From BBC News:
Political activist Tommy Robinson has been convicted of harassing two Daily Mail journalists.
…The case concerned Robinson’s response to Daily Mail and Mail Online articles from August 2024, showing him on holiday in Cyprus while riots took place in England following the Southport murders.
…Robinson had denied the charges, saying he had “panicked” and had been “scared” when the Daily Mail published a story accusing him of “stoking race riots from his sunbed”.
…He said he had “wanted to find the journalists” to “put pressure on them”.
But he told the jury he had not known they were “in fear.”
This was always a weak defence: Robinson’s actions in response to the article were obviously retalitatory, and if he himself had felt “scared” (we’ll take him at his word) it was not credible that he did not intend to cause similar fear in those he was targeting. Robinson used private investigators (unnamed by the media) to track down where they lived, and then posted photographs online – including a cropped image of one journalist’s family.
There was also every reason to suppose Robinson intended to incite harassment by others: in 2019 he made a night-time visit to the writer Mike Stuchbery’s home that inspired copycat harassment by Robinson’s friend Andrew Tate, and in 2021 when the Independent journalist Lizzie Dearden wrote to him ahead of a story about his finances he responded by attending her home address in an “angry and agitated” state and accusing her partner of being a paedophile.
The 2024 story can be seen here (it was recently amended to remove an image of “Robinson and his friends”); it describes him as “on the run” after a UK arrest warrant had been issued against him after he had skipped a court appearance (1). As such, he hardly had a reasonable expectation of privacy, even without the context of his high-profile commentary at the time regarding the Southport killings (2).
A MailOnline post to the Press Awards website has an account of how Robinson was tracked down to the resport in Cyprus: Robinson’s social media posts had included images of Vienna airport, alongside a reference to a seven-hour layover; a Cypriot Greek contectionary shop shelf; and a hotel gym from which distinctive waterslides were visible through a window. It seems, then, that despite wanting privacy and security, Robinson could not resist showing off his lifestyle and signalling his scofflaw disregard for the court. This was hubris, and Robinson should be grateful that his self-exposure was brought to his attention by journalists rather than quietly used by someone with more sinister intentions.
The Guardian has some extra detail about what happened in court:
Journalists were given an escort out of the courtroom by security after one of them was threatened inside the court by one of [Tommy] Robinson’s supporters. The man was ejected from the press gallery and later from the courtroom.
This was apparently Dave Atherton, who gives his own account of what happened here. He says he called a journalist “something” and said he would “make him go viral”, and that he was ejected for not been a “state approved” journalist (“like the Soviet Union & NAZI Germany”). However, he did not respond to a query as to whether he showed up at court with a press card. Atherton has links with various figures in London linked to Reform UK.
Notes
1. Robinson was due in court in relation to breaching a court injunction put in place after he was found in 2021 to have libelled a teenage Syrian refugee. He was eventually jailed for this contempt of court in October 2024. Robinson declared himself bankrupt during the 2021 trial, and although he was discharged from bankrupcy in 2022, journalists have continued to look into his finances – another reason why a holiday at a luxury resort is notable.
2. As described by Tortoise Media, Robinson “falsely claimed that people were stabbed by Muslims in Stoke-on-Trent and Stirling”; “called for mass deportations, shared demonstration posters, and described violent protests in Southport as ‘justified’; and “shared a video that speculated that the suspect in the Southport stabbings was Muslim, a widespread piece of disinformation that helped trigger the riots across the country”.
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