Displaying items by tag: prison sentence

Far-right activist Tommy Robinson was sentenced to 18 months in prison after breaching a court order not to repeat false allegations about Syrian refugee Jamal Hijazi. Robinson, who founded the English Defence League, was initially sued for libel in 2021 and ordered to pay £100,000 to Hijazi after his unfounded accusations severely impacted the teenager and his family, who had relocated to the UK for refuge. The court issued an injunction barring Robinson from continuing these allegations, which he breached by producing a film entitled Silenced and making further comments in interviews. Robinson admitted that this constituted contempt of court. His case has sparked protests from his supporters, who gathered in London demanding his release.

British radical Islamist preacher Anjem Choudary, 57, was sentenced to life imprisonment on Tuesday for directing a terrorist organisation. He was convicted of leading al-Muhajiroun, a group banned as a terrorist organisation over a decade ago, and encouraging support for it. 'Organisations such as yours normalise violence in support of an ideological cause,' the judge told him, adding, ‘Such groups embolden individuals to commit acts they might otherwise avoid and disrupt peaceful coexistence.’ Choudary received a life sentence with a minimum term of 28 years before parole eligibility, minus the year he has already spent in custody. Once Britain's most prominent Islamist preacher, he had praised the 9/11 attackers and expressed a desire to convert Buckingham Palace into a mosque. He was imprisoned in 2016 for supporting IS and released in 2018 after serving half of his sentence. He stood trial with Canadian Khaled Hussein, 29, who was sentenced to five years for membership in a proscribed organisation.

A court in the Chelyabinsk region of Russia has sentenced a Jehovah’s Witness (JW) follower to seven years in prison on charges of ‘extremism’. Yevgeny Bushev had been under house arrest for over a year on allegations of continuing ‘the illegal activities of a banned religious organisation’. In 2017 the Supreme Court declared the JW movement to be extremist, banning its estimated 400 branches across the country. Bushev is the 15th JW follower from the region to be prosecuted. The prosecution’s witness was an employee of the National Guard (Rosgvardia) who had ‘shown interest in the Bible’: a linguistic examination concluded that Bushev had ‘tempted’ him to accept the JW faith when responding to questions about religion. International human rights NGOs have condemned Russia’s crackdown on JW followers in the years since the ban, and in June 2022 the European Court of Human Rights said that Russia had violated over 1,400 followers' right to religious freedom.

France said on 8 November that one of its citizens being held in Iran has been sentenced to five years in prison on a baseless conviction, and called for his immediate release and that of three other of its nationals held in the country. Ties between the two countries have been strained over the issue in what Paris has said are arbitrary arrests that are equivalent to state hostage taking. Louis Arnaud, who has been held since September 2022, is being detained at the Evin prison in Tehran. His mother said that the pretexts given for his sentencing were for propaganda and harming the security of the Iranian state: ‘These are completely baseless, a carbon copy of what they attribute to other Europeans held in Iran.’ In recent years, the elite Revolutionary Guards have arrested dozens of dual nationals and foreigners, mostly on charges related to espionage and security. Rights groups have accused Iran of trying to extract concessions from other countries through such arrests - a charge which the government denies.

Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny has lost his appeal against a 19-year prison term, which was added to his existing sentence last month. The ruling was upheld by a Moscow court, with the proceedings closed to the media except for the reading of the verdict. Navalny, considered the most prominent figure in Russia's opposition movement, has been seen as a symbol of hope for many, with supporters likening him to Nelson Mandela. His political movement has been banned, and key figures have either been jailed or forced to flee the country as part of a government crackdown on dissent. His latest sentence was imposed on charges related to alleged ‘extremist activity’, which he denies. He was already serving an 11-and-a-half-year sentence on fraud charges, which he also described as politically motivated. Navalny's appeal rejection comes despite international admiration for his return to Russia after being poisoned with a nerve agent in Siberia, an act he attributes to the Kremlin. The Russian government has sought to diminish Navalny's political significance and portrays him as an extremist and a puppet of foreign intelligence agencies.