Man who burned Koran outside Turkish consulate wins bid against CPS in latest court battle

With the backing of campaigners, Mr Coskun won an appeal against his conviction at Southwark Crown Court in October - deemed by many as a win for free speech.

With the CPS moving to overturn his acquittal this week, Donald Trump was prepared to offer him asylum in the United States had the ruling not gone in his favour.

Mr Coskun was initially convicted last June of a religiously aggravated public order offence after he held a flaming copy of the Islamic text aloft and shouted “f*** Islam” outside the Turkish embassy on February 13 last year.

The Crown Prosecution Service brought an appeal against Mr Coskun's October acquittal at the High Court and asked for it to be reconsidered.

But dismissing the appeal in a decision on Friday, Lord Justice Warby and Ms Justice Obi said: “We are not persuaded that the court left any material factor out of account or relied on any immaterial factor".

Lawyers for the CPS told a hearing earlier in February that the judge was wrong to find that Mr Coskun’s behaviour was not “disorderly” and, if it was, was unlikely to cause harassment, alarm or distress.

Mr Coskun, who has been provided accommodation by the Home Office since his protest because of threats made to him, resisted the legal challenge and attended the hearing in London.

Turkish-born Mr Coskun, who is half-Kurdish and half-Armenian and lives in England, had his legal case funded by the National Secular Society (NSS) and the Free Speech Union (FSU).

Following the High Court’s decision, Lord Young of Acton, general secretary of the Free Speech Union, said: “This appeal should never have been brought by the Crown Prosecution Service, just as Hamit should never have been prosecuted.

“We have not had blasphemy laws in this country for 18 years and, for that reason, this prosecution was bound to fail.

“Yet the CPS has spent hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to bring one back via the back door - and one that just enforces Muslim blasphemy codes, not Christian ones.

“In light of this humiliating defeat, I think the Director of Public Prosecutions has no choice but to resign".

Footage from the burning, back in February, appeared to show Mr Coskun being attacked by a man with a knife after his initial stunt.

He later received treatment for injuries sustained to his fingers - but at the time, officers said the man did not receive any stab wounds.

Appearing at court a few days after burning the holy book, Mr Coskun was seen with a bandaged hand.

Mr Coskun said he had come to England to "be able to speak freely about the dangers of radical Islam" and is now "reassured" that he is "free to educate the British public about my beliefs".

Stephen Evans, chief executive of the National Secular Society, said after the decision: “The High Court has rightly rejected this wrongheaded attempt to introduce a blasphemy law by the back door.

“However offensive some may have found the Koran-burning protest, it was lawful. Criminal law protects people from harm, not from being offended.

“This judgment makes clear that it is not the state’s job to police religious sensibilities. A hostile, even violent reaction to speech cannot be allowed to determine whether that speech is criminal.

“There must now be a serious review of how and why the CPS originally came to charge a man with causing harassment, alarm and distress to the religion of Islam, and why it chose to pursue this case to the High Court. Public confidence demands answers".

A Crown Prosecution Service spokesperson said: “There is no law to prosecute people for ‘blasphemy’ and burning a religious text on its own is not a criminal act - our case was always that Hamit Coskun’s words, choice of location and burning of the Qu’ran amounted to disorderly behaviour, and that at the time he demonstrated hostility towards a religious group.

“The High Court has made a ruling we will review its decision carefully".