{"id":203858,"date":"2026-07-09T17:52:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T17:52:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2026\/07\/09\/graham-linehan-receives-settlement-from-met-over-online-post-arrest\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T17:52:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T17:52:17","slug":"graham-linehan-receives-settlement-from-met-over-online-post-arrest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2026\/07\/09\/graham-linehan-receives-settlement-from-met-over-online-post-arrest\/","title":{"rendered":"Graham Linehan receives settlement from Met over online post arrest"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The Metropolitan Police have apologised to comedian and campaigner Graham Linehan and acknowledged his “considerable distress” for his arrest over gender critical posts on X in September 2025.<\/b><\/p>\n

Five armed Heathrow airport officers detained the Irish comedy writer on suspicion of inciting hatred under the Public Order Act as he returned from Arizona.<\/p>\n

The BBC understands a settlement has been reached, which is reported to be \u00a325,000. <\/p>\n

In a video reacting to the news, Linehan, who now lives in Arizona, said the money will be “very handy” given he has been “fighting against this madness”. <\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the Met said they “recognise the considerable distress caused to Mr Linehan, and have offered our sincere apologies”. <\/p>\n

They had already apologised to Linehan in May, but issued a second apology as well as the settlement.<\/p>\n

Following the arrest, Linehan was taken to hospital after officials became concerned for his health when they took his blood pressure. <\/p>\n

His condition was “neither life-threatening nor life-changing” the police said at the time, and he was bailed “pending further investigation”.<\/p>\n

Police confirmed the incident Linehan was arrested for was subsequently investigated as a non-crime hate incident. <\/p>\n

The arrest sparked a mixture of reaction from politicians and public figures and created a debate around policing and free speech. <\/p>\n

A month after the arrest, in October 2025, the Met announced it would no longer investigate non-crime hate incidents to allow officers to “focus on matters that meet the threshold for criminal investigations”.<\/p>\n

The force also said it was dropping the probe into Linehan.<\/p>\n

Non-crime hate incidents are alleged acts perceived to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards people with certain characteristics, such as race or transgender identity.<\/p>\n

They are recorded to collect data but do not amount to a criminal offence. <\/p>\n

Speaking to BBC News in September, Linehan said: “I don’t regret anything I’ve tweeted – sometimes I’ve tweeted a bit more out of anger, because of the frustration that no-one’s paying attention to this issue.”<\/p>\n

He said he was arrested over three posts on his X account. <\/p>\n

The first post said: “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.”<\/p>\n

His second post from X appeared to be an aerial shot of a group of protesters in a town centre, and he called it “a photo you can smell”.<\/p>\n

The third expressed his views, in which he said “I hate them”, referring to “misogynists and homophobes”, adding an expletive.<\/p>\n

Linehan was supported through the civil claim by the advocacy group the Free Speech Union. <\/p>\n

The group said it welcomed the second apology and settlement, but said Linehan should not have been arrested to begin with. <\/p>\n

Its general secretary Lord Toby Young said: “I’m beginning to lose count of the number of cases we’ve fought in which the police have arrested someone for a tweet, decided to take no further action and then had to pay them substantial compensation for wrongful arrest.<\/p>\n

“At some point you’d think the penny would drop: police our streets, not our tweets.”<\/p>\n

It comes two months after, in a separate case, Linehan had his conviction for damaging a transgender activist’s mobile phone overturned. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Metropolitan Police have apologised to comedian and campaigner Graham Linehan and acknowledged his “considerable distress” for his arrest over gender critical posts on X in September 2025. Five armed Heathrow airport officers detained the Irish comedy writer on suspicion of inciting hatred under the Public Order Act as he returned from Arizona. The BBC […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-203858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nGraham Linehan receives settlement from Met over online post arrest - Tahrir News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2026\/07\/09\/graham-linehan-receives-settlement-from-met-over-online-post-arrest\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Graham Linehan receives settlement from Met over online post arrest\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Metropolitan Police have apologised to comedian and campaigner Graham Linehan and acknowledged his “considerable distress” for his arrest over gender critical posts on X in September 2025. 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