Tommy Robinson has been jailed for 18 months for contempt of court after he repeatedly flouted a High Court order with false allegations against a teenage Syrian refugee.
The far-right activist, 41, lost a High Court battle in 2021 after he made libellous allegations against a Syrian refugee, Jamal Hijazi, calling the 15-year-old violent and a “bully”.
In the wake of the court defeat, Mr Justice Nicklin made an order banning Robinson - real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon - from repeating the allegations.
But Woolwich crown court heard he has committed ten breaches of the order in 2023 and 2024, in his documentary ‘Silenced’ and at a string of interviews and rallies.
On Monday, he admitted two Contempt of Court charges covering that series of breaches of the High Court injunction.
These include airing the film ‘Silenced’ at a protest in Trafalgar Square in July, livestreaming a video in Denmark which was subsequently posted on YouTube, and a series of online interviews including with Jordan Peterson.
Mr Justice Johnson ordered that Robinson should be jailed for 18 months.
“Court injunctions must be obeyed”, he said.
“Nobody is above the law. Nobody can pick and choose which laws, or injunctions they obey, and which they do not. Even if a person is convinced that an injunction was wrongly granted, or is contrary to their views, or is contrary to what they regard as the weight of the evidence, they must comply with the injunction unless or until it is discharged.
“They are not entitled to set themselves up as a judge in their own cause and simply breach the injunction. Otherwise, the administration of justice and the rule of law would break down.
“It is in the interests of the whole community that court injunctions are obeyed, so that the rights and freedoms that are enjoyed by individuals can be protected and enforced.”
The judge also ordered Robinson to pay the costs of the contempt applications, estimated at more than £80,000.
He added that Robinson appears to consider himself “above the law” and has showed no signs that he will comply with the court order in the future.
“The defendant has not shown any remorse for his breaches of the order”, said the judge.
“It would be surprising if he had done, and any expression of remorse would have been likely to have required analysis before being accepted as genuine.”
Robinson has been in custody since Friday, after he handed himself in to police in Folkestone.
He has been separately charged with failing to provide his mobile phone access code to police under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000, and was technically set free on bail until a court hearing for that criminal charge next month.
But he was held in custody over the weekend, ahead of the Contempt hearing in Woolwich.
On Saturday, thousands of his supporters gathered in central London for a protest which the political activist missed after he was remanded.
Demonstrators carried placards reading “Two tier Keir fuelled the riots” and chanted “We want Tommy out” as they headed from Victoria station to Parliament Square.
Robinson was first questioned over the terror allegation in July, after which he was set free and subsequently left the country.
Mr Justice Johnson issued a warrant for his arrest but ordered that it not be carried out “until early October” to allow him time to indicate that he would attend the next hearing voluntarily or to apply to “set aside” the warrant.
An application to set aside the warrant was then made last week, but was rejected, paving the way for his arrest and remand.
Robinson posted a video of himself arriving at Luton Airport on October 20 and said he was surprised at that stage that he had not been arrested.
The court heard the activist has been found in Contempt of Court three times previously, in 2017 at Canterbury crown court for filming within the precincts of the court, in Leeds in 2019 for interviewing defendants as they arrived for their trial and breaching a court order, and in 2022 for failing to attend a High Court hearing.
He paid a £900 fine for the third offence, and was jailed for nine months for the first two incidents.
Robinson indicated from the dock that he accepted the latest Contempt charges, which centre on his ‘Silenced’ film and are set out in interviews he conducted between January 2023 and this summer.
The court heard publication of his film had been disseminated by others online, including by Andrew Tate, to millions of potential listeners.
“The harm here is that millions of people could see Mr Yaxley-Lennon thumbing his nose at the court”, said Aidan Eardley KC, for the Solicitor General.
“This is not a case about Mr Yaxley-Lennon’s political views. It is not even directly a case about freedom of expression.
“It is a case about the disobedience to a court order, and the undermining of the rule of law that goes with that.”
Mr Eardley said the initial breaches of the order were smaller in scale, but Robinson then recorded a new introduction and started openly broadcasting the film to large crowds.
Referring to “continuing concerning behaviour by Mr Yaxley-Lennon”, Mr Eardley said when the second Contempt charge was filed when the Silenced film on X had been viewed 44m times.
“Because of the nature of the film is to effectively re-run the case that failed at trial, it substantially repeats all the allegations made at trial”, he said.
He claimed that all of the paragraphs of the injunction were breached “at one point or another” by the film.
He said in written submissions that the court “can be sure that the defendant was responsible for the publication of the film” and “also intended that it should be shared as widely as possible via other channels”.
Sasha Wass KC, for Robinson, said he gained a “reputation for being someone prepared to take up unpopular causes”, and he made the film investigating the Syrian schoolboy with the financial backing of US broadcaster Alex Jones.
Ms Wass said Robinson is likely to be held in isolation in prison, as he was when previously jailed.
“The defendant is in a very strange position - as a civil prisoner he will become a category D prisoner, but as a controversial figure the prison on his last sentence and almost certainly likely to do the same on this occasion felt it necessary to keep him in solitary confinement.
“Not just separate from some prisoners, but separate from anybody. The defendant spent three-and-a-half months in complete isolation.”
She said a psychiatric report from 2019 concluded Robinson was traumatised from his last spell in prison, and left with depression, nightmares, severe anxiety, panic attacks, irritability, and difficulties sleeping.
Concluding her submissions, Ms Wass urged the judge to pass a short sentence and said of Robinson: “His principles have brought him before the court.”
Robinson is due to be set free halfway through his 18-month sentence. He has the option to reduce his sentence and secure an earlier release by removing ‘Silenced’ from online media platforms.
