Luke Yarwood, a 36-year-old man, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for having posted two tweets against illegal immigration, which were considered by the British justice system as an "incitement to hatred" and to violence.
Yarwood was convicted after posting his messages on X (formerly Twitter) following the terrorist attack that took place in December 2024 at a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, where six people were killed. The attack was carried out by a Muslim immigrant, an event that caused a strong international impact and multiple reactions on social media.
The episode that led to the conviction began when Yarwood replied to a post that claimed that thousands of Germans were taking to the streets with the intention of "taking back their country". In that context, the defendant wrote: “Go to the hotels where they are staying and burn them to the ground”. That message was one of the two tweets used by the prosecution to support the charge of alleged "incitement to racial hatred".
Prosecutor Siobhan Linsley argued before the court that Yarwood's "extremely unpleasant posts" had the potential to cause disorder at one of the three high-profile hotels that house illegal immigrants in Bournemouth, in the county of Dorset, near where the defendant lives.
According to the prosecution's argument, the content of the messages could translate into concrete acts of violence, even if no subsequent incident had been recorded.
