By DANIEL BATES

Last updated at 09:38 11 December 2007

Samurai swords are to be outlawed under a government crackdown.

Possessing, manufacturing or importing the weapon will all be banned, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith will announce this week.

The penalty for breaching the law will be a minimum of six months in prison and a fine of £5,000.

The move will be seen as an attempt to counter the rise in popularity of Samurai swords among violent criminals.

For some it has become the weapon of choice.

Home Office figures show there have been nearly 100 crimes involving the sword since 2003 and at least six people have been murdered by them.

The only exemptions to the new laws will be genuine historical artefacts as used by collectors and martial arts clubs.

Among the crimes where Samurai swords were involved was that involving former Lib Dem MP Nigel Jones.

He was set upon in 2000 by Robert Ashman, who was wielding the weapon.

Although Mr Jones survived with horrific injuries his parliamentary aide Andrew Pennington was killed after being stabbed six times.

Earlier this year drug addict Hugh Penrose was jailed for at least 19 years for slashing a 21-year-old woman with a samurai sword and running her over.

Another case was Bradley Moran who was jailed for 17 years for killing a man with a Samurai sword after a row in a nightclub.

Only two months ago thieves armed with a similar weapon robbed a security van of £40,000 in Northampton.

Currently it is legal to buy Samurai swords and they are easily available in martial arts shops and on the internet.

The only restriction is they cannot be carried in a public place, the penalty for which is a maximum jail sentence of four years.

In March this year the government published a consultation paper called 'Banning Offensive Weapons'. It proposed outlawing all Samurai swords, although now is the first time firm plans will be put forward to do so.

In the last knife amnesty in 2006 a clutch of Samurai swords were among the 90,000 weapons handed in.

These events, however, have failed to stop the seemingly inexorable rise in knife crime.

Last month figures released under the Freedom of Information Act revealed a knife crime every 24 minutes of the day.

Samurai swords have been used in a number of violent films in recent years including Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill series, which featured scenes of people having limbs hacked off by Uma Thurman as she wielded the blade.

A Home Office spokeswoman said: "The Home Secretary will be making a statement to Parliament later this week.

"Part of that will include proposals to ban the possession of Samurai swords as well as manufacturing and importing them."