Man who burnt Koran outside Turkey's UK embassy wins appeal

A Kurdish-Armenian man who burnt a Koran outside Turkey's embassy to the UK won an appeal on Friday against his conviction, in a ruling hailed by free-speech campaigners.

Hamit Coskun, 51, was found guilty in June of a religiously aggravated public order offence and issued with a fine.

Coskun, who was born in Turkey, had set the religious book alight outside Ankara's consulate in London in February while shouting slogans against Islam.

His case was taken up by the National Secular Society (NSS) and the Free Speech Union (FSU), who argued that Coskun was essentially being prosecuted for blasphemy.

Turkey has previously condemned protests in Western countries at which the Muslim holy book was vandalised, including a series of Koran-burnings in Sweden that sparked demonstrations across the Islamic world in 2023.

Ruling in Coskun's favour, judge Joel Bennathan told the Southwark Crown Court on Friday that no blasphemy offence existed in the law.

While "burning a Koran may be an act that many Muslims find desperately upsetting and offensive", the judge said that the criminal law code does not seek to "avoid people being upset, even grievously upset".

"The right to freedom of expression, if it is a right worth having, must include the right to express views that offend, shock or disturb," he added.

Blasphemy laws were abolished in England and Wales in 2008.

Several European countries have previously seen protests where activists, sometimes from the far right, damage or destroy religious symbols or books while claiming free speech protections.

Those have often sparked protests from Muslim countries, Turkey included.

After Salwan Momika, a Sweden-based Iraqi refugee, burned a Koran at a protest in 2023, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan complained about the Scandinavian country's decision to let his demonstration go ahead while holding up Stockholm's bid for NATO membership.

In a statement, Coskun said that he came to England "having been persecuted in Turkey, to be able to speak freely about the dangers of radical Islam".

"I am reassured that, despite many troubling developments, I will now be free to educate the British public about my beliefs," he added.

Britain's Free Speech Union said the successful appeal sent a message that "anti-religious protests, however offensive to true believers, must be tolerated".

Coskun has also received the support of the opposition Conservative party's justice spokesperson and former leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick.

Until May, when the Kurdistan Workers' Party announced it had abandoned its armed struggle, Turkey was engaged in a deadly four-decade-long on-off conflict against Kurdish fighters.

The Armenians, meanwhile, have long sought international recognition for what they argue was the Ottoman Empire's genocide of their people during the First World War. Turkey strongly denies the accusation of genocide.