THE first arrests of extremist clerics planned for next week will test how successfully the Government can swiftly deport the “preachers of hate” under rules announced yesterday.

Charles Clarke is preparing to act against a number of individuals despite warnings, including one from a UN official, that the deportations will breach Britain’s human rights obligations.

The Home Secretary accused the UN of being too preoccupied with the rights of terrorists when it should be more concerned about their victims.

He dismissed criticism by Manfred Nowak, the UN’s special rapporteur on torture, of the new powers which will make it easier to get rid of undesirables from Britain.

Mr Clarke said: “The human rights of those people who were blown up on the Tube in London on July 7, are, to be quite frank, more important than the human rights on the people who committed those acts.” He announced that a new list of unacceptable behaviours allowing him to deport people is now in force.

But the Home Secretary has dropped a plan that expressing extreme views which the Government considers in conflict with Britain’s culture of tolerance should be included in the rules. Home Office sources said this was considered to be too wide a reason for deportation.

Officials in the Home Office are studying a number of names, including those foreign imams, whom they hope to expel on the ground that these men first entered Britain on false identity documents.

Even if Mr Clarke orders the deportation of an individual, the person has a right of appeal which is likely to result in the removal being delayed for up to two years.

At least one of these clerics is understood to come from Pakistan and British diplomats have been in contact with officials in Islamabad over the expected expulsions.

Mr Clarke said yesterday that the list of undesirables includes high-profile Islamic militants. “We have got the names that are widely in the public domain at the moment,” he said.

The “names” are believed to include Muhammad al-Massari, the Saudi-born dissident whose London-based radio station backs suicide attacks on British soldiers in Iraq. Dr al-Massari, who has lived in Britain since 1994, shows footage on his website of a suicide bombing of a checkpoint in which three Black Watch soldiers were killed.

A team of immigration officials, police and the security services have compiled the list of clerics, website operators, youth leaders and teachers.

The Home Office says that Muslim leaders helped them to identify these undesirables, but officials refuse to name the Islamic groups involved.

Mr Clarke said: “The mainstream Muslim community is very clear that it does not want these kinds of people in the country. They are telling us loud and clear.”

The main Islamic associations, such as the Muslim Council and the Muslim College, last night denied playing any role in drawing up the list.

Mohammad Shahid Raza, who is head of training imams at the Muslim College, said: “We are concerned about this. We don’t expect things like this in Britain. The danger is that some young men who followed an imam who is suddenly expelled with no reason given may take their anger on to the streets.”

Mr Raza said that more than 80 per cent of imams preaching here are from abroad. He said the new trend at some radical mosques is for young Britons to deliver firebrand sermons at Friday prayers.

“By day they are IT specialists but it is men like this who are stirring up trouble when they preach,” he said. The Muslim Association urged Mr Clarke to allow Islamic communities to police their mosques, arguing that they successfully ousted a notorious radical cleric from the Finsbury Park mosque in North London.

Among the other high- profile names believed to be on Mr Clarke’s list is Yasser al-Siri, the Egyptian who allegedly runs an extremist website from his home in West London.

He has said that lawyers will prevent him from being sent back to Cairo where the authorities accuse him of taking part in an assassination attempt against a former prime minister in 1993.

The US authorities have also failed to extradite him.

THE GOVERNMENT’S POWERS

Foreigners could already be excluded or deported if they were deemed a threat to:

Or involved in war crimes or crimes against humanity

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