LONDON – Tommy Robinson is free, for now.
On Tuesday, Robinson appeared before the highest circuit judge in London’s Central Criminal Court, defending himself against contempt charges that landed him in prison.
Judge Nicholas Hilliard, Q.C. ruled that the facts of the case were not yet settled, and referred the case to the Attorney General — punting the decision to the political class, who will have to weigh public interest in its ruling.
This was good news for Robinson, who had requested the referral and submitted a witness statement that led the judge to determine the case was too complex for him to rule on.
Tuesday was just the latest hurdle for Robinson in his ongoing court battles against the draconian UK government.
Robinson was found in contempt of court in May 2017 for filming during the trial of four Muslim men later found guilty of gang-raping a 16-year-old girl.
Robinson, an activist and citizen journalist from a working class background, claims he wasn’t familiar with the strict rules around court reporting in the UK; he received a suspended sentence and was put on probation.
A year later, he went to Leeds to report on the trial of 20 Pakistani men accused and later found guilty of rape and forced prostitution.
There’s a disturbing trend in the UK of Muslim gangs luring, grooming and forcing vulnerable girls into prostitution rings. For years, authorities across the UK failed to intervene to stop the horrendous abuses against these girls, predominantly from from white working class families, out of fear of being accused of “Islamophobia.”
Robinson was better informed on the court rules this time, having received legal training and more reporting experience through his time working for Ezra Levant’s Rebel Media. He carefully followed the rules, and the judge in that case later ruled that his reporting had no impact on that trial.
He was nevertheless arrested and charged with breach of peace for filming outside the Leeds court. Within hours of his arrest, he was found guilty of contempt and whisked away to jail.
For the crime of reporting on the horrendous grooming and rape of girls as young as 11, Robinson spent more than two months in prison. He was inexplicably transferred to a predominantly Muslim prison, where he claims he was severely mistreated and spent much of him time in solitary confinement.
On August 1, Robinson’s appeal was finally heard and the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales threw away his conviction, citing a lack of due process.
Robinson was released, having lost 40 pounds and looking like a political prisoner.
I went to London this week to cover Robinson’s trial and to learn more about the growing political movement behind him. My airfare was covered through a grant from Rebel Media, who crowd-sourced funding to bring more journalists to cover the trial.
Robinson returned to court this week for the retrial of his original conviction. This time around, he was not alone — thousands of supporters from England’s forgotten working class showed up in central London to protest the treatment of Robinson as well as the horrendous phenomenon of grooming rape gangs.
The British press, known for their snobby derision towards working class people, wrote off the crowd as soccer hooligans and far-right racists. They loathe Robinson and demonize him at every opportunity.
Tommy Robinson is far from perfect. He refuses to abide by political correctness and has made plenty of mistakes, both in his early days of street activism against radical Islam and more recently in how he covered the rape-gang trials.
None of this justifies why a journalist was arrested, jailed, thrown in solitary confinement and denied basic rights; while rapist and pedophiles are treated with kid gloves and often protected by UK elites.
Something is rotten in the state of England. Tommy Robinson is working furiously to expose the harmful effects of political correctness and turning a blind eye to cultural violence originating in immigrant communities.
Elites in the UK may not like it, but a growing audience of everyday people are cheering him on.
