A man who came to the UK on a small boat has been found guilty of making a threat to kill Nigel Farage in a TikTok video.<\/p>\n
Fayaz Khan, 26, an Afghan national, was found guilty by a majority of 10 jurors to two after almost 12 hours of deliberation at Southwark court court. He had made the threat to kill the Reform UK leader in October last year in a video that Farage told the court was \u201cpretty chilling\u201d.<\/p>\n
Khan had a \u201cvery large presence online\u201d with his videos on TikTok, amassing hundreds of thousands of views, jurors had heard.<\/p>\n
In autumn last year Khan\u2019s videos were focused on his attempts to come to the UK by small boat. He had lived in Stockholm, Sweden, since 2019, the prosecutor, Peter Ratliff , told the court.<\/p>\n
On 12 October last year, Farage uploaded a video to YouTube titled \u201cthe journey of an illegal migrant\u201d that highlighted Khan and referenced \u201cyoung males of fighting age coming into our country about whom we know very little\u201d, jurors were told.<\/p>\n
Ratliff said Khan responded with a video on 14 October in which he appeared to say: \u201cEnglishman Nigel, don\u2019t talk shit about me. You not know me. I come to England because I want to marry with your sister. You not know me.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t talk about me more. Delete the video. I\u2019m coming to England. I\u2019m going to pop, pop, pop.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Khan said \u201cpop, pop, pop\u201d he made \u201cgun gestures with his hand\u201d, headbutted the camera and was pointing to an AK-47 tattoo on his face to \u201cemphasise he wasn\u2019t joking\u201d, Ratliff told jurors.<\/p>\n
Farage said on Tuesday that Khan\u2019s video was \u201cpretty chilling\u201d, adding: \u201cGiven his proximity to guns and love of guns, I was genuinely worried. He says he\u2019s coming to England and he\u2019s going to shoot me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jurors were shown a screenshot of a subsequent TikTok post by Khan with the caption \u201cI mean what I say\u201d written on an image of a GB News report about the alleged threat against Farage.<\/p>\n
The court was also shown other videos on social media by Khan in which he appeared to make \u201cpop, pop, pop\u201d noises and similar hand gestures to those in the TikTok video referencing Farage.<\/p>\n
The court heard that Khan had livestreamed his journey across the Channel from France and was arrested on 31 October after arriving in the UK on a small boat.<\/p>\n
Khan said in a police interview it was \u201cnever my intention to kill him or anything \u2013 this is my character, this is how I act in my videos. In every video I make those sounds, I say \u2018pop, pop pop\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Khan was not called to give evidence.<\/p>\n
Ratliff said in his closing speech the alleged threat to kill was \u201cnot some off-the-cuff comment\u201d and the video was \u201csinister and menacing\u201d. He added that Khan was \u201ca dangerous man with an interest in firearms\u201d. \u201cIf you\u2019ve got an AK-47 tattooed on your arm and your face, it\u2019s because you love AK-47s and you want the world to know that.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his closing speech, the defence lawyer, Charles Royle, said Khan was \u201cremonstrating in his own idiosyncratic, moronic, comedic, eye-catching, attention-seeking way\u201d, rather than making a threat to kill in the TikTok video.<\/p>\n
Khan will be sentenced on Tuesday for the threat to kill conviction and for entering the UK illegally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man who came to the UK on a small boat has been found guilty of making a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":489926,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[12,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-489925","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115353279772051187","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}