Tommy Robinson’s appeal against contempt of court sentence to be heard on Friday

Tommy Robinson’s challenge against his sentence for contempt of court will be heard at the Court of Appeal on Friday.

Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was jailed for 18 months in October last year after admitting 10 breaches of a High Court order made in 2021.

The order barred the 42-year-old from repeating false allegations against a Syrian refugee who successfully sued him for libel.

Sentencing him at Woolwich Crown Court last year, Mr Justice Johnson said Robinson’s breaches were not “accidental, negligent or merely reckless” and that the “custodial threshold is amply crossed”.

Robinson’s appeal will be heard by the Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr, Lord Justice Edis and Lord Justice Warby at the Royal Courts of Justice in London.

Contempt

The hearing is due to start at 10.30am, according to court listings.

Robinson was jailed after the Solicitor General issued two contempt claims against him last year.

The first alleged he “knowingly” breached the order on four occasions, including by having “published, caused, authorised or procured” a film called Silenced, which contains the libellous allegations, in May 2023.

The film was pinned to the top of Robinson’s profile on the social media site X, while he also repeated the claims in three interviews between February and June 2023.

The second claim was issued in August concerning six further breaches, including playing the film at a demonstration in Trafalgar Square in central London last summer.

Handing down the sentence in October, Mr Justice Johnson said that “nobody is above the law” and described Robinson’s breaches of the injunction as “flagrant”.

Libel

The injunction was issued after Robinson was successfully sued by Jamal Hijazi, a then-schoolboy who was assaulted at Almondbury Community School in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, in October 2018.

After a clip of the incident went viral, Robinson made false claims on Facebook, including about Mr Hijazi attacking girls in his school, leading to the libel case.

Mr Justice Nicklin ordered Robinson to pay Mr Hijazi £100,000 in damages and his legal costs, as well as making the injunction preventing Robinson from repeating the allegations.