Throwbacks to the time Tommy Robinson claimed he had been “mentally tortured” in prison because he had no TV have been doing the rounds on social media as the far-right figure continues to be bunkered up in Europe.
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, has been thrust back into the media spotlight over his role in the UK riots, which were spurred by the spread of misinformation on social media.
He fleed the UK just one day before he was due in the High Court for a libel hearing and is now bemoaning the fact that he can’t get ‘a single lawyer’ to take-up his case.
In 2018, Robinson lodged a form with the prison service claiming he had been kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours every day for two months.
He had been convicted earlier in the year after filming people in an ongoing criminal trial at Leeds Crown Court and broadcasting it to 250,000 people on social media.
Robinson claims he lost nearly 40lbs during his two months in jail, eating only one tin of tuna and a piece of fruit daily and said he was “paranoid” that other inmates were tampering with his food.
“You are punishing me with no TV,” he wrote.
“I’d like to be given a TV as I feel I am being mentally tortured.
“I don’t eat the prison food as I can’t see if anything is done to it as servey [sic] may know its coming to my cell. I’m paranoid so I rely on tinned food from the canteen.”
He was “allowed no socialisation, no church, no education, no work and no gym,” he wrote.
He also complained about being moved from prison in Hull to HMP Onley in Rugby.
“You have moved me from Hull with a 7 per cent Muslim population to here where 1 in 3 prisoners are Muslim. I’d like to know how that move could have happened considering you have a duty of care for my safety.”
“This prison move is not progressive and is affecting my mental health.”
The Prison Service rejected his claims.
“Mr Yaxley-Lennon was treated with the same fairness we aim to show all prisoners – he had access to visits, television and showers – and it is totally false to say he was held in ‘solitary confinement’”, said a Prison Service spokesman.
“He was initially placed into the Care & Separation Unit for less than 48 hours while an assessment of the risk to his safety was undertaken by prison staff. He then joined the main prison population.”
Robinson told Fox News programme Tucker Carlson Tonight that he had been spat at and had excrement thrown at him by other prisons.
“I was supposed to be in Her Majesty’s Prison Service, not Guantanamo Bay,” he said.