A man from Dorset has been jailed for 18 months over anti-migrant social media posts, including one calling for asylum hotels to be set ablaze.
Luke Yarwood, 36, pleaded guilty to two counts of publishing written material intended to stir up racial hatred at Bournemouth Crown Court.
His posts on X included calls for “slaughter in the streets” and demanded migrant accommodation be burned down.
The tweets were brought to the attention of Dorset Police by Yarwood’s own brother-in-law, with whom he had an ongoing dispute.
Prosecutor Siobhan Linsley told the court Yarwood’s first offending post responded to coverage of the Magdeburg Christmas market car attack in Germany on December 20, 2024, which claimed six lives and injured more than 300 people.
Taleb Al-Abdulmohsen, a doctor from Saudi Arabia, is currently on trial for the horrific attack.
Yarwood wrote a day after the atrocity: “Head for the hotels housing them and burn them to the ground.”
The second tweet followed on January 29, when he stated: “I think it’s time for Britain to gang together, hit the streets and start the slaughter.
Luke Yarwood has been jailed for 18 months for social media posts
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“Violence and murder is the only way now. Start off burning every migrant hotel then head off to MP houses in Parliament. We need to take over by force.”
Ms Linsley described these two posts as “bookends” to a series of tweets demonstrating hostile attitudes towards asylum seekers and Muslims.
However, the court heard Yarwood’s posts attracted just 33 views between them, although other tweets he made during the same period reached more than 800 people.
A BMW drove through the market’s barriers in the German city of Magdeburg
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REUTERSThe prosecutor drew parallels with the case of Lucy Connolly, who received a prison sentence for calling on people to set fire to asylum hotels following the Southport killings last year.
Ms Linsley argued while the immediate risk of widespread disorder was lower than in Ms Connolly’s case, tensions surrounding asylum accommodation remained high across the UK.
She highlighted daily protests at migrant hotels continued to require police resources nationwide.
Judge Jonathan Fuller KC said Yarwood harboured a “preoccupation with immigrants” and held an “obsession with Islam” alongside “extremely right-wing views”.
He told the defendant: “You are fully entitled to express your views but freedom of speech is not an absolute right, it is qualified and for good reasons.”
The judge described the tweets as “odious in the extreme”, adding there could be “few clearer examples of words specifically designed to stir up racial hatred and incite violence”.
Defence barrister Nick Tucker argued his client’s posts amounted to “the impotent rantings of a socially-isolated man with fragile mental health” that produced no real-world consequences.
Mr Tucker said Yarwood now acknowledged his views were “uneducated, ignorant and odious” and maintained his client was “not at heart a racist”.