Elon Musk has said far-right activist Tommy Robinson should be released from prison after jailed Brit was jailed in October last year for repeating libellous allegations against a refugee
Elon Musk claimed Tommy Robinson had been ‘smeared'(Image: Getty Images)
The world’s richest man Elon Musk has stuck his beak in to UK affairs again – calling for far-right loudmouth Tommy Robinson to be released from prison.
Musk has repeatedly engaged with his posts on his social media app X. The Tesla tech man has shared posts saying Robinson had been “smeared as a ‘far-right racist’ for exposing the mass betrayal of English girls by the state”.
Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley Lennon, was jailed in October when a judge slapped him with an 18-month sentence after the Solicitor General took legal action against him for breaching a High Court injunction made in 2021. Robinson admitted 10 breaches of the order, which barred him from repeating libellous allegations against Syrian refugee Jamal Hijazi after the then-schoolboy successfully sued him for libel.
Robinson is the founder and former leader of the anti-Islam English Defence League (EDL)(Image: AFP/Getty Images)
Mr Hijazi 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.
But Musk asked: “Why is Tommy Robinson in a solitary confinement prison for telling the truth? He should be freed and those who covered up this travesty should take his place in that cell.”
The MK Citizen reported that followers who visited Robinson at his HMP Woodhill jail-home had claimed he is in solitary confinement – but for his own safety.
Musk was also referencing grooming scandals in northern England that began to be uncovered in 2013.
Musk slammed the PM on X today(Image: POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
The tech entrepreneur’s relationship with Sir Keir and the Labour government is rocky at best. During the summer riots last year, the billionaire had engaged with posts by Robinson, and also suggested that civil war in the UK was “inevitable”. Musk also retweeted a fake Daily Telegraph headline suggesting rioters would be sent to detention camps in the Falkland Islands.
Musk slammed prime minister Sir Keir Starmer on X today, accusing the PM of failing to bring perpetrators to justice when he was the head of the Crown Prosecution Service.
He asked: “In the UK, serious crimes such as rape require the Crown Prosecution Service’s approval for the police to charge suspects. Who was the head of the CPS when rape gangs were allowed to exploit young girls without facing justice? Keir Starmer, 2008-2013.”
Starmer was the CPS chief from 2008 to 2013. He appointed Nafir Afzal to begin prosecutions against a grooming gang in Rochdale in 2013 and brought in reforms to the way the CPS investigates sexual abuse following the Jimmy Savile scandal.
The spat also comes as the Government rejected a request from Oldham Council for an inquiry led by the Home Office.
Safeguarding minister Jess Phillips, who was also the target of a Musk’s X rant in which he said she “deserves to be in prison”, said in a letter to the council that it was for a local authority to “commission an inquiry into child sexual exploitation locally”.
Ms Phillips said she recognised the “strength of feeling” for a Home Office-led inquiry, but the Government will not “intervene”.
An Oldham Council spokesman has said: “Survivors sit at the heart of our work to end child sexual exploitation.
“Whatever happens in terms of future inquiries, we have promised them that their wishes will be paramount, and we will not renege on that pledge.”
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