LONDON (Reuters) -British anti-Islam activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon on Tuesday won a bid to trim his 18-month sentence for contempt of court, meaning he will be released from jail within a week.
Tommy Robinson's Early Release from Jail Next Week
LONDON (Reuters) -British anti-Islam activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon on Tuesday won a bid to trim his 18-month sentence for contempt of court, meaning he will be released from jail within a week.
Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson, was jailed in October after he admitted breaching an injunction banning him from repeating false allegations against a Syrian refugee, who had successfully sued him for libel.
Britain's solicitor general took legal action against Yaxley-Lennon over comments in online interviews and a documentary titled 'Silenced', which was viewed millions of times and was played in London's Trafalgar Square in July.
The judge who sentenced Yaxley-Lennon said that four months of the 18-month sentence, half of which was to be served in jail, could be lifted if Yaxley-Lennon took steps to remove 'Silenced' from his social media accounts and elsewhere online.
Yaxley-Lennon's lawyer Alex Di Francesco told London's High Court that 'Silenced' had been removed from accounts he controlled and that requests had been made to remove interviews in which Yaxley-Lennon repeated the libelous allegations.
Judge Jeremy Johnson ruled that Yaxley-Lennon had "purged" his contempt, meaning his release date of July 26 will now be brought forward to May 26.
Yaxley-Lennon, who counts U.S. billionaire Elon Musk among his supporters, was accused by some media and politicians of inflaming tensions which led to days of rioting across Britain in late July and August last year after the murder of three young girls at a dance workshop in Southport.
His social media account said in January that Musk was paying some of his legal fees, though Musk has not confirmed this.
(Reporting by Sam Tobin; Editing by Sachin Ravikumar)
