{"id":93924,"date":"2025-10-21T03:43:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T03:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/93924\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T03:43:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T03:43:08","slug":"prosecutors-drop-linehan-case-over-social-media-posts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/93924\/","title":{"rendered":"Prosecutors drop Linehan case over social media posts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan has said that police have informed his lawyers that he will face &#8220;no further action&#8221; after being arrested in London on suspicion of inciting violence over social media posts about trans issues.<\/p>\n<p>In a post on social media, the 57-year-old said that the Crown Prosecution Service has dropped the case.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Linehan was arrested at Heathrow Airport last month on suspicion of inciting violence.<\/p>\n<p>He had just arrived in Britain from Arizona in the United States.<\/p>\n<p>He said his arrest was in relation to three social media posts.<\/p>\n<p>One read: &#8220;If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\">The police have informed my lawyers that I face no further action in respect of the arrest at Heathrow in September. After a successful hearing to get my bail conditions lifted (one which the police officer in charge of the case didn&#8217;t even bother to attend) the Crown\u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Graham Linehan (@Glinner) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Glinner\/status\/1980288054016590157\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">October 20, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<p>In a statement on X, Mr Linehan said: &#8220;The police have informed my lawyers that I face no further action in respect of the arrest at Heathrow in September.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;After a successful hearing to get my bail conditions lifted (one which the police officer in charge of the case didn&#8217;t even bother to attend) the Crown Prosecution Service has dropped the case.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;With the aid of the Free Speech Union, I still aim to hold the police accountable for what is only the latest attempt to silence and suppress gender critical voices on behalf of dangerous and disturbed men.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Free Speech Union said that it plans to sue the Metropolitan Police for &#8220;wrongful arrest&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve instructed a top flight team of lawyers to sue the Met for wrongful arrest, among other things,&#8221; it said in a statement on X.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;After weeks of police bail &#8211; subject to unlawful conditions, including a ban on posting on X &#8211; officers have told @Glinner that prosecutors say there isn\u2019t sufficient evidence to support any charges.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That shouldn\u2019t have been a surprise since opposing trans ideology is not a crime. Throughout this probe, the police have behaved like activists, not impartial upholders of the law.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Rather than inviting Graham for an interview in September, the Met sent five armed police officers to arrest him at Heathrow Airport.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So, we\u2019re not stopping here. Police forces cannot continue to suppress lawful free speech without facing consequences.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We\u2019ve instructed a top flight team of lawyers to sue the Met for wrongful arrest, among other things.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Graham deserves an apology but, more importantly, the police need to be taught a lesson that they cannot allow themselves to be continually manipulated by woke activists.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>No more investigatations into &#8216;non-crime hate incidents&#8217; <\/p>\n<p>In a statement, a Metropolitan Police spokesperson said that &#8220;we understand the concern around this case. The Commissioner has been clear he doesn&#8217;t believe officers should be policing toxic culture war debates, with current laws and rules on inciting violence online leaving them in an impossible position.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;As a result, the Met will no longer investigate non-crime hate incidents. We believe this will provide clearer direction for officers, reduce ambiguity and enable them to focus on matters that meet the threshold for criminal investigations.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;These incidents will still be recorded and used as valuable pieces of intelligence to establish potential patterns of behaviour or criminality.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We will continue to investigate and arrest those who commit hate crimes &#8211; allowing us to comply with statutory guidance while focusing our resources on criminality and public protection.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Additional reporting PA<\/p>\n<p>                    <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan has said that police have informed his lawyers that he will face &#8220;no&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-93924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}