Tommy Robinson Freed After Shock High Court Sentence U-Turn

Tommy Robinson walks free as High Court slashes sentence—find out how a last-minute legal twist turned the tide in one of Britain’s most explosive contempt cases.

Tommy Robinson is to be released from prison within days, following a decision by the High Court to reduce his 18-month custodial sentence for contempt of court by four months. The ruling was delivered after Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, applied to purge his contempt by demonstrating compliance with a long-standing High Court injunction. He had been jailed in October of last year for multiple admitted breaches of the 2021 injunction, which was issued after he lost a libel case brought by a Syrian refugee.

The sentence handed down in 2024 was composed of two elements: a 14-month punitive term and a four-month coercive element, the latter of which could be removed if Robinson took steps to comply with the original injunction.

That order, made by Mr Justice Nicklin, was issued after Robinson was found to have published false and defamatory allegations about Jamal Hijazi, a schoolboy who was filmed being assaulted in Huddersfield in 2018. The subsequent libel case resulted in a High Court ruling against Robinson, awarding Mr Hijazi £100,000 in damages, alongside legal costs. The injunction issued at that time prohibited Robinson from repeating the false allegations, including claims that Mr Hijazi had been involved in acts of violence.

The Solicitor General later issued two separate contempt proceedings against Robinson, alleging he had knowingly breached the terms of the injunction on ten occasions between early 2023 and mid-2023.

Among the breaches was the publication and promotion of a film entitled Silenced, which contained the same libellous allegations and remained pinned to the top of his X (formerly Twitter) profile.

Additional breaches included repeating the claims in multiple interviews and showing the film at a public demonstration in Trafalgar Square. Robinson admitted all ten breaches.

At sentencing, Mr Justice Johnson made it clear that the coercive part of the sentence could be lifted if Robinson demonstrated a genuine commitment to upholding the injunction. However, following his imprisonment, Robinson pursued further legal avenues, including a challenge to his segregation conditions in prison, which he lost in March. He later