Armed police officers are a rare sight in Britain, but the Irish comedian Graham Linehan was met by five of them when he landed at London’s Heathrow Airport from Arizona on Monday, before being arrested, searched and questioned.
The reason? Three posts he wrote on X in April, Linehan claimed on his Substack.
“If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act,” Linehan wrote in one of them, in reference to trans women. “Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.”
Without naming Linehan – the co-creator of the sitcom “Father Ted” who is a gender critical activist – London’s Metropolitan Police confirmed it had arrested a man in his 50s “on suspicion of inciting violence.” Linehan denied that his posts were “a call to violence” against trans women and has been released on bail.
For Nigel Farage, the populist leader of the hard-right Reform UK party, Linehan’s arrest was “rather timely.” He had been invited to give evidence before the US House of Representative’s Judiciary Committee in Washington on Wednesday, for a hearing on “European threats to free speech.”
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