An anti-vaxxer activist has been found guilty of harassing former Health Secretary Matt Hancock after hurling questions and abuse at the politician on a packed Tube train.
Geza Tarjanyi, 62, pursued Hancock as he walked to Parliament on January 19, when the MP said he was confronted with a string of shouted conspiracy theories and accusations.
Five days later, the former Cabinet Minister had just finished a breakfast meeting with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in Downing Street when he was confronted in the street again by Tarjanyi.
The activist, who is part of a regular protest group camped out in Whitehall, pursued Hancock to Westminster tube station and on to a Jubilee Line train, continuing to pepper him with questions and insulting comments during a ten-minute encounter which was caught on camera.
Tarjanyi, a former children’s entertainer and DJ, called the politician a “murdering scumbag”, Westminster magistrates court heard, and accused him of “murdering millions of people” during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Reaching a verdict on Wednesday, Chief Magistrate Paul Goldspring said Hancock had been a “clear, cogent, and credible witness”, while Tarjanyi’s evidence had been “manipulative, rehearsed, pre-planned, and contrived”.
“The defendant’s behaviour was aggressive and oppressive, and designed to be confrontational”, he said.
“Mr Hancock clearly felt harassed and insulted. The video shows this in clear and striking terms.”
He found Tarjanyi had deliberately committed a crime in order to spark a court case in which Hancock would be a key witness.
“It’s clear he wanted his day in court to question Mr Hancock about the Covid response, and intended to use unlawful methods so he would be prosecuted and achieve his aim to cross-examine Mr Hancock in court”, said the judge.
He sentenced Tarjanyi to a eight-week prison sentence, suspended for two years, ordered him to complete 200 hours of community service, and pay £930 in costs and a £128 victim surcharge.
In his evidence in June, Hancock said he feared he was about to be shoved down a Tube escalator during the second encounter with Tarjanyi.
The MP for West Suffolk accused Tarjanyi of leaving him feeling intimidated and in fear, and suggested Tarjanyi had deliberated walked into the back of him.
“I’m trying to get on to the escalator, to get away from him, and he was now having a go at the person who had come to my aid”, he said.
“At this stage, I didn’t know what I was going to do to get away from him.
“I felt extremely intimidated, I also felt the behaviour was outrageous.”
He claimed Tarjanyi “pushed into me”, and told the court from the witness box: “Obviously I was extremely worried at this time. If I had lost my balance at that point, I would have tumbled down the escalator. It’s a long escalator, I could see a long escalator moving away from me, and I was being pushed from behind.
“I had to work to maintain my balance and stop myself falling down the escalator.”
The judge concluded that Hancock had been “jostled” by Tarjanyi in the walk to the Tube station, and the MP was “bumped into” deliberately inside the station.
However he said he could not be sure that a second collision next to the escalators was deliberate.
Footage of Tarjanyi haranguing Hancock on the Tube ride to Bond Street went viral online, showing a Transport for London worker trying to stop the confrontation and help the MP.
In the clip, Tarjanyi was heard saying “I’ve been arrested 16 times and I want to go to court”.
In his evidence, Tarjanyi apologised for being “rude” during the incident, but insisted he had been posing legitimate questions to the politician that he said reporters from established news organisations do not ask.
He said Hancock’s claim of being barged was “laughable”, and defended the language he had used, suggesting ‘murderer’ was an accurate way to describe the former Health Secretary and ‘scumbag’ is a “Lancashire phrase” that is not abusive.
“I was trying to expose Matt Hancock as a liar and a murderer”, he said, insisting: “I was calm the whole way through.”
The judge also ruled that Tarjanyi deliberately set up possible false defences in the midst of both incidents, by claiming that Hancock had barged into him.
In his evidence, Hancock – who is standing down as an MP at the next election and lost the Tory whip after going on I’m a Celebrity….Get Me Out of Here – said he regularly talks to journalist, constituents, and members of the public, but he is conscious of not engaging with conspiracy theorists to avoid promoting their views.
Tarjanyi, from Leyland in Lancashire, filmed himself in the two interactions with Mr Hancock, and denied the charge of harassment.
The court heard he worked for 30 years as a children’s entertainer and DJ, and says he became a fulltime campaigner after his home was damaged by fracking.
A restraining order was imposed on Tarjanyi, banning him from contacting Hancock for the next three years.
The judge also said £100 would be given as a commendation to the TfL worker who was subjected to “abhorrent” abuse from Tarjanyi as she tried to defuse the situation.
