The far-right leader whose anti-Islamic messages were retweeted by Donald Trump has made a bizarre appeal to him to intervene in her upcoming prosecution.
Jayda Fransen was the little-known deputy leader of Britain First until inflammatory messages she posted online were picked up by the US President and seen around the world.
The 31-year-old faces prosecution for religiously aggravated harassment and a separate trial for using threatening and abusive language.
Taking advantage of her new notoriety, she made a video message for Trump calling on him to intervene in the cases to help her.
Britain First’s Jayda Fransen has used her new-found notoriety following Donald Trump’s retweeting of her message to call on the President to intervene in her prosecution in the UK
She starts the online video by thanking the President for retweeting her messages and saying she is ‘delighted’ by the publicity.
She said: ‘On behalf of myself and every citizen of Britain and for every man and women who has fought and died for us tro have freedom of speech, I am appealing to you for your help.
‘I’m appealing for your intervention before I am thrown in jail.’
Fransen, and Britain First leader Paul Golding, 35, both of Penge, are due to appear at Folkestone Magistrates’ Court today for a pre-trial review over allegations of religiously aggravated abuse in Canterbury and Ramsgate, Kent.
A trial is scheduled for January 29, the Crown Prosecution Service said.
She will also appear in court in Northern Ireland in December charged with using threatening and abusive language in connection with a speech she made at an anti-terrorism demonstration in Belfast on August 6.
Fransen’s anti-Muslim posts were retweeted by Mr Trump although it has since emerged that the attacker in this video is neither a Muslim nor a migrant
Britain First have been widely accused of racism and of stoking up racial hatred
Last year, Ms Fransen was found guilty of religiously aggravated harassment after accosting a Muslim woman.
The charge stemmed from a January 2016 incident in which Fransen, wearing a political uniform and during a so-called ‘Christian patrol,’ accosted a Muslim woman named Sumayyah Sharpe in Luton, England.
Ms Fransen admitted that she told Sharpe, who was wearing hijab, that Muslim men force women to cover up to avoid rape ‘because they cannot control their sexual urges.’
In a flurry of social media posts on Wednesday morning, Mr Trump retweeted three posts by Britain First deputy leader Jayda Fransen to his 43.6 million followers, including footage from the Netherlands purporting to show a Muslim migrant attacking a man on crutches.
Fransen said she is ‘delighted’ that the President had retweeted her messages to his followers
The retweets were made without comment, but were regarded by many in the UK as an effective endorsement of the far-right group.
After Theresa May condemned the tweets, Trump then targeted her with an online message, telling her to concentrate on tackling extremism.
In her first personal response to the furore today, Mrs May said that the UK and US worked closely together in the fight against terrorism.
And she added: ‘The fact that we work together does not mean that we are afraid to say when we think that the United States have got it wrong and to be very clear with them.
‘I am very clear that retweeting from Britain First was the wrong thing to do.’