Tommy Robinson case - live: EDL founder's supporters attack journalists after he is jailed for contempt of court

Live updates from Old Bailey hearing

Tommy Robinson enters the Old Bailey ahead of sentencing

Tommy Robinson has been sent back to prison for encouraging ”vigilante action” against defendants in a grooming gang trial during a video livestreamed on Facebook.

The founder of the English Defence League was found in contempt of court last week over the film, which breached reporting restrictions on the case in Leeds in May 2018 and came close to collapsing the case against the guilty men.

Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was originally jailed for 13 months last year but was freed on appeal.

Appearing at the Old Bailey today, he was sentenced to nine months imprisonment, reduced to 19 weeks because of time already served. The maximum sentence available to the judges was two years' imprisonment.

Follow live updates from court in our liveblog below

Key Points

• Tommy Robinson arrives late for sentencing at Old Bailey
• EDL founder faces up to two years in prison
• What are the sentencing options?
• Robinson claims a jail sentence would be a 'win'
• Judges ruled Robinson encouraged vigilante action

[11 July 2019 07:35 · Peter Stubley]

Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of Tommy Robinson's sentencing hearing at the Old Bailey. It is due to start at 9.30am.

[11 July 2019 07:37 · Peter Stubley]

Robinson - who appears in court under his real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon - faces up to two years imprisonment after being found in contempt of court last week.

[11 July 2019 07:43 · Peter Stubley]

The judges who found Robinson in contempt issued their full reasons on Tuesday. The ruling questions the credibility of his evidence that he attempted to check the reporting restrictions at Leeds Crown Court before confronting defendants in the case live on social media.

Robinson also encouraged "vigilante action" by confronting the defendants as they arrived at court, and suggesting that they be followed and harassed.

At the time he made the video the jury were considering their verdicts in the second of three linked trials.

[11 July 2019 07:49 · Peter Stubley]

The judges' full reasons also revealed that Robinson's video caused a Huddersfield grooming gang member to appeal his rape conviction.

[11 July 2019 07:51 · Peter Stubley]

After the verdict, Yaxley-Lennon appealed to Donald Trump to grant him asylum in the US, claiming he needed "evacuation from this country because dark forces are at work".

[11 July 2019 07:53 · Peter Stubley]

Despite saying he feared being killed in prison, Robinson later changed his mind and said that being jailed for contempt of court would be a "win".

[11 July 2019 08:02 · Peter Stubley]

So what sentence is he likely to get?

In the original contempt hearing in Leeds last year (which was reversed on appeal), Robinson was sentenced to a total of 13 months imprisonment.

This was made up of 10 months for the contempt over his Facebook Live video and three months for breaching a suspended sentence for an earlier contempt at Canterbury Crown Court in May 2017 (which also involved filming defendants in an ongoing "grooming gang" trial).

Robinson has already spent two months in prison while serving that sentence. The judges may therefore consider that he has already spent enough time behind bars. Or they could pass a sentence which means he will have to return to jail.

The maximum available sentence is two years imprisonment, though it is unlikely he will get longer than the 13 months passed originally.

[11 July 2019 08:06 · Peter Stubley]

Here are some other examples of a prison sentence for contempt  of court.

Joanne Fraill was jailed for eight months in 2011 after chatting to an acquitted defendant on Facebook while she and her fellow jurors were considering the cases of three other defendants in a drug trial.

In July 2016, 19-year-old Damien Parker-Stokes was locked up for 15 months for taking photographs at Bristol Crown Court as his friend Ryan Sheppard was being jailed for murder. He posted the photographs on Facebook and "glorified" Sheppard.

Earlier this year actress Tina Malone was handed an eight-month suspended sentence and was ordered to pay £10,000 costs for sharing a Facebook post said to unmask James Bulger killer Jon Venables. The Shameless star admitted breaching a ban on publishing anything that purportedly reveals the new identity of Venables.

[11 July 2019 08:08 · Peter Stubley]

The alternative is to order Robinson to pay a fine.

Previous examples of financial penalties usually involve newspapers or other media.

For example, in April 2002, the publishers of the Sunday Mirror were ordered to pay more than £129,000 in fines and costs for running an article which led to the collapse of the first trial of Leeds United footballers Jonathan Woodgate and Lee Bowyer, who faced charges arising out of the assault of an Asian student.

The newspaper carried an interview with the alleged victim's father while the jury was still considering its verdict.

Woodgate was convicted of affray following a second trial, while Bowyer was cleared.

[11 July 2019 08:11 · Peter Stubley]

In March 2011, the publishers of the Daily Mail and The Sun were each fined £15,000 after they became the first website owners in the country to be found guilty of contempt "online", when they were found to have created a "substantial risk" of prejudicing a murder trial.

Both had accidentally published insufficiently cropped photos after the start of the September 2009 trial of Ryan Ward, which showed him holding a pistol.

Ward was later convicted of murdering car mechanic Craig Wass by hitting him with a brick.

And in In October 2012, the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror were each fined £10,000 after being found guilty of contempt of court over articles published after killer Levi Bellfield's conviction for the abduction and murder of schoolgirl Milly Dowler.

The jury were still deliberating whether Bellfield was guilty of the attempted abduction of Rachel Cowles, then aged 11, the day before he snatched Milly from a street in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, in 2002. As a result of the publicity, the Old Bailey jury was discharged from returning a verdict in relation to that charge.