Hamit Coskun, 51, who recently won a free speech case at the UK High Court over his “right to burn the Holy Qur’an,” was previously sentenced to 16 years in prison for strangling his wife to death, court documents have revealed.
Coskun, who was cleared of charges over burning a copy of the Qur’an outside the Turkish consulate on February 13 2025, was previously found guilty of aggravated homicide in 2002.
The revelation has come after Turkish court documents, independently verified by Middle East Eye (MEE), found him guilty for the death of his wife, Vesia Coskun.
Coskun, who is half Armenian and half Kurdish, is said to have served seven years of his sentence following his arrest and conviction in 2002, being released in 2009.
But despite the documents which MEE say they have verified, Coskun denied any involvement in his wife’s death, rather claiming she died of an asthma attack in a different year and that the court documents must have been forged.
Lawyers representing Coskun claim that he denied he had ever been arrested, charged or imprisoned over his wife’s death, and said that he had been in prison in Turkey for a number of years due to his “anti-regime politics”.
The lawyers added that Coskun had “no realistic access to material from his former life in Turkey.”
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According to MEE, a lawyer who had reviewed Coskun’s case file at Istanbul Bakirkoy criminal court confirmed that the documents, which MEE had seen, were the same as those found in the official court archive.
There was also a newspaper report about the case on September 26 2002, which was the same day Coskun was arrested according to the documents.
Coskun’s life in the UK
Coskun applied for asylum in the UK in 2022. In February 2025 he was arrested for burning a copy of the Holy Qur’an in front of the Turkish consulate in London.
Coskun shouted Islamophobic statements whilst he was burning the Qur’an, such as “f*** Islam” and “Islam is a religion of terrorism.”
During the act, Coskun was confronted by a Muslim man, Moussa Kadri, who slashed at him with a knife. Kadri was given a suspended prison sentence for his act.
Coskun was charged and convicted on June 2, 2025 with religiously aggravated disorderly behaviour.
However, his conviction was overturned after an appeal in October 2025, with the High Court dismissing the Crown Prosecution Service’s attempt to challenge and reinstate his charges on February 27, 2026.
Following the judgement, Coskun wrote in the Daily Telegraph that the High Court had “struck back against the Islamification of Britain” following the decision.
“I am now free to resume my campaign against the rising tide of Islamification, both in Britain and Europe – and that may include burning copies of the Koran again,” he wrote.
Wife’s killing
According to the court documents, Coskun was tried in Istanbul’s Bakirkoy criminal court where he was accused of strangling Vesia Coskun on September 25 2002, whom he had been married to since 1993.
Coskun allegedly killed her “by placing his hands on her throat” in a fight at their home in Istanbul’s Ilkiteli district.
He subsequently turned himself in at a police station.
Coskun allegedly confessed to the killing and expressed remorse, according to MEE as seen in the indictment filed against him.
After being held in prison pending his trial, Coskun was repeatedly hospitalised which delayed the trial proceedings, and in December 2007 he was sentenced to 16 years in prison, including the years he had already spent in custody.
According to MEE, the indictment against him alleged that he was having a relationship with another woman, who was also accused of being involved in the killing, but the woman was later cleared of all charges and both Coskun and her had retracted their statements.
Coskun was released from Kocaeli Prison on parole on July 2 2009.
Charges overturned
His conviction was then overturned in January 2010 due to procedural issues with the trial, only to be reconvicted in May 2011 following a retrial after his late wife’s sister complained to the court.
Coskun didn’t serve any further time following his reconviction.
In a recent article in the Telegraph, Coskun claims that he was arrested and tortured in Turkey for joining a “left-wing pro-democracy party” in the 1990s, and was released from prison in 2002.
However, the court files which MEE reviewed allegedly state that he was separately convicted and sentenced to five years in prison by Izmir criminal court for his alleged membership of an illegal armed group, although no date was specified.
Coskun’s lawyers maintained that he had never seen the court documents in question and that they must have been forged due to politically motivated reasons.
“His wife died of natural causes. There was no police investigation into it, at least that he knows of. He was never arrested for her murder or charged for it. He was never put on trial for it or jailed for it.”
