Man who burned Koran outside embassy says verdict is ‘assault on free speech’

A man found guilty of burning a Koran outside a Turkish consulate in London has said his conviction is an ‘assault on free speech’.

Hamit Coskun, 50, shouted ‘f*** Islam’ and ‘Islam is religion of terrorism’ while holding the burning religious text above his head in Knightsbridge in February.

Turkey-born Coskun, who is half-Kurdish and half-Armenian, travelled from his Midlands home to Rutland Gardens to pull the Koran from his bag and burn it on February 13.

He said on social media he was protesting the ‘Islamist government’ of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who had ‘made Turkey a base for radical Islamists and is trying to establish a Sharia regime’.

A passerby chased Coskun from the embassy grounds, spitting on and kicking him after he fell to the floor.

Coskun was convicted of a religiously aggravated public order offence motivated by ‘hostility towards members of a religious group, namely followers of Islam’ today.

He was also found guilty of using disorderly conduct ‘within the hearing or sight of a person likely to have caused harassment, alarm or distress’’ contrary to the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and section five of the Public Order Act 1986.

Delivering the verdict, district judge John McGarva said: ‘Your actions in burning the Koran where you did were highly provocative, and your actions were accompanied by bad language in some cases directed toward the religion and were motivated at least in part by hatred of followers of the religion.’

He ordered Coskun to pay a £240 fine, with a further charge of £96.

In a statement issued through the Free Speech Union, Coskun said the conviction may bring back ‘blasphemy laws’.

He said: ‘This decision is an assault on free speech and will deter others from exercising their democratic rights to peaceful protest and freedom of expression.

‘As an activist, I will continue to campaign against the threat of Islam.

‘Christian blasphemy laws were repealed in this country more than 15 years ago and it cannot be right to prosecute someone for blaspheming against Islam.

‘Would I have been prosecuted if I’d set fire to a copy of the bible outside Westminster Abbey? I doubt it.’

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