Robert Jenrick has hailed a “free speech victory” for Hamit Coskun after he won an appeal against his public order conviction, which he got for burning a Koran.
Speaking to GB News, the Shadow Justice Secretary declared that the “landmark case” was an attempt to implement “backdoor blasphemy laws” into Britain.
Mr Coskun was found guilty earlier this year of a religiously aggravated public order offence after shouting ‘f*** Islam’ while burning a copy of the Koran outside the Turkish consulate in London.
With the backing of the National Secular Society (NSS) and the Free Speech Union (FSU), Mr Coskun won his appeal against his conviction at Southwark Crown Court.
Robert Jenrick has hailed Hamit Coskun’s ‘free speech victory’ after winning an appeal for burning the Koran
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GB NEWS / PA
Having attended the appeal verdict in court today, Mr Jenrick told GB News of his joy for Mr Cuskun’s victory: “I thought this was a very important and potentially landmark case. It’s a victory for freedom of speech that Hamit Coskun has been cleared today.
“You might find it unpleasant, you might even find it downright nasty to burn a religious text in a public place, and it’s not something that I would condone, but in most instances it is not a criminal offence.”
Highlighting the abolition of blasphemy laws almost two decades ago, Mr Jenrick added: “Parliament voted almost 20 years ago now to abolish our blasphemy laws and the authorities, by pursuing this case in the way that they did, were trying to recreate a blasphemy law by the back door.
“So it was very important to fight this every step of the way, and the fact that the court today has cleared Mr Coskun I think is a very significant signal, this country does not have a blasphemy law, and it never should do.”
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Mr Jenrick explained his position, saying: “I think all of us in society would agree that you shouldn’t be burning a religious text if it was being done, for example, outside a mosque or a synagogue or a church or religious school specifically, clearly, to intimidate or to incite hatred of those people who are inside or passing around.
“But that wasn’t what was happening in this instance. This was a man on a street burning it as part of a personal political protest. He wasn’t expecting to offend anybody. In fact, there was a Deliveroo driver who passed him, and then somebody came rushing out of the building, slashing at him with a knife, saying that they were offended by it. The bar has to be set very, very high.”
Expressing his outrage at the “two-tier justice” Mr Coskun faced in his case, the Shadow Justice Secretary told GB News: “The other thing about this incident that became so egregious was the very real sense of two-tier justice. Here was a man who was making a protest, and yet was dragged before the courts and found guilty.
“And then you had a man who literally ran out of a building with a knife, an Islamist trying to attack him, potentially even trying to kill him, and yet that man, although he was found guilty, was given a suspended sentence, never went to prison. I believe I thought that was an appalling, unbelievable miscarriage of justice.”
Mr Jenrick told GB News that the victory is a ‘significant signal’ about blasphemy laws
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GB NEWS
Demanding a “full inquiry” into the “miscarriage of justice” handed to Mr Coskun, Mr Jenrick concluded: “I’m going to be writing to the Attorney General later today, demanding a full inquiry from the Crown Prosecution Service as to the way in which they have handled this case.
“Initially they created this imaginary charge of incitement against the religious institution of Islam. No such offence exists. We saw that, we took action against them and shamed them, frankly, into dropping that charge. They then brought forward another, lesser charge under the Public Order Act. He was found guilty of that in the first instance. And then today, a High Court judge sitting, so that Crown Court has cleared him of that offence as well.”
He added: “So there are very serious questions now to answer by the CPS as to how they’ve conducted this case. They’ve dragged a man ultimately found innocent through the courts for months, wasted Did presumably hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers money and created these trumped up charges which have been found to be bogus.”
In a statement following the ruling, Mr Coskun said: “I want to thank the Free Speech Union, the National Secular Society, all my lawyers, the MPs who have supported me and the judges for the decision today.
“I came to England, having been persecuted in Turkey, to be able to speak freely about the dangers of radical Islam. I am reassured that — despite many troubling developments — I will now be free to educate the British public about my beliefs.”