Nigel Farage felt ‘genuinely worried’ by alleged TikTok death threat, court hears

Nigel Farage felt “genuinely worried” after a man allegedly posted a TikTok video threatening to come to Britain and shoot him, a court has heard.

The Reform UK leader was giving evidence at the trial of Fayaz Khan, 26, who has been charged with threatening to kill the Reform UK leader last year in a post Farage described as “pretty chilling”.

Khan is an Afghan national who arrived in the UK last October on a small boat and had posted online videos charting his journey across Europe, Southwark crown court was told.

Farage uploaded a video on 12 October last year titled “The journey of an illegal migrant”, which referred to Khan. The prosecution said Khan responded with a video on 14 October, which was played to the jury.

In it Khan appears 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,” quoted the prosecutor, Peter Ratliff. He told jurors that Khan had made “gun gestures with his hand” when he said “pop, pop, pop” and pointed to a tattoo of an AK47 assault rifle on his face.

Farage said 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. I understood that very clearly indeed, as did many people who saw it at the same time.”

He added: “In high-profile politics, a lot of nasty stuff gets posted. A lot of nasty stuff gets said. What you don’t see is an individual say on social media they are coming for you directly, and secondly the means by which they are going to do it.”

Khan “live-streamed” his journey across the Channel and was arrested on 31 October after arriving in the UK, the court was told by a police officer. Ratfliff told jurors that Khan had a “very large presence online” under the TikTok username “madapasa”, amassing hundreds of thousands of views

The defendant, who denies threatening to kill Farage, was said to have told police in an interview in November last year that he had attempted to come to the UK “10 times”, and was in Dunkirk when he recorded the video in which he is alleged to have threatened to kill the politician.

The court heard that Khan told police through a interpreter: “I didn’t say: ‘Nigel Farage delete that video or if you do not delete that video I’m going to shoot you.’ I said: ‘Pop, pop, pop.’

“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’.”

The trial continues.