US technology billionaire says Tommy Robinson, who is serving in 18-month prison sentence, ‘should be freed’.
Elon Musk has called for the jailed British far-right activist Tommy Robinson to be released and criticised UK Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer for his response to grooming scandals when he served as the country’s chief prosecutor more than a decade ago.
In a flurry of posts on social media on Thursday, the US technology billionaire said that Robinson, who founded the far-right English Defence League and whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, “should be freed”.
“Why is Tommy Robinson in a solitary confinement prison for telling the truth?” Musk wrote on X, the social media platform he owns, on Thursday.
“He should be freed and those who covered up this travesty should take his place in that cell,” he wrote.
Robinson, a one-time football hooligan with a string of UK criminal convictions, is serving an 18-month jail term after he admitted contempt of court in a long-running libel case involving a Syrian refugee.
Musk also posted several messages about the grooming scandals which took place over decades in a number of English towns and cities including Rochdale, Rotherham and Oldham until they were uncovered more than a decade ago.
Musk shared various other accounts’ claims around the scandals and criticised Starmer’s response to the scandal.
“In the UK, serious crimes such as rape require the Crown Prosecution Service’s approval for the 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, criticising the current British prime minister.
Starmer was the head of the CPS in that period and he began a prosecution of a grooming gang in Rochdale during his final year in the role, shortly after the scandal emerged. None of the probes into the scandals singled Starmer out for blame 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 responses to it.
Musk’s tweets on Robinson have garnered support from far-right figures, including Dutch politician Geert Wilders, as well as some right-wing YouTube channels who also called for his release.
The US tech billionaire’s latest intervention in UK politics comes after his recent declaration of support for Germany’s far-right AfD party, where he claimed that AfD is the only party which can “save” Germany as the country heads towards snap elections next month.
The German government has accused him of interfering in the vote.
Musk has also openly backed 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 funder and supporter of US President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign. Last month, Trump refuted claims that he had “ceded the presidency” to Musk.
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