(Corrects name of lawyer from Doyle to Royle in paragraph 11)
LONDON (Reuters) -Nigel Farage, the leader of the populist Reform UK party which leads opinion polls in Britain, told a court on Tuesday an Afghan migrant’s TikTok video about him while making apparent gun gestures was “chilling”.
Fayaz Khan, a 26-year-old Afghan national, is standing trial at Southwark Crown Court in London, charged with making a threat to kill Farage in a video posted on TikTok in October 2024.
Prosecutor Peter Ratliff said Khan was attempting to travel to Britain last year, a journey he documented on social media where he had a large following.
FARAGE IN COURT AS WITNESS
Farage had posted a video on YouTube on October 12, 2024, about migrants attempting to travel to Britain, which included clips from videos Khan had posted of his journey.
Two days later, Khan – who has a tattoo of an AK-47 assault rifle on his face – posted a response telling “Englishman Nigel” to delete his video and said ‘pop, pop, pop’ while making gun gestures with his hand, Ratliff told jurors.
The prosecutor also said some of Khan’s social media posts “suggested he had access to firearms”.
Farage, standing in the witness box, said Khan’s video response to his post had been brought to his attention shortly after it was posted.
“I thought the response was pretty chilling,” he said.
Farage said that being a high-profile politician had made him a target for criticism: “Abuse is part of public life, (but) that’s not something that I’m used to seeing.
“Given his proximity to guns and love of guns, I was genuinely, genuinely worried.”
Khan’s lawyer Charles Royle suggested to Farage that Khan’s video “suits your narrative”, to which Farage replied: “It doesn’t suit my narrative, it’s a fact.”
Ratliff earlier told the jury that Khan, who has pleaded not guilty to making a threat to kill, told police he did not mean he would shoot Farage by saying “pop, pop, pop”.
“Whatever you think about Mr Farage and his politics, whatever you think about the issue of migration or illegal migration specifically, all of that is just irrelevant,” Ratliff added.
“The only real issue … is whether the defendant intended that Nigel Farage would believe that he would carry out his threat.”
(Reporting by Sam Tobin;Editing by Alison Williams)
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