Father Ted writer Graham Linehan said he was arrested at Heathrow Airport over three X posts expressing his views on trans issues.<\/p>\n
The 57-year-old said he was detained by five armed officers after flying in from Arizona and told he was under arrest over the social media entries.<\/p>\n
Mr Linehan said he was taken to a cell and then questioned over the X posts, published in April.<\/p>\n
One said: \u201cIf a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another was a photograph of a trans rights protest, with the comment \u201ca photo you can smell\u201d, with a follow-up post saying: \u201cI hate them. Misogynists and homophobes. F**k em.\u201d<\/p>\n
The writer said after questioning by police his blood pressure had reached \u201cstroke territory\u201d and he was taken to hospital and kept under observation, before being released on bail.<\/p>\n
The Met Police did not identify Mr Linehan but a spokeswoman said: \u201cOn Monday, September 1 at 1pm officers arrested a man at Heathrow Airport after he arrived on an inbound American Airlines flight.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe man in his 50s was arrested on suspicion of inciting violence. This is in relation to posts on X.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter being taken to police custody, officers became concerned for his health and he was taken to hospital. His condition is neither life-threatening nor life-changing.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has now been bailed pending further investigation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe arrest was made by officers from the MPS Aviation Unit.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is routine for officers policing airports to carry firearms. These were not drawn or used at any point during the arrest.\u201d<\/p>\n
Separately, Mr Linehan is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates\u2019 Court on Thursday accused of harassing transgender woman Sophia Brooks and damaging her phone, which he denies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Father Ted writer Graham Linehan said he was arrested at Heathrow Airport over three X posts expressing his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38767,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,6,11,12,1678,15,16,5,9168,2104,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-38766","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-featured-news","11":"tag-featurednews","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-latest-news","14":"tag-latestnews","15":"tag-lgbtq","16":"tag-main-news","17":"tag-mainnews","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-place-republic-of-ireland","20":"tag-place-uk","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-topstories","23":"tag-world","24":"tag-world-news","25":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}