US officials are preparing to help Hamit Coskun flee the UK if he loses this week’s “blasphemy case”.
US officials are preparing to help him flee the UK if he loses this week’s ‘blasphemy case’ (Image: PA)
Donald Trump’s administration is preparing to offer refuge to a man who burnt a Koran in the UK, if he loses a “blasphemy case” this week. State department officials are in talks to help Hamit Coskun, 51, who was found guilty of a religiously aggravated public order offence when he burned a copy of the Quran outside the Turkish consulate in London last February.
He overturned the conviction last June, but the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is contesting that decision at a High Court hearing on Tuesday (February 17). If he loses the case, the Trump administration plans to accept Mr Coskun as a refugee, with one senior US administration official describing his case as “one of several cases the administration has made note of”. The potential intervention is likely to escalate transatlantic tensions over free speech, which critics have argued are being eroded under Sir Keir Starmer’s Government.
Mr Coskun was found guilty at Westminster Magistrates Court of religiously aggravated public order and of using disorderly behaviour (Image: PA)
Mr Coskun, who is of Armenian-Kurdish descent, sought asylum in the UK from his home country of Turkey, saying Islamic terrorists had destroyed his family’s life. On February 13, 2025, he shouted abusive comments about Islam as he held the flaming book aloft in Rutland Gardens in Knightsbridge. He was found guilty at Westminster Magistrates Court of religiously aggravated public order and of using disorderly behaviour, and fined £240 with a statutory surcharge of £96.
At the time, District Judge John McGarva said Mr Coskun’s conduct was “provocative and taunting” and told him “you have a deep-seated hatred of Islam and its followers”.
Mr Coskun was originally charged by the CPS with harassing the “religious institution of Islam”, however, the charge was later amended after the National Secular Society and the Free Speech Union took up his cause and argued that he was effectively being accused of blasphemy, an offence abolished in the UK 18 years ago. At his trial, lawyers for the CPS insisted that Mr Coskun was not being prosecuted for setting fire to the Koran.
“For me, as the victim of Islamic terrorism, I cannot remain silent. I may be forced to flee the UK and move to the USA, where President Trump has stood for free speech and against Islamic extremism,” he told The Telegraph, claiming that if this were to occur, the UK “will have effectively fallen to Islamism and the speech codes that it wishes to impose on the non-Muslim world”.
Trump has already granted refugee status to white South Africans facing ‘racial discrimination’ (Image: Getty)
Mr Coskun, who is living in a safe house for his own protection, said that if he won the case, he would remain in the UK and continue burning Korans as part of a political protest at what he claimed was the Islamification of Turkey.
“I wish to go back to educating people about the dangers that Islam poses to the Western world,” he said.
Now, the US has discussed granting the 51-year-old refugee status if he applies. From there, he can apply for political asylum. This comes after Vice President, JD Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference last year in which he declared that free speech in Britain was “in retreat” while questioning whether Europe still shared America’s values. Mr Trump has already granted refugee status to white South Africans who claimed they faced racial discrimination in their home country.
Lord Young of Acton, the general secretary of the Free Speech Union, said if Mr Coskun lost his appeal, it would mark the death of UK free speech: “You’ve heard of the heckler’s veto. This will create a stabber’s veto. It will sound the death knell for free speech in Britain.”
