Tommy Robinson greeted by hundreds of supporters as contempt of court case referred to Attorney General

Tommy Robinson, the founder of the English Defence League, told supporters he is the victim of a "political witch hunt" as hundreds gathered outside the Old Bailey ahead of his retrial.

Amid raucous scenes in which demonstrators drank from cans of strong lager and waved banners praising Donald Trump, the far right activist took to a stage and insisted he was being charged with contempt of court “because of who I am, rather than what I did”.

But the case against Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was sent back to the Attorney General over a legal technicality.

Judge Nicholas Hilliard QC, the Recorder of London, said that the “nature and extent of controversies” in a new statement the defendant filed a day earlier required cross-examination, which could not be achieved legally at that hearing.

Yaxley-Lennon, 35, denies being in contempt in May when he broadcast on social media from outside Leeds Crown Court about an Asian grooming sex trial that had strict reporting restrictions placed on it.

'The star attraction of the show': on the ground with Tommy Robinson's supporters

He was arrested at that court and sentenced to 13 months’ imprisonment. After two months in jail, three appeal judges overturned his conviction saying he should not have been tried the same day as his arrest. They ordered a retrial.

Judge Hilliard said that the defendant’s latest statement meant there were now disputed elements and so the case should be reviewed by the Attorney General to decide whether it should be sent to a court where cross-examination could be conducted.

A spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office sad: "A law officer will consider all material afresh, and make a decision whether or not to refer Stephen Yaxley-Lennon to the High Court for contempt."

As the streets around the court reverberated to the chants of “we want Tommy out,” Yaxley-Lennon emerged from court after the short hearing to loud applause.

After being hailed a “saviour”, he gave a 25 minutes speech claiming he said he had only broadcast details about the Leeds case that were already in the public domain.

As office workers came to their windows to see what the commotion was about, the chants shifted from “Oh, Tommy Robinson” to “Fake News” as the assembled mainly white, middle-aged men pointed in unison at television crews and reporters.

At one point a woman who had been drinking cans of Stella Artois was ushered to a side where she threw up.

More than 500 protestors were crammed inside barricades on the cordoned off street and under the watchful eyes of rows of City of London police.

The contempt charge relates to a trial where 20 members of a gang of mainly Pakistani men were sentenced to more than 220 years in prison after the court heard they had passed victims around for sexual gratification like “commodities”.

That case, one of three linked trials, was reported after a judge agreed to a request from the media to lift reporting restrictions after all the connected trials had concluded.

But, the latest legal papers about the alleged contempt reveal that Yaxley-Lennon’s video was filmed from outside the Leeds court while the trial was ongoing and was posted on Facebook and seen 3.4 million times in four days.

It is claimed his language in the clip suggested he believed the defendants were guilty, and he even approached them for comments at an entrance used by jurors. On occasions this led to the defendants abusing him.

The document, from Angus McCullough, QC, advocate to the court, says that Yaxley-Lennon made “derogatory comments” about the defendants’ religious and ethnic backgrounds before accusing them of “more widespread criminal activity”.

Yaxley Lennon has convictions for assault, public order offences, drugs, mortgage fraud and he was imprisoned in 2013 for using someone else’s passport to travel to the US.

In May last year, he was found to be in contempt by filming in the precincts of Canterbury Crown Court and was handed a suspended sentence of three months.

While supporters claim his jailing over the Leeds case was an affront to freedom of speech, the anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate claim Yaxley-Lennon is an “extremist and violent thug” who “nearly derailed” a trial.