Tommy Robinson: How close EDL founder came to causing collapse of Huddersfield grooming gang trial

Exclusive: Five defence lawyers applied for jury to be dismissed over Robinson’s Facebook Live video

“There is a reporting restriction on this case … I have to be super careful,” Tommy Robinson told followers as he broadcast a Facebook Live outside Leeds Crown Court.

The anti-Islam activist then spoke for more than an hour about “rape jihad gangs” and read out allegations against members of a Huddersfield grooming gang, despite knowing a set of three linked trials was still under way.

“This is part two of the trial … the jury are making their verdicts now,” Robinson correctly stated shortly before his arrest on 25 May 2018. “I won’t be able to share [the full video] with you until the reporting restrictions are lifted, and I don’t think that will be for possibly another six months.”

Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, would later claim that he was unaware of the scope of the restriction and did not mean to endanger the grooming trials.

But The Independent can now reveal how close he came to causing the cases to collapse.

Four days after Robinson was originally jailed for contempt of court, defence lawyers launched an application to discharge the jury – a move that would have forced a lengthy retrial or ended the grooming case completely.

A judge had imposed an order under the Contempt of Court Act that banned reporting on the proceedings until the last trial had finished, to prevent jurors being swayed by articles about previous cases.

Judge Geoffrey Marson jailed Robinson for 13 months for breaching the restriction and imposed a separate ban on reporting proceedings against him that was successfully challenged by The Independent.

Robinson was freed in August because of procedural failings that “gave rise to unfairness”, but the Court of Appeal ordered him to face a new hearing.

Now, two High Court judges have found that Robinson had committed contempt of court in three respects – by breaching the reporting restriction, filming the video and confronting defendants outside court.

Dame Victoria Sharp, president of the Queen’s Bench Division, said: “The respondent’s conduct amounted to a serious interference with the administration of justice.”

Court transcripts obtained from the grooming trial by The Independent show that on 29 May 2018, Judge Marson told defence lawyers a juror had “mentioned Tommy Robinson” as they returned for the first day of deliberations following his imprisonment.

Lawyers defending members of the gang then argued it was “inconceivable” that jurors had not seen Robinson’s live stream, which would prejudice them against their clients.

Bunty Batra, a barrister representing rapist Faisal Nadeem, said the video had been viewed 3.5 million times, amid an international furore over Robinson’s imprisonment and protests in London.

“In my respectful submission these circumstances are so unprecedented, it is inconceivable when you have 3.5 million hits on the internet that this information has not come to the attention of this jury,” Mr Batra told the court.

“It is inconceivable that the jury have not been spoken to by others, whether they themselves were looking for the information matters or not.”

He argued that the jury could be biased against the defendants by watching the stream, where Robinson talked of “hundreds of young girls being gang-raped in our country, in every town and city” by “Muslim grooming gangs”.

He pointed out that several defendants were called Mohammed and urged viewers to look for a “common denominator”.

Defence lawyers representing four other members of the grooming gang backed the application. One said Robinson had listed allegations that were dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service.

Following lengthy legal arguments, Judge Marson dismissed the application and refused to question members of the jury on whether they had watched Robinson’s video.

He said the juror who mentioned Robinson was “told immediately not to say a thing to anybody” and that all had been told not to carry out their own research on the trial.

“There is no evidence that any of the jurors have seen anything which was streamed on social networks,” Judge Marson added. “There has been no information put before me from any juror that they do not feel able to abide by their oath and in my judgment this is a case where we have to trust the jury.”

They later convicted all defendants of offences including rape, trafficking for sexual exploitation and supplying class-A drugs to victims aged between 11 and 17.

The third trial was able to go ahead and in October, the reporting restriction was lifted following the conviction of 20 men who were given prison sentences totalling 220 years.

The gang members lured young girls into what they believed to be genuine relationships before plying them with alcohol or drugs and assaulting them, in a campaign of abuse spanning from 2004 to 2011.

Robinson claimed the “mainstream media” were not reporting the case, but journalists from the Huddersfield Examiner were in the court at the time.

London’s Old Bailey heard that Robinson had read the charges from a BBC News article, and a key part of his defence was the claim that all the information was already in the public domain, despite his claims to “expose” grooming gangs.

When Robinson was brought before him on 25 May 2018, Judge Marson explained that he made the reporting restriction to “ensure the integrity of the trials”.

“You are entitled to your views, you are entitled to express them within the law, but you are not entitled to express them until the prohibition was lifted,” he said. “There has been a significant risk to this trial.”

Robinson’s defence lawyer in that hearing, Matthew Harding, said he was instructed to give “mitigation as opposed to a defence to the contempt”.

He told Leeds Crown Court Robinson was “genuinely remorseful”, adding: “He didn’t set out to flagrantly breach an order.”

It came a year after Robinson was given a suspended sentence for contempt in another rape case at Canterbury Crown Court, when he had filmed inside the building.

He alluded to the sentence in his live stream, saying: “I am walking a thin line because basically the police put on a suspended prison sentence … if the police can pin anything on me I’ll be going to jail for three months.”

As officers gathered outside Leeds Crown Court and Robinson spotted a judge and lawyers watching him through a window, panic set in.

“There’s nothing they can do, is there?” he asked his assistants, who were off-camera. “You are allowed to do this, innit? I haven’t done anything wrong, have I?”

The livestream continued as he was arrested on suspicion of breach of the peace, calling out for a solicitor as he was led away.

Robinson will be sentenced this month and faces up to two years’ imprisonment.