Anjem Choudary, the notorious Islamist hate preacher, will be released from jail next month despite a chilling warning from the justice minister that he remained “genuinely dangerous”.

Choudary, 51, is due to be freed within weeks after serving half of a five-and-a-half-year prison sentence for encouraging Muslims to join Islamic State.

The Government admitted on Tuesday it was powerless to prevent Choudary from being released on licence. Rory Stewart, the prisons minister, said that the preacher was “a deeply pernicious, destabilising influence”.

Mr Stewart, in an interview, added: “He is... somebody who is a genuinely dangerous person. We will be watching him very carefully.”

Choudary was leader of the proscribed terrorist group al-Muhajiroun, whose followers included Khuram Butt, part of the London Bridge terror cell who murdered eight innocent bystanders in June last year.

Other disciples include Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, the killers of Fusilier Lee Rigby, murdered outside his barracks in south London in 2013.