ON OCTOBER 24 last year Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, Tommy Robinson’s real name, was charged under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 because he failed to provide Kent Police with the PIN to his mobile phone when they arrested him in Folkestone on Sunday July 28. He denied the charge. His case was finally heard at Westminster Magistrates Court on October 13 and 14 this year by District Judge Sam Goozee. Yesterday he delivered his verdict. NOT GUILTY. The public gallery erupted into cheers.
No wonder. It should have been a slam-dunk from the start. Had it been anyone other than TR, the non-existent case of the prosecution’s KC Anna Morris and the defence counsel’s evisceration of the first police witnesses would have been enough for the judge to dismiss the case out of hand.
With all the hallmarks of a trumped-up charge, it was not clear Robinson would get a fair hearing or what the outcome would be. That the MSM would report without prejudice was even more doubtful.
That is why I attended Tommy’s trial, I explained outside the court that morning to the former Labour councillor, now film-maker and Urban Scoop interviewer, Wendell Daniel:
Frustratingly, contempt of court rules meant that I could neither report on their bias or on my many other doubts about the case until the verdict. The last thing I wanted was to be accused of prejudicing the outcome. Of no help to Tommy – possibly the reverse. And it risked TCW.
The MSM were free, however, to peddle their bias. They have failed to date (a) to examine why and how this terrorism charge came to court in the first place, given a Crown prosecution case based on nothing but self-evidently discriminatory prejudice, and (b) why a magistrates’ court was chosen for the hearing, not the Old Bailey (if they were really serious that Robinson was a terrorist).
Despite his acquittal, the question remains whether Robinson can ever be sure of a fair trial given the media’s deep-seated bias, negative labelling and character smears.
In this rare win for Tommy the Judge concluded that the stop had not been carried out lawfully or without discrimination. It ‘gave the impression of an arbitrary decision based on who you are’, he said, and ‘it was actually what you stood for and your beliefs that acted as the principal reason’. According to Ezra Levant, the Canadian journalist who was in court for the verdict (but not the MSM reporters), ‘It was a blistering takedown of the British establishment. One by one, the judge said he didn’t believe the police witnesses. Imagine that – after years of harassment, the system finally admitted what Tommy’s supporters have known all along: this was a political vendetta.’
Much was due to Tommy’s brilliant defence counsel, Alisdair Williamson KC, a veritable Rumpole of the Bailey if ever there was one. The powers police may exercise in relation to the Counter Terrorism Act are extraordinary, he said to the first police witness. ‘You have to exercise restraint when you use your powers so they don’t interfere with human rights.’
That they clearly hadn’t exercised that restraint became clear in the first hour of the police cross-examination, a point that the MSM have expressed no interest in. In fact over the course of this case the MSM’s reporting has belied Judge Sam Goozee’s confident assumption about their professionalism and probity. Only accredited journalists know how to report accurately, he said when he lambasted the public gallery, and Ezra Levant in particular, with a contempt of court warning.
Yet at the end of the trialone MSM headline after another cast Robinson as a ‘far right activist’ and a fraud by sneering at his ‘journalist’ in quotes credentials.
‘Far-right activist Tommy Robinson has said that he refused to give police his mobile phone Pin when he was stopped at the entry to the Channel Tunnel because it had “journalistic material” on it, a court has heard.’ Note the inverted commas.
More worrying was the institutional bias revealed in the MSM concentration on Crown prosecutor Anna Morris’s case, uncritically recycling a drip-feed of prejudice. Tommy Robinson ‘stopped at border driving a Bentley with thousands in cash’ read the Telegraph’s headline. And, as if to make sure we knew Tommy was a wrong’un whose arrest was understandable, came ‘Far-Right activist insulted police officers after being arrested for refusing to give them pin to his phone, court hears‘.
Astonishingly none mentioned the high drama of the day – the defence counsel’s ‘gasp-inducing’ cross-examination of the four police witnesses under which their case for Robinson’s detention, examination and arrest under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act collapsed like a pack of cards, exposing a hopelessly incompetent yet determined abuse of their powers.
Why no comment on this since?
Neither the Telegraph nor any of the other ‘pro forma’ style reports commented on the risibility of the prosecution’s case that had the public gallery laughing out loud in disbelief.
‘The officers who asked about his reasons for travelling felt his behaviour, under their guidelines, met criteria for a possible link to terrorist activity or future terrorist activity,’ Anna Morris KC said. ‘They also noted his notoriety as a political activist.’
Was this decision made in good faith, Alisdair Williamson KC asked. The very question the MSM should have taken up, but hasn’t. The disparities Williamson uncovered between the police’s retrospectively constructed witness statements (written from memory, they admitted under questioning) and their answers in court plus critical omissions from the original report of the arrest which gave no date, no time or selection criteria for their decision to detain Robinson, still leaves huge questions.
Why the long time gap after they stopped him before they told him they were detaining him and then before arresting him? What were they doing/waiting for? Consulting ‘partner agencies’ not revealed or previously disclosed to the defence.
The defence counsel also poured cold water on the police’s spurious doubt that Robinson was driving to Spain. A quick check, Williamson demonstrated, showed he regularly travelled there. He went on ruthlessly: ‘Do terrorists normally drive in high-value vehicles, have you ever been advised to look out for this?’
In sum, were any of the police’s criteria credible?
How, Williamson asked, could the English Defence League, which each officer admitted they knew had been disbanded ten years previously, be indicative of Robinson’s mindset as they claimed? Did they have any evidence that he had ever been linked to terrorism? Indeed, did they actually ask Mr Robinson in the course of his examination about any suspected terrorist plans at all? No. Instead, as the defence asserted, they had discussed his political views with him.
None of this detail has been reported in the accredited mainstream media.
What we got were the one-sided accounts that Robinson had read by the time he left court, that left him raging at today’s corrupt relationship between government, courts and media, filmed by me.
Thanks to the prejudice of the MSM, the police’s disproportionate use of their extraordinary powers under counter-terrorism legislation will no doubt brushed under the carpet. It would appear that stopping Robinson on trumped-up terrorism charges on the basis of his association with protest, for ‘knowing’ that he is ‘a right-wing extremist and an Islamophobe’ and because of his past EDL connections, is as OK for the MSM as it was for the prejudiced police.
