On Thursday, rumors that activist Tommy Robinson was intentionally moved to a prison with an overwhelming majority of Muslim inmates hit fever pitch.
At the end of May, the far-right journalist was, astonishingly, arrested for merely live-streaming Muslim men walking into a courtroom; they had been charged with child-rape grooming. Robinson was sentenced to 13 months behind bars the same day as his arrest.
On Wednesday, journalist and author Rasheem Kassam, formerly of Breitbart, reported that Robinson was being moved to “a very heavily Muslim populated prison.”
Robinson’s manager, Caolan Robertson, told Infowars’ Alex Jones that Robinson had been moved from HMP Hull, where there is apparently a 2% Muslim inmate population, to a new prison with a 71% Muslim population.
“We’ve found the statistics of the prison, it’s about 71% Muslim. Really, really, really disastrous. The last one was close to 2%,” he told Jones. Much of Robinson’s controversial activism deals with exposing radical Islam; critics have argued that his rhetoric is “Islamophobic.”
Due to the crackdown on journalism allowed in Robinson’s case, it is unclear if Robinson has been moved and where he has been moved. According to The Mirror, the activist is rumored to have been moved to HMP Leicester.
Kassam has since updated his Twitter account regarding the floating-around 71% statistic. “I do not believe ‘71%’ of Tommy’s new fellow inmates are Muslim. It is more like 1 in 5. That is still high and higher than average UK prison population. There’s no need for us to disseminate incorrect figures when the real truth is bad enough,” he wrote. Hours later, though, he upped the figure to one in three.
So what is the truth?
Hull prison, where Robinson was (or maybe still is) being detained, has a higher Muslim population than Robinson’s manager noted: 7.4%, not 2%, according to the Ministry of Justice, as noted by The Mirror. And the suspected new prison, HMP Leicester, has an estimated 14.3%, not 71%.
It remains unclear why Robinson would be moved in the first place, and beyond that, it’s incomprehensible from an American perspective as to why the activist was even arrested at all. Republican Rep. Paul Gosar from Arizona highlighted the disregard for free speech by the U.K. in a statement condemning the arrest of Robinson:
For more background on Robinson and his arrest, commentary is provided by Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro, below:
