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French comedian targets Queen

A French comedian has given the Queen a controversial "quenelle" salute after Britain banned him.

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Source: AAP


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French comedian Dieudonne M'bala M'bala has answered Britain's decision to ban him from entry by giving the Queen his trademark Nazi-like salute.

The comic, who has a string of convictions for hate speech in his homeland, performed the stiff-armed gesture after naming the Queen in a rant during a show in the Swiss town of Nyon.

Britain's interior ministry earlier on Monday said it had slapped an exclusion order on 47-year-old Dieudonne, who had said he planned to visit his friend, French footballer, Nicolas Anelka, on the grounds of public security.

Dieudonne invented the allegedly anti-semitic "quenelle" gesture that Anelka used during a goal celebration in December, landing the striker with a charge from English footballing authorities.

"We can confirm that Mr Dieudonne is subject to an exclusion order," a Home Office spokeswoman said in a statement.

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"The home secretary (Theresa May) will seek to exclude an individual from the UK if she considers that there are public policy or public security reasons to do so."

British media last week quoted Dieudonne as saying that he was planning to perform a show in Britain and hold a press conference in support of Anelka, a former international on a stint with West Bromwich Albion.

Britain has used exclusion orders on rare occasions in recent years to keep out public figures deemed as having extreme views.

The "quenelle" is Dieudonne's trademark stiff-armed gesture that critics say is a disguised Nazi salute but that he defends as a generic "up yours" to the French establishment.

Some followers of Dieudonne have been photographed doing the quenelle at sites including Auschwitz, synagogues and outside a Jewish school in Toulouse where a rabbi and three children were shot dead by Islamist gunman Mohamed Merah in 2012.


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