The notorious hate preacher and Islamic State recruiter Anjem Choudary, linked to numerous deadly UK attacks, will walk free next month after being jailed just over two years ago.

He was convicted in August 2016 of urging Muslims to support Islamic State terrorists in a series of YouTube videos, after years of openly preaching radical Islam and anti-Western sentiments on the streets and in the mainstream media.

Choudary, 51, was sentenced to five and a half years but will be let out after serving less than half.

London Bridge terrorist Khuram Butt was linked to the network around Choudary, as well as suspected executioner “new Jihadi John” Siddhartha Dhar, failed suicide bomber Omar Sharif, and Brusthom Ziamani, a teenager jailed for 22 years after plotting mass murder in London.

Prisons Minister Rory Stewart said the short sentence was due to a “lack of evidence” but promised MI5 and police will “watch [him] like a hawk” when he is free, to stop him from inciting further attacks.

Speaking to the Evening Standard Tuesday, Mr Stewart said Choudary remained a “deeply pernicious, destabilising influence” and preachers like him would never be reformed.

People with “extremely contorted, dangerous and horrifying views of the world” like Choudary “can’t change”, he said.

When such people cannot be locked up, strict “multi-agency public protection arrangements”, known as MAPPA, were being put in place, including MI5 and police surveillance, satellite tracking, and restrictions on their activities.

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“We have to put a very rich, full, MAPPA wrap around them that includes everything going all the way up to MI5,” he said.

Continuing: “That’s GPS trackers, that’s police, that’s intelligence, watching every movement of their lives and restricting it incredibly closely because I’m in no doubt that these people are highly dangerous.

“Even if they are not themselves making bombs, they are a completely pernicious influence on the people they come into contact with and they need to be kept away from them.”

Mr Stewart also announced plans to train up an “elite corps” of about 25 Muslim clerics who would attempt to deradicalise the growing number of terrorist prisoners.

The imams will undergo a residential training course to learn how to counter radical and violent Islam and will receive advice from former extremists on the best ways to influence hardline Muslims.