LONDON: A British court on Friday found an Afghan migrant guilty of threatening to kill anti-immigration political leader Nigel Farage in a TikTok post which the politician described as “chilling”.
Fayaz Khan, 26, made the threat in a video last October addressed to Farage, leader of Britain’s hard-right Reform UK party, which is surging in the polls.
Police told Southwark Crown Court in London that Fayaz Khan had been living in Sweden since 2019 and had a large social media following.
The migrant “live-streamed” his journey across the English Channel from France and was arrested on Oct 31 after arriving in the UK on a small boat.
The threat came after Farage posted a video highlighting Khan’s social media posts about his attempts to come to Britain.
In response, Khan posted a TikTok video addressing Farage in which he said he was coming to the UK to “marry your sister”.
“I am coming to pop, pop, pop.”
Prosecutor Peter Ratliff told jurors that while Khan said “pop, pop, pop” he made “gun gestures with his hand”, as well as headbutting the camera.
He also pointed to an AK-47 tattoo on his face to “emphasise he wasn’t joking”.
Farage told the court he found the video “pretty chilling” and was “genuinely worried” due to the defendant’s apparent love of guns.
A screenshot of a later TikTok post by Khan showed the caption “I mean what I say” written over an image of a news report about the threat to Farage.
Reacting to Khan’s conviction on X, Farage said: “I just hope and pray that he is deported to Sweden.
Published in Dawn, October 11th, 2025
