2024-10-28 15:49:00
A leading figure of the far right in the United Kingdom, he is the bane of British authorities who accuse him of stoking communal tensions in the country. Arrested and remanded in custody on Friday, Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was sentenced this Monday to eighteen months in prison for repeating anti-immigration remarks. On four occasions, the 41-year-old activist had “knowingly breached” a 2021 order prohibiting him from repeating defamatory comments against a Syrian refugee who had won a case against him.
At the hearing, the co-founder of the English Defense League pleaded guilty, nodding and answering “yes” when the judge asked him if he admitted the crimes. Arrested for contempt of court, Tommy Ronbinson was also accused of refusing to provide the passcode to his cell phone. Thousands of protesters gathered on the streets of London on Saturday to demand tougher migration policy and support the far-right activist.
Accused of fomenting riots at the end of July
Widely followed on social networks, Tommy Robinson has already been sentenced to several prison sentences in recent years, in particular for hooliganism, disturbing public order and assaulting a police officer. Presenting himself as “an ordinary boy from Luton who faced Islamic extremism”, he is accused of fueling anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim violence in late July after the murder of three girls who were stabbed to death at a school dance in Southport . “Disorder is spreading… don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he wrote on his X account. False information about the perpetrator of this triple murder claimed that he was a young Muslim who arrived illegally on a dinghy.
He was also jailed in 2018 for contempt of court, a conviction that earned him the sympathy of Steve Bannon, a former White House adviser under Donald Trump, as well as several far-right European figures who attended rallies of support. Banned from Twitter the same year, his account was reactivated on the platform, renamed X, when it was bought in 2023 by billionaire Elon Musk.
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