps Snr and chief spokesperson for the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas.

Artur Ryno and Pavel Skachevsky. Young leaders of a Russian skinhead group. Convicted in December 2008 of murdering 20 'non-Russians' and attempting to murder 12 more. Believed to have stabbed to death as many as 40 people in an effort to 'cleanse Moscow' of 'inferior non-Slavs'.