A small boat Afghan migrant jailed for five years for threatening to kill Nigel Farage launched into a furious court tirade at the Reform UK leader, claiming he is being locked up because “he wants to be Prime Minister”.
Fayaz Khan posted a TikTok video in October last year aimed at Farage which concluded with the words: “I’m coming to England. I’m going to pop, pop, pop.”
He was then arrested by the UK authorities after crossing the Channel in a small boat while livestreaming his journey.
Southwark crown court heard on Tuesday that Khan was fleeing a jail term for carrying a knife in Sweden when he made the crossing, and gave false details to the UK to hide his criminal past.
Mrs Justice Steyn sentenced him to five years in prison for threatening to kill Farage, with a concurrently eight month term for breaching immigration rules as he entered the country.
The sentence provoked a furious outburst from Khan, who claimed he now wants to return to his family in Afghanistan and suggested the case against him had been fixed.
“I’m not guilty of wanting to kill him”, he ranted. “He’s going to be Prime Minister, I swear to God. You want to f***my life...because he’s going to be Prime Minister.”
He shouted directly at Farage: “You want to be Prime Minister, I am not here because I want to kill you.
“You want to use me because you want to be Prime Minister.
“Just because you want to do that you want to f*** my life, you want to put me in prison.”
Passing sentence, the judge said Khan had “implied you were a mafia leader” in the threat video, while making gun gestures and headbutting the camera repeatedly.
“This was a threat to kill Nigel Farage, made with the intent that Nigel Farage would fear it would be carried out”, she said.
She said Farage, with other MPs, understands his role as a high-profile politician comes with public scrutiny and sometimes he faces abuse.
“Your video was not mere abuse”, said the judge. “It was a threat to kill with a firearm, and as Mr Farage put it, it was pretty chilling.
“Mr Farage rightly understood you were threatening to shoot him.”
Farage sat in the courtroom’s public gallery around ten feet away from Khan with just the clear screens of the dock between them.
During the hearing, his barrister, Charles Royle, offered an apology from Khan to Farage, and the politician was seen accepting it with a nod in Khan’s direction.
After the outburst in the dock, Khan could be heard shouting and struggling with security staff while being led away to the cells.
Standing on the steps of the court, Farage told reporters he is “happy” with the sentence, but claimed Khan would be released and “free” in a year-and-a-half.
“I’ve got mixed feelings”, he said. “Happy with the sentence, happy with the win, but I repeat, in 18 months time this violent criminal will be free on our streets.
“He said he’d rather go back to Afghanistan and we should satisfy that as soon as we can”
Details of Khan’s background were also revealed at the start of Tuesday’s sentencing hearing.
He has lived in Stockholm, Sweden since 2015, Swedish authorities know him by another name and believe he is 31, rather than 26 as he claimed when landing in the UK.
He claimed to have given the alias Khan “because he had enemies who he did not want to find him”, but prosecutor Peter Ratliff said it is “more likely he gave a false name because of his criminal record in Sweden”.
He told the court Khan has 17 convictions racked up between 2019 and 2024, including multiple incidents involving drugs and dishonesty, and prison terms for carrying a knife, vandalism, and threatening behaviour towards a public official.
After his arrest in the UK, Khan was also sentenced to six months in prison in Sweden for another incident of knife possession.
The judge was handed an impact statement from Farage which was not read aloud, but she referred to it in her sentencing remarks.
“He was very concerned and very worried for himself and his family”, she said.
“He found your threat to kill him and the description of how you intended to do so - taken together with the ease of finding him given his role and the fact you often wore a face covering, making it more difficult to identify you - alarming.”
The incident involving Farage unfolded in October last year after Khan documented on TikTok his efforts to travel to the UK by small boat.
Farage picked up on the social media posts and uploaded a video on YouTube, entitled “the journey of an illegal migrant”.
Referencing Khan directly, Farage complained of “young males of fighting age coming into our country about whom we know very little”.
Khan then responded with a threat, saying: “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.”
Khan pointed to the tattoo on his face of an AK-47 machine gun as the video ended, while also mimicking firing a gun with his hand.
He claimed that the “pop, pop, pop” sign-off was common to all his social media videos and denied pretending to fire a gun.
But prosecutor Peter Ratliff called the video “sinister and menacing”, while Khan was branded “a dangerous man with an interest in firearms”.
The prosecutor added: “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 evidence, Farage, the MP for Clacton on Sea, called the threat video “pretty chilling”, adding: “Given his proximity to guns and love of guns, I was genuinely worried.”
The Reform UK leader added: “He says he’s coming to England and he’s going to shoot me.”
Not content with the first video, Khan created another image with the caption “I mean what I say” over an GB News report about the threat against Mr Farage.
The threat of an arrest was already looming when Khan made the journey across the English Channel from France in a small boat, livestreaming his progress.
Mr Ratliff said Khan had been among 65 migrants on a small boat which made the crossing on October 31 last year, before being intercepted by Border Force agents.
“He claimed no one had mentioned that method of travel was illegal, and claimed if he hadn’t been intercepted, he would have voluntarily claimed asylum”, he said.
“He said he had lived in Sweden for nine years from 2015, and he shared his journey from Sweden to the UK on TikTok to show people the difficulties of the trip.”
However the prosecutor told the judge that he had travelled through safe countries to get to the UK, he could not claim to be seeking asylum from his legal difficulties in Sweden, and he suggested Khan’s videos about his journey were “boasts” and “intended to encourage others”.
In mitigation, Mr Royle said Khan considers himself an “entertainer and rapper”, and he says his online posts and facial tattoos are “furthering that role in the entertainment industry”.
“The persona of Khan doesn’t really bear the rather literal interpretation the Crown give him of being an aggressive gangster or pseudo-gangster”, he said. “He was playing a role to gain followers.”
Mr Royle said Khan is the father of a three-year-old son he left behind in Sweden, he had been given a notice to leave the country, and planned to claim asylum in the UK because he says he had worked for his father, an associate of former Afghan president Hamid Karzai.
In her sentencing remarks, the judge said threats to kill MPs are “exceptionally serious” whether made in-person or online.
“Being an MP is a vitally important public duty, it’s critical to a thriving and vibrant democracy that the general public have access to MPs, and politicians are not deterred from standing for, or remaining in Parliament by threats.”
Reacting to the conviction last week, Farage posted on social media: “How many more of these people are we letting into our country every single day?”
Khan was convicted by a juror by a majority of 10 to two of making a threat to kill, and he pleaded guilty to knowingly attempting to arrive in the UK without a valid entry clearance.
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