US officers are making ready to assist Hamit Coskun flee the UK if he loses this week’s “blasphemy case”.
US officers are making ready to assist him flee the UK if he loses this week’s ‘blasphemy case’ (Picture: PA)
Donald Trump’s administration is making ready to supply refuge to a person who burnt a Koran within the UK, if he loses a “blasphemy case” this week. State division officers are in talks to assist Hamit Coskun, 51, who was discovered responsible of a religiously aggravated public order offence when he burned a duplicate of the Quran outdoors the Turkish consulate in London final February.
He overturned the conviction final June, however the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is contesting that call at a Excessive Courtroom listening to on Tuesday (February 17). If he loses the case, the Trump administration plans to simply accept Mr Coskun as a refugee, with one senior US administration official describing his case as “considered one of a number of circumstances the administration has made observe of”. The potential intervention is more likely to escalate transatlantic tensions over free speech, which critics have argued are being eroded below Sir Keir Starmer’s Authorities.
Mr Coskun was discovered responsible at Westminster Magistrates Courtroom of religiously aggravated public order and of utilizing disorderly behaviour (Picture: PA)
Mr Coskun, who’s of Armenian-Kurdish descent, sought asylum within the UK from his house nation of Turkey, saying Islamic terrorists had destroyed his household’s life. On February 13, 2025, he shouted abusive feedback about Islam as he held the flaming guide aloft in Rutland Gardens in Knightsbridge. He was discovered responsible at Westminster Magistrates Courtroom of religiously aggravated public order and of utilizing disorderly behaviour, and fined £240 with a statutory surcharge of £96.
On the time, District Decide John McGarva mentioned Mr Coskun’s conduct was “provocative and taunting” and informed him “you might have a deep-seated hatred of Islam and its followers”.
Mr Coskun was initially charged by the CPS with harassing the “spiritual establishment of Islam”, nonetheless, the cost was later amended after the Nationwide Secular Society and the Free Speech Union took up his trigger and argued that he was successfully being accused of blasphemy, an offence abolished within the UK 18 years in the past. At his trial, attorneys for the CPS insisted that Mr Coskun was not being prosecuted for setting fireplace to the Koran.
“For me, because the sufferer of Islamic terrorism, I can’t stay silent. I could also be compelled to flee the UK and transfer to the USA, the place President Trump has stood without cost speech and in opposition to Islamic extremism,” he informed The Telegraph, claiming that if this had been to happen, the UK “can have successfully fallen to Islamism and the speech codes that it needs to impose on the non-Muslim world”.
Mr Coskun, who resides in a secure home for his personal safety, mentioned that if he gained the case, he would stay within the UK and proceed burning Korans as a part of a political protest at what he claimed was the Islamification of Turkey.
“I want to return to educating folks in regards to the risks that Islam poses to the Western world,” he mentioned.
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Now, the US has mentioned granting the 51-year-old refugee standing if he applies. From there, he can apply for political asylum. This comes after Vice President, JD Vance’s speech on the Munich Safety Convention final yr wherein he declared that free speech in Britain was “in retreat” whereas questioning whether or not Europe nonetheless shared America’s values. Mr Trump has already granted refugee standing to white South Africans who claimed they confronted racial discrimination of their house nation.
Lord Younger of Acton, the overall secretary of the Free Speech Union, mentioned if Mr Coskun misplaced his attraction, it might mark the demise of UK free speech: “You’ve heard of the heckler’s veto. This may create a stabber’s veto. It is going to sound the demise knell without cost speech in Britain.”
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