EDL leader Stephen Lennon pleaded guilty to possession of a false identity document with improper intention after entering the US illegally. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
The leader of the English Defence League has been jailed for 10 months for using someone else's passport to travel to the United States.

Stephen Lennon, 30, pleaded guilty to possession of a false identity document with improper intention, contrary to the Identity Documents Act 2010, at Southwark crown court in London.

The court heard Lennon, who had previously been refused entry to the US, used his friend Andrew McMaster's passport to travel to New York in September. He used a self-check-in kiosk to board the flight at Heathrow, and was allowed through when the document was checked in the bag-drop area.

But when he arrived at JFK, customs officials who took his fingerprints realised he was not McMaster. Lennon was asked to attend a second interview but left the airport, entering the US illegally.

He stayed one night and travelled back to the UK using his own passport, which bears the name Paul Harris. The EDL leader uses several aliases.

The court heard he was jailed for assault in 2005 and has previous convictions for drugs offences and public order offences.

Judge Alistair McCreath told him on Monday: "I am going to sentence you under the name of Stephen Lennon, although I suspect that is not actually your true name, in the sense that it is not the name that appears on your passport.

"You knew perfectly well that you were not welcome in the United States. You knew that because you tried before and you had not got in, and you knew the reason for that – because, rightly or wrongly, the US authorities do not welcome people in their country who have convictions of the kind that you have.

"With that full knowledge, you equipped yourself with a passport. I am told that it was given you by way of a loan from your friend Andrew McMaster, to which you bore, I am told, some resemblance. And by use of that passport you did what you could to get into the United States."

He said Lennon had used his own passport to flee the US to "avoid the consequences that would have fallen upon you had you been caught by the authorities in America".