Tommy Robinson to appeal against sentence for contempt of court

Tommy Robinson (Yui Mok/PA)

Tommy Robinson is appealing against his sentence for contempt of court, according to court listings in the UK.

Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was jailed for 18 months in October last year after admitting 10 breaches of a UK 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 that Robinson’s breaches were not “accidental, negligent or merely reckless” and that the “custodial threshold is amply crossed”.

Court listings show that Robinson’s challenge will be heard at the Court of Appeal on April 11.

The UK solicitor general issued two contempt claims against Robinson last year.

Robinson is serving a prison term at HMP Woodhill near Milton Keynes (PA)

The first claimed 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 remains 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.

Lawyers for the Solicitor General told Woolwich Crown Court that Robinson had been “thumbing his nose at the court” and “undermining” the rule of law.

Barristers for Robinson said he accepted the breaches but was “following his principles”.

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

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.

Last month, Robinson failed in a bid to bring a legal claim against the Government over his segregation in prison, after claiming he had suffered an “evident decline in his mental health” due to his isolation at HMP Woodhill, near Milton Keynes.