The activist and filmmaker will probably be positioned in solitary confinement for his personal security
A British decide has sentenced right-wing activist Tommy Robinson to 18 months in jail for publishing a documentary containing libelous claims a few Syrian refugee. Robinson claims that he was jailed for “talking the reality.”
Again in 2018, Robinson claimed on social media {that a} Syrian scholar who was attacked at a Yorkshire secondary faculty had a prolonged document of attacking feminine college students. He was sued for libel by the scholar and ordered to pay £100,000 ($128,500) in damages in 2021, and to not repeat the allegations in opposition to the scholar.
Robinson, whose actual title is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, repeatedly breached this order, arguing that he had proof that the Syrian teen had beforehand obtained a police warning for assault. In essentially the most high-profile breach of the order, Robinson performed a documentary movie containing these claims at an indication in London in July.
At a listening to in Woolwich Crown Courtroom in London on Monday, Justice Johnson informed Robinson that “in a democratic society underpinned by the rule of legislation, court docket orders have to be obeyed.”
“No one is above the legislation. No one can decide or select which legal guidelines or which injunctions they obey, or which they don’t,” he said. “Even when they imagine that an injunction is… opposite to their views they have to adjust to the injunction.”
Robinson’s lawyer, Sasha Wass, argued that Robinson felt compelled to broadcast the documentary, as he had uncovered proof that college workers had been paid to remain silent on the Syrian’s historical past of violent conduct. He “acted in the best way that he did, and he accepts his culpability as a result of he passionately believes in free speech, a free press, and an amazing want to show the reality,” she mentioned.
Pleading for leniency, she argued that Robinson must be positioned in solitary confinement for his personal security if jailed. Robinson has served a number of stints in solitary confinement earlier than, and suffered from “signs of trauma, nightmares, [and] melancholy” in consequence, she informed the court docket, quoting from a medical report.
Robinson was handed an 18-month sentence, with the potential of launch after 9 months, Justice Johnson dominated. At no level through the listening to was the factual accuracy of the documentary disputed by Johnson or authorities prosecutors.
In a press release launched after the decision was handed down, Robinson described himself as a “political prisoner.”
“If I’ve to take a seat in jail for talking the reality; Properly I’m simply certainly one of many individuals now that this authorities is imprisoning for issues they are saying,” he mentioned, referring to the handfuls of Britons jailed for posting inflammatory statements on social media throughout nationwide riots following the homicide of three youngsters by a British teenager of Rwandan descent in July.
One in all these prisoners, a 61-year-old man jailed for nearly three years for shouting racist remarks at law enforcement officials, died in jail final week, reportedly by suicide.
Hundreds of individuals attended a protest march in assist of Robinson in London on Saturday. Two individuals have been arrested and one other two have been arrested at a left-wing counter-protest held close by, town’s Metropolitan Police said.
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