Law lords uphold ban on Farrakhan

Three law lords have upheld a government ban preventing the controversial political leader Louis Farrakhan from entering Britain.

The judges gave no reason for their decision yesterday, but said the leader of the Nation of Islam – whose aims include "the regeneration of black self-esteem and a separate state for US blacks – should have no further right of appeal.

Mr Farrakhan, 69, won a court fight last October to prove that his exclusion from Britain was a breach of his human rights. But the Government overturned the ruling at the Court of Appeal.

Britain has banned him from visiting since the 1980s. It says Mr Farrakhan, who once described Judaism as a "gutter religion", could stir ethnic strife with what Home Office lawyers have called his "anti-Semitic and racially divisive views". Mr Farrakhan's lawyers argued last year that he was now "an extremely prominent spiritual, religious and social leader". But a Home Office lawyer countered that "to allow such a person into the country would pose a significant threat to community and public order".

Mr Farrakhan arrived in Zimbabwe last Friday, where he reportedly backed President Robert Mugabe's policy of seizing white-owned farms.