London
CNN
—

British far-right political activist Tommy Robinson has been sentenced to 18 months in prison after admitting he was in contempt of court by repeating false allegations against a Syrian refugee, according to court documents.

Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, admitted on Monday that he broke the rules of the British court 10 times.

Robinson, the founder of the English Anti-Immigration Defense League (EDL), was accused of repeating false allegations which saw him lose a libel suit in 2021.

The original libel case related to Robinson making false allegations against a Syrian schoolboy who was attacked in an incident widely shared on social media. In 2018, footage emerged of the 15-year-old – a refugee from Syria – being taunted, grabbed by the throat and pushed to the ground as other pupils at his school in Huddersfield, northern England, looked on.

At the time, Robinson made allegations against the teenager in a series of social media videos, which he later deleted, falsely claiming the teenager had assaulted English girls. The far-right figure later admitted to posting a fake photo purporting to show Muslim gang violence.

At Monday’s sentencing hearing, a judge at Woolwich Crown Court in London said Robinson had breached court rules by posting a video, titled ‘Silenced’, on social media in which he repeated the defamatory allegations. He also played the film publicly in London’s Trafalgar Square at a rally of his supporters.

“The violations were not accidental or negligent or simply reckless,” Judge Johnson said said during the sentencing hearing. “There was a degree of sophistication to the breaches in that they involved the planned release of material in a manner that was designed to try to achieve maximum coverage.

“No one is above the law,” the judge said added.