A man who came to the UK on a small boat has been found guilty of making a threat to kill Nigel Farage in a TikTok video.
Fayaz Khan, 26, an Afghan national, was found guilty by a majority of 10 jurors to two after almost 12 hours of deliberation at Southwark court court. He had made the threat to kill the Reform UK leader in October last year in a video that Farage told the court was “pretty chilling”.
Khan had a “very large presence online” with his videos on TikTok, amassing hundreds of thousands of views, jurors had heard.
In autumn last year Khan’s videos were focused on his attempts to come to the UK by small boat. He had lived in Stockholm, Sweden, since 2019, the prosecutor, Peter Ratliff , told the court.
On 12 October last year, Farage uploaded a video to YouTube titled “the journey of an illegal migrant” that highlighted Khan and referenced “young males of fighting age coming into our country about whom we know very little”, jurors were told.
Ratliff said Khan responded with a video on 14 October in which he appeared to say: “Englishman Nigel, don’t talk shit about me. You not know me. I come to England because I want to marry with your sister. You not know me.
“Don’t talk about me more. Delete the video. I’m coming to England. I’m going to pop, pop, pop.”
While Khan said “pop, pop, pop” he made “gun gestures with his hand”, headbutted the camera and was pointing to an AK-47 tattoo on his face to “emphasise he wasn’t joking”, Ratliff told jurors.
Farage said on Tuesday that Khan’s video was “pretty chilling”, adding: “Given his proximity to guns and love of guns, I was genuinely worried. He says he’s coming to England and he’s going to shoot me.”
Jurors were shown a screenshot of a subsequent TikTok post by Khan with the caption “I mean what I say” written on an image of a GB News report about the alleged threat against Farage.
The court was also shown other videos on social media by Khan in which he appeared to make “pop, pop, pop” noises and similar hand gestures to those in the TikTok video referencing Farage.
The court heard that Khan had livestreamed his journey across the Channel from France and was arrested on 31 October after arriving in the UK on a small boat.
Khan said in a police interview it was “never my intention to kill him or anything – this is my character, this is how I act in my videos. In every video I make those sounds, I say ‘pop, pop pop’.”
Khan was not called to give evidence.
Ratliff said in his closing speech the alleged threat to kill was “not some off-the-cuff comment” and the video was “sinister and menacing”. He added that Khan was “a dangerous man with an interest in firearms”. “If you’ve got an AK-47 tattooed on your arm and your face, it’s because you love AK-47s and you want the world to know that.”
In his closing speech, the defence lawyer, Charles Royle, said Khan was “remonstrating in his own idiosyncratic, moronic, comedic, eye-catching, attention-seeking way”, rather than making a threat to kill in the TikTok video.
Khan will be sentenced on Tuesday for the threat to kill conviction and for entering the UK illegally.
