US tech billionaire says Tommy Robinson, who is serving an 18-month prison sentence, ‘should be released’.
Elon Musk has called for jailed British far-right activist Tommy Robinson to be freed and criticized UK Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer for his response to grooming scandals when he served as the country’s attorney general more than a decade ago. first.
In a series of social media posts on Thursday, the US tech billionaire said Robinson, who founded the far-right English Defense League and whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, “must be freed”.
“Why is Tommy Robinson in solitary confinement for telling the truth?” Musk wrote on X, the social media platform he owns, on Thursday.
“He must be released and those who covered up this travesty must take his place in that cell,” he wrote.
Robinson, a former football hooligan with a string of criminal convictions in the UK, is serving an 18-month prison sentence after pleading contempt of court in a long-running defamation case involving a Syrian refugee.
Musk also posted several messages about grooming scandals that took place over decades in a number of English towns and cities, including Rochdale, Rotherham and Oldham until they came to light more than a decade ago.
Musk shared various other accounts’ claims about the scandals and criticized Starmer’s response to the scandal.
“In the UK, serious crimes such as rape require the approval of the Crown Prosecution Service for police to charge suspects. Who was the head of the CPS when rape gangs were allowed to exploit young girls without facing justice? Keir Starmer, 2008-2013,” he posted, criticizing the current British Prime Minister.
Starmer was head of the CPS at the time and he launched a prosecution of a grooming gang in Rochdale during his last year in the role shortly after the scandal broke. None of the investigations into the scandals singled out Starmer for culpability or found that he tried to block prosecutions.
In 2012, Starmer blamed the justice system’s flawed approach to sexual exploitation and ordered a comprehensive restructuring of the CPS’s response to it.
Musk’s tweets about Robinson have drawn support from far-right figures, including Dutch politician Geert Wilders, as well as several right-wing YouTube channels, who also called for his release.
The US tech billionaire’s latest foray into UK politics follows his recent declaration of support for Germany’s far-right AfD party, where he claimed the AfD is the only party that can “save” Germany while the country heads to early elections next month.
The German government has accused him of meddling in the vote.
Musk has also openly supported other far-right figures in Europe, including Nigel Farage of the UK’s Reform Party and Italy’s right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
Musk was also a prominent campaign funder and supporter of US President-elect Donald Trump. Last month, Trump dismissed claims that he had “taken the presidency away” from Musk.
