KB-2023-003636 - [2025] EWHC 2043 (KB)

The article was published in three forms: in print, on a website and on an app. All three versions are substantially the same. The website version was first published on 21 September 2022. The print version was published on 24 September 2022. The headline is “Leicester and the downside with diversity”. The website and app versions have a large photograph showing two police vans, a police car and a large number of hooded men, with the caption “unrest in Leicester.” The article opens with the observation “…if you import the world’s people you import the world’s problems.” It then describes one of the “downsides” as the disturbances which had taken place in Leicester which, it was said, “initially broke out between local Muslims and Hindus in the last days of August.” The following was said about the claimant:

“Hindu and Muslim groups across social media started to call for their men to come out on the streets – which they did. The Hindus chanted ‘Jai Shree Ram’ (‘Praise Lord Ram’) and some were filmed carrying weapons. Muslims retaliated in kind and in one video were seen setting light to a Hindu flag. This inflamed tensions further and became a political scandal in the Indian media.

Soon charming people like Mohammed Hijab, who rotates between presenting himself as a reasoned interlocutor and a street agitator, arrived on the scene. Hijab made a slight name for himself last year by whipping up a mob on the streets of London. At one anti-Israel protest addressed by Hijab in inflammatory terms, a masked man was filmed chanting “We’ll find some Jews. We want their blood”, though Hijab says he had left the protest by that time and later tried to calm things down. Of course, the police did nothing much about the crowd itself, for the belief of the British police these days is that as long as a mob can be dispersed at some point, it counts as a great victory for the force.

This week Hijab cropped up in Leicester to whip up his followers. Among other things he told them that Hindus are ridiculous people, not least because of their belief in reincarnation. Hijab claimed that the Hindus must live in fear because they have been reincarnated as such “pathetic, weak cowardly people.” “I’d rather be an animal,” he went on.

Soon both sides were accusing the other of attacking their places of worship. Crowds of hundreds faced off in the streets with a thin line of police officers between them. Some in the mobs came armed with knives and other weapons….”

On 21 September 2022, the second defendant posted a tweet with a link to the website version of the article. On 22 September 2022, the claimant posted tweets in reply in which he challenged the second defendant to show where he had said the words that had been attributed to him. On the same day he sent an email to the first defendant’s editor demanding that he retract statements in the article that he had said “we found some Jews we want some blood” and “Hindus are ridiculous.” On 23 September 2022, Fraser Nelson, the first defendant’s editor, pointed out that the article did not claim that the claimant had said “we found some Jews we want some blood” and that, instead, the article reported the claimant’s account that he had left the protest by the time that had been said by another man. Mr Nelson also said that the basis for the contention that the claimant had told his followers that Hindus were ridiculous was the video he had posted on his YouTube channel. The claimant responded with two emails asking when he had used the word “Hindu” and when he had said that Hindus were weak and pathetic. There was no further response.