Botswana latest country to ban controversial anti-gay priest Steven Anderson

The government of Botswana has confirmed it will deport a controversial US priest who has sparked outrage for his views on homosexuality. Steven Anderson is to be deported one week after he was barred from entering South Africa.

He was arrested after doing a radio interview in Botswana's capital, Gaborone, in which he said gay people should be "stoned to death".

Botswana has outlawed homosexuality, which is punishable with imprisonment for up to seven years, according to section 164 of the country's penal code.

However, President Ian Khama said his country does not allow hate speech. Thus he ordered the arrest and deportation of Anderson, Reuters reported.

"He was picked up at the radio station. I said they should pick him up and show him out of the country," Khama told Reuters. "We don't want hate speech in this country. Let him do it in his own country."

Anderson runs the Faithful Word Baptist Church, which considers homosexuality as an abomination punishable by the death penalty. The church, founded in Arizona, has been listed as an anti-gay hate group.

Anderson has often called for a genocide of LGBT people and defined gay people as "sodomites who recruit through rape and molestation".

Earlier this year, he drew widespread criticism after praising the gun attack in a gay club in Orlando, Florida, that left 49 people dead in June. The pastor said: "There's 50 less paedophiles in this world".

After his visa to South Africa was rejected, Anderson wrote on his Facebook page: "I have been banned from South Africa AND the United Kingdom. I am not even allowed to have a connecting flight in London. I feel sorry for people who live in South Africa, but thank God we still have a wide open door in Botswana. Stand by for reports of MULTITUDES saved in Botswana, where religious freedom still exists."

In 2014, he claimed the world could be free from Aids if all LGBT people were executed. Referring to a passage contained in the Leviticus, he said: "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, even both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them.

"And that, my friend, is the cure for Aids. It was right there in the Bible all along - and they're out spending billions of dollars in research and testing. It's curable - right there. Because if you executed the homos like God recommends, you wouldn't have all this AIDS running rampant."

In 2009, Anderson allegedly prayed to God for the US President Barack Obama to die. In the same year, a member of his church, Christopher Broughton, went to an Obama appearance in Phoenix while carrying an assault rifle and a pistol.