The radical cleric Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed will not be allowed to return to Britain from Lebanon, where he is on holiday, the Home Office announced today.

Sheikh Bakri Mohammed, who has lived in North London for 20 years, left Britain for Beirut six days ago, where he said he was visiting his mother.

This morning, the Home Office said the 47-year-old cleric, who has been under police investigation on incitement to murder charges because of his extremist views, would not be allowed back into the UK.

"The Home Secretary has issued an order revoking Omar Bakri Mohammed’s indefinite leave to remain and to exclude him from the UK on the grounds that his presence is not conducive to the public good," said a Home Office spokesman.

Sheikh Bakri Mohammed, who has called the perpetrators of the July 7 bombings the "fantastic four", has 14 days to appeal the decision.

Sheikh Bakri Mohammed, who is Syrian, was granted indefinite leave to remain in Britain in 1993, after coming to London in 1985 from Saudi Arabia, where he was deported for being a member of Hizb ut Tahrir, the radical Islamic group he has continued to promote in speeches across the country.

Syrian officials have given warning that Sheikh Bakri Mohammed could face prosecution if he attempts to return to his homeland. He fled Syria in 1982 after authorities stamped out the Syrian branch of the radical Muslim Brotherhood organisation.

Sheikh Bakri Mohammed left London last Saturday, the day after Tony Blair announced tough new measures to proscribe the activities of "preachers of hate". The Prime Minister said members of al-Muhajiroun, the officially-disbanded group Sheikh Bakri Mohammed has led since 1996, would be arrested.

Supporters of Sheikh Bakri Mohammed, nicknamed the "Tottenham Ayatollah", reacted with dismay to the news of his exclusion from the UK.

"I think it's completely outrageous that the Government can exclude someone simply because they disagree with his views," Anjem Choudary, a close associate of Sheikh Bakri Mohammed, told Sky News. "It seems to be that this is a failure of the freedoms that you espouse."

Mr Choudary said Sheikh Bakri Mohammed would find plenty of support if he remained in the Middle East and that he had already suggested he would not return to Britain if he was not welcome here.

This week the Sheikh said that he intended to return to Britain in four to six weeks and yesterday, he told a Lebanese news channel in Beirut that he had an appointment at a hospital in London for a heart operation later this year.

"I have every right to come back. Britain is my home. My family are there and I have done nothing wrong," he told Future TV.

As he left the television studios he was detained by the Lebanese authorities. A Lebanese prosecutor has since ordered his release, according to judicial sources.

Speaking to Voice of Lebanon radio, Lebanon Justice Minister Charles Rizk said that Sheikh Bakri Mohammed’s case was "purely legal." The country's General Security department has said in a statement that he was being interrogated about the circumstances of his entry to Lebanon. Information Minister Ghazi Aridi said that he was arrested as a "precautionary measure". Under Lebanese law, a suspect can remain in "administrative detention" for up to 96 hours before a decision is made on whether to prosecute him or release him.

Lebanese newspapers reported today that Syria would like Lebanon to hand over the preacher, but this could not be confirmed with the Syrian authorities as today is the Muslim sabbath. He holds Syrian and Lebanese citizenship.

Yesterday the Crown Prosecution Service confirmed that it had compiled a file on Sheikh Bakri Mohammed to investigate whether to charge him with incitement to murder on the basis of his outspoken support for Islamic holy war.

Sheikh Bakri Mohammed, a father of seven, is understood to have received tens of thousands of pounds in benefits payments in his time in the UK and has told followers to claim as much as they can while doing all that they can to allegedly "wage war" against Britain.

In the past, his website has boasted of sending British recruits to fight in Afghanistan and other conflicts such as Kashmir, Bosnia and Chechnya but this stopped once anti-terror laws were brought in after the September 11 attacks which could have seen the site risk prosecution.

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