By British far-right political activist Tommy Robinson has been jailed for 18 months after he admitted to being in contempt of court by repeating false accusations about a Syrian refugee, according to court documents.
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, admitted on Monday to breaching UK court rules 10 times.
Robinson, the founder of the now-defunct anti-immigration English Defence League (EDL), was accused of repeating false allegations that caused him to lose a libel suit in 2021.
The initial libel case related to Robinson making false accusations against a Syrian schoolboy who was attacked in an incident shared widely on social media. In 2018, footage emerged showing the 15-year-old – a refugee from Syria – being taunted, grabbed by the throat and pushed to the ground, as other students at his school in Huddersfield, northern England, looked on.
At the time, Robinson made allegations against the teenager in a number of social media videos, which he then deleted, falsely claiming the teen attacked English girls. The far-right figurehead later admitted to posting a fake photograph purporting to show violence by a Muslim gang.
At Monday’s sentencing hearing, a judge at London’s Woolwich Crown Court said Robinson breached court rules by publishing a film, called “Silenced,” on social media in which he repeated the libelous allegations. He also played the film publicly in London’s Trafalgar Square at a rally of his supporters.
“The breaches were not accidental or negligent or merely reckless,” Justice Johnson said during the sentencing hearing. “There was a degree of sophistication in the breaches in that they involved the planned release of material in a manner that was designed to seek to achieve maximum coverage.
“Nobody is above the law,” the judge added.
