Katie Hopkins: Dedicated arrest website calls for police investigation into The Sun columnist's 'racist' tweets

The Sun writer angered followers on Twitter after a comment she reportedly made about Palestinians

A website calling for Katie Hopkins to be arrested has been set up following an inflammatory statement she allegedly made about Palestinian people on Twitter earlier this week.

The site – www.arrestkatiehopkins.co.uk – claims that The Sun columnist incited racial hatred when she tweeted the following to her 247,000 followers, and urges that the police investigate her comments under the Communications Act 2003 Section 127, which covers offensive and threatening messages sent over a “public” electronic communications network.

Hopkins appeared to be referring to a recent news story involving the alleged stabbing of an Israeli soldier in Tel Aviv.

The report followed a summer of intense fighting between Israeli and Palestinians in Gaza, during which the Israeli Defence Forces launched an intense air and ground offensive. It led to the deaths of around 2,100 Palestinians – many casualties of which were civilian – to 66 Israeli soldiers.

“While Katie Hopkins simply started off as generally unpopular and offensive and may have received at least some protection from The Director of Public Prosecutions’ ‘interim guidelines’ (December 2012) for social media prosecutions include the use of Section 127 which attempt to limit the usage of Section 127, to cases which go beyond those which are ‘offensive, shocking or disturbing; or satirical, iconoclastic or rude; or the expression of unpopular; or unfashionable opinion about serious or trivial matters, or banter or humour, even if distasteful to some or painful to those subjected to it’, it is now clear that she has escalated to the point where her online activity has moved from the realm of being simply unpopular onto being downright offensive, hurtful and indeed racist,” the mission statement on the website reads.

“We believe that the DPP interim guidelines no longer apply. The police and indeed the PPS have been reluctant to take action and so now we are taking it out of their hands. We have setup an online notification of arrest for Katie Hopkins.”

It then calls for users to go to the ‘Arrest Her’ tab in the navigation bar and sign a petition letter written to the Home Secretary, the Director of Public Prosecutions and STH Management.

The website has received almost 100 signatures since it launched yesterday.

A spokesperson from the Metropolitan police was unable to confirm whether a criminal investigation into Hopkins' tweets was currently underway.

Hopkins is yet to respond to request for comment on the allegations.

It isn’t the first time such a petition has been set up against Hopkins. A number of similar letters appeared on Change.org calling for the former Apprentice contestant to be banned from appearing on television and sacked from her role as The Sun columnist in November 2013.

The petitions attracted thousands of independent signatures following a tweet she posted about the life expectancy in Scotland being 59.5.

“Goodness me,” she had written. “That lot will do anything to get out of retirement.”