Tommy Robinson faces football banning order after punching England fan in Portugal
Charles Hymas
Gerard Couzens
TOMMY ROBINSON, the controversial Right-wing firebrand, faces a potential football banning order and police investigation after being caught on video punching an England fan in Portugal.
Deputy Chief Constable Mark Roberts, the National Police Chiefs’ Council football policing lead, said: “We have been informed of an incident outside the Guimaraes stadium and the footage has been passed to our counterparts in Portugal for further investigation.
“As with all the disorder that has taken place in Portugal over the past few days, anyone found to be involvedcould be subject to a banning order on their return to the UK.”
Police can go to court to seek a banning order, generally of between two and 10 years, even if an alleged football hooligan has not been convicted of an offence. Portuguese police also said they were studying ways to bar the English Defence League founder from England’s third place Nations League play-off against Switzerland on Sunday.
The video showed Robinson, a former leader of the English Defence League and now an adviser to Ukip, punching a red-shirted England fan after approaching him from behind before the 3-1 defeat to Holland in Guimaraes on Thursday. The 36-yearold sent the fan sprawling to the ground but insisted he was acting in self-defence after being threatened.
After footage of the punch was posted online, Robinson uploaded a video to social media saying: “That man has come up to me twice, getting rowdy, getting abusive, being aggressive. I said to the man’s friend: ‘Keep that man away from me, he comes back up to me again like that and watch what happens to him’.”
Portuguese police said they were attempting to track down the man who was attacked and would investigate if he made a compliant.
Robinson, who has previously been jailed for contempt of court, went to court to successfully overturn a previous football banning order in 2016.