👉EDL founder is being sued for libel by teenage Syrian refugee Jamal Hijazi 🚩Tommy Robinson secretly recorded conversations with school staff while trying to gather evidence to defend himself in a libel trial, the High Court has heard. 🚩The English Defence League founder, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is being sued by a Syrian refugee after he accused the teenager of attacking young English girls. 🚩Robinson, 38, made the claim after seeing a viral video of 16-year-old Jamal Hijazi being assaulted in Almondbury School playground in Huddersfield in November 2018. 🚩In two Facebook videos he claimed Jamal was "not innocent and he violently attacks young English girls in his school", adding that Jamal "beat a girl black and blue" and "threatened to stab" another boy at his school. 🚩The teenager denies the allegations and is bringing a libel claim against Robinson, who is relying on a defence of truth. 🚩Robinson told a preliminary hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice in London that the secret recordings were necessary because staff were "scared to stand by me". 🚩He told Mr Justice Nicklin: "If people were free to tell the truth, I wouldn't be standing here. Unfortunately, I felt I had to do this." 🚩He claimed he had spent the last eight weeks in Huddersfield speaking to staff and pupils and that the secret conversations involved "people (who) have good jobs in the industry". 🚩Judge Nicklin said: "These people, I suspect, will be shocked to find they have been secretly recorded and are now featuring in a High Court libel trial." 🚩Robinson replied: "I needed to prove to people what they said. 🚩"I've only secretly recorded people because the media are about to tell people I lied, that I made it up, but I need people to know I told the truth." 🚩Robinson, who was not legally represented at the hearing, described himself in court as "the only journalist in the country reporting the truth". 🚩He was jailed for contempt of court in 2019 after he interfered with the trial of a sexual grooming gang at Leeds Crown Court and is also facing a separate court hearing later this year for allegedly threatening an Independent journalist in an attempt to prevent the publication of a negative news story. --------- 𝐂𝐫𝐞: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭