A Polish Catholic priest with a history of antisemitic and Islamophobic statements has been prevented from entering the UK.

Jacek Międlar was among three Polish nationals stopped by border authorities on Saturday morning.

They were due to speak at a rally held in Birmingham by far-right group Britain First.

The group’s deputy leader, Jayda Fransen, told IBTimes UK: “They have not committed any crime, it’s completely ridiculous.”

Around 200 people attended the rally in the centre of the city on Saturday afternoon.

The 28-year-old priest, from Wroclaw in east Poland, has developed a large following in his native country among nationalists.

He has repeatedly denied Polish antisemitism or the role which Poland played in the Holocaust, accusing Jews of “anti-Polish narrative building” as part of a “Holocaust industry”.

In 2016, he was reported to have referred to Jews as “a cancer which swept Poland”. On his blog he has also referred to Islam as “the enemy” and to “the destruction of the ‘white man’.”

His local Catholic church has reportedly suspended him.

It is not the first time Międlar has been barred from entering the UK. In February he was detained at Stansted airport on his way to a Britain First rally in Shropshire.

He later published a post on his blog claiming that he had been stopped by the “Jewish secret service”.