District Judge John McGarva has reserved judgment in the case of FSU member Hamit Coskun, who stood trial this week at Westminster Magistrates’ Court for burning a copy of the Koran outside the Turkish Consulate in London. The judge will now deliver his verdict at 11am on Monday.
Hamit, 50, is a Kurdish-Armenian asylum-seeker from Turkey. As a committed atheist, his actions were, he says, a protest against the “Islamist government” of President Erdoğan, which he accuses of turning the country into “a base for extremism”. At the trial, the court heard how he was imprisoned for seven years in Turkey for his involvement with a banned political party, during which time he was tortured. His brother, also an activist, was killed in 1997. Hamit followed proceedings with the aid of a Turkish translator.
Read more: Verdict reserved in trial of FSU member over Koran burning
