An American “shock jock” said last night that he was planning legal action against the Government after discovering that he had been on a list of 16 people banned from entering Britain since October.

Michael Savage, who hosts the “Savage Nation” radio show, told the San Francisco Chronicle that he had been defamed and endangered by the decision made by Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary.

“This lunatic . . . is linking me up with Nazi skinheads who are killing people in Russia,” he said. “She’s putting me in a league with Hamas murderers who kill Jews on buses.

“I have never advocated violence. I've been on the air 15 years. My views may be inflammatory, but they're not violent in any way.”

The list of 16 “least wanted” also included the American Baptist pastor Fred Waldron Phelps Sr and his daughter Shirley Phelps-Roper, who have picketed the funerals of Aids victims and claimed that the deaths of American soldiers are a punishment for US tolerance of homosexuality.

Others include Mike Guzovsky, a Jewish militant said to be the leader of a violent group actively involved with military training camps, and Artur Ryno and Pavel Skachevsky, leaders of a Russian skinhead gang that beat migrants and posted films of the attacks on the internet.

Both men are serving 20-year prison sentences.

The Hamas MP Yunis al-Astal has been banned, as has the neo-Nazi Erich Gliebe, who made web broadcasts in which he vilified ethnic minority groups and encouraged the distribution of racist leaflets and posters.

The category of “preachers of hate” — the supposed target of the list — covers the exclusion of Wadgy Abd el-Hamied Mohamed Ghoneim, Abdullah Qadri al-Ahdal, Safwat Hijazi and Amir Siddique.

Six other people on the list have not been identified for security reasons.

Ms Smith said: “I think it’s important that people understand the sorts of values and sorts of standards that we have here, the fact that it’s a privilege to come and the sort of things that mean you won’t be welcome in this country.”

Abu Izzadeen, who was jailed after footage was found showing him calling for the beheading of any Muslim serving in the Army, has been freed after the Court of Appeal agreed to reduce the four-and-a-half-year prison term handed down to him and five other men. Izzadeen, 34, from Leyton, East London, had served less than a quarter of his sentence.

The least wanted:

Abdullah Qadri al-Ahdal, Yunis al-Astal, Samir al-Quntar, Stephen Donald Black, Wadgy Abd el-Hamied Mohamed Ghoneim, Erich Gliebe, Mike Guzovsky, Safwat Hijazi, Nasr Javed, Abdul Ali Musa (previously Clarence Reams), Fred Waldron Phelps Sr, Shirley Phelps-Roper, Artur Ryno, Amir Siddique, Pavel Skachevsky and Michael Alan Weiner (aka Michael Savage)

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