Anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson has been served a legal letter at his home for allegedly defaming a Syrian refugee boy who was attacked at a school in Huddersfield.
The general public donated £10,300 against the far-right activist after he posted numerous videos and statuses on Facebook about the incident in October 2018.
Video footage of 15-year-old Jamal being pushed to the ground and getting waterboarded sparked widespread outrage, and police continue to investigate the incident.
In response to the media coverage, Mr Robinson – real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – posted videos on his Facebook page accusing Jamal of bullying “white English girls” at the school.
The anti-Muslim activist’s page, which was permanently deleted from Facebook last week, had more than a million followers, and the posts on the Huddersfield school attack were viewed more than 900,000 times each.
Lawyers representing the Jamal claim that the posts were defamatory, and that Facebook allowed them to go viral.
Mohammed Tasnime Akunjee said the family were not wanting a specific amount of financial compensation, but that the case was in “unique territory” because of Jamal’s age and the claims “being repeated numerous times across the world”.
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A pre-action letter was delivered in person to Mr Robinson’s family home on Sunday 3 March, and he has 14 days to reply.
Lawyers hope to use some of the crowdfunded money to “penetrate the veil surrounding Stephen Yaxley-Lennon’s finances” to ensure compensation can be sought if the lawsuit is successful.
They claim that Mr Robinson’s Facebook posts caused Jamal to become “the focus of countless messages of hate and threats from the extreme right wing”, and a police safety warning.
On Tuesday, the former leader of the English Defence League had his page removed and was permanently banned from Facebook and Instagram.
The next day, Amazon took Mr Robinson’s book about the Quran off its shelves.
The anti-Islam activist has previously been banned from PayPal and Twitter over his activities, and his website was deleted in December 2018.
Police said the incident at Almondbury Community School remains under investigation.
The suspect, a 16-year-old boy, has been summoned to court for alleged assault.
The teenager had shared posts from Mr Robinson’s Facebook page in the months before the incident, as well as from Britain First and other far-right pages.
