LONDON (Reuters) - Two years ago, Omar Bakri Mohammed was banned from Britain after the government ruled that the so-called "preacher of hate" was not conducive to the public good in the aftermath of the July 2005 London bombings.
Bakri, who gained notoriety when he referred to the hijackers behind the September 11, 2001 attacks as the "magnificent 19", had become the embodiment of the radical clerics the government believed were poisoning the minds of young Muslims.
Even from his new home in Lebanon, the Syrian-born Bakri's influence is still regularly mentioned in newspaper articles and prosecutors have described him as a leading influence for many convicted of terrorism offences in recent British trials.
Outlining new counter-terrorism measures on Wednesday, Prime Minister Gordon Brown made "tackling radicalisation and those promoting hate" a major focus point.
However the bearded and bespectacled Bakri, a 49-year-old father of six, says his absence, rather than helping Britain to stop the radicalisation of Muslims, has made matters worse.
He claims the British government and security services had failed to realise that preachers from groups such as his banned al-Muhajiroun (AM) and al-Gurabaa organisations had held back disaffected young Muslims from violence.
"I was able to control the youth for years after the Bosnia war, Chechnya war, Kashmir war, Iraqi war, Afghan war -- I was always able to channel the anger in demonstration, in talks, in confrontation," he told Reuters by telephone.
"The government should benefit from my services there. They should benefit that somebody is able to control the youth not by saying to them 'love the queen, long live the queen'.
"No, they would never respect me, not by saying obey God and do not violate the sanctity of people, Muslim or non-Muslim."
Bakri had lived in Britain for 20 years before the government announced he was not welcome back after he left for a holiday in August 2005.
The British and U.S. authorities say that for years Bakri and his AM colleague Abu Hamza al-Masri, currently serving a seven jail term for inciting his followers to commit murder, spread hatred from London's Finsbury Park Mosque.
Just some of those said to have been influenced by the duo are convicted September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and jailed shoe-bomber Richard Reid.
A group of Britons jailed earlier this year for plotting to carry out fertiliser-based bomb attacks on clubs and shopping centres were radicalised by Bakri, their trial was told.
Despite this, Bakri has sometimes been presented in the media as a joke, partly because of his heavy Middle Eastern accent.
However Ed Hussain, a former follower of Bakri who wrote a book on how he had been radicalised, said his message was sinister while a British security source said the cleric would not have been excluded if he wasn't taken seriously.
