UK: Tommy Robinson found to be in contempt of court

By Muhammad Mussa

LONDON (AA) - Tommy Robinson has been sentenced to prison after a high court found him to be in contempt of court for obstruction of justice on Friday.

The founder of the far right English Defence League, whose real name is Steven Yaxley-Lennon, will face up to two years in prison for filming defendants in a criminal trial and posting the footage on social media, breaching a reporting ban.

According to the high court, Robinson’s conduct interfered with the process and administration of the justice system, affected the transparency of the case in question and endangered the lives of the defendants by broadcasting their faces to the public.

Legal representatives of Geoffrey Cox, the attorney general, who submitted the application to have Robinson sentenced to prison, told the court that the right-wing individual’s objective was to reveal the identities of the defendants to the public.

“The answer clearly is that he made a reckless assumption as to what he might be able to do because it suited him to do so, and the reason it suited him to do so was that his whole objective was to get the defendants’ faces out there,” Andrew Caldecott, the legal representative of the attorney general, told the Guardian newspaper.

Robinson has denied any wrongdoing and does not believe he was breaching any reporting restrictions and that the information he did release was already open to the public. The incident took place during a grooming trial in May 2018.

Supporters of Robinson and the EDL rejected the judgement and staged a small demonstration outside the high court in London, accusing the justice system of being biased against Robinson and enemies of free speech.

Last year Donald Trump Jr, the U.S. president’s son, on Twitter shared a tweet from a Robinson supporter, adding his own comment: “Reason #1776 for the original #brexit. Don’t let America follow in those footsteps” in support of Robinson who was jailed last year.

Robinson founded the English Defence League in 2009 as an Islamophobic organization, and members of the group routinely engage in violence during marches and demonstrations. In recent years, he has received the support of Trump and other high officials.

Robinson has also publicly called out against Muslims living in the U.K. and has led many “mosque invasions” as part of the EDL’s Islamophobic campaign.