A man who burned a Koran outside the Turkish consulate in London has won an appeal against his conviction.

Hamit Coskun was found guilty earlier this year of a religiously aggravated public order offence after shouting “f*** Islam” while holding the flaming religious text aloft outside the Turkish consulate in England’s capital city in February.

Before travelling to London, the 51-year-old wrote posts on social media detailing his plan and saying it was to “protest the Islamist government” of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whom he claimed “has made Turkey a base for radical Islamists and is trying to establish a Sharia regime”, the court previously heard.

With the backing of campaigners, Coskun won an appeal against his conviction at Southwark Crown Court today.

Hamit Coskun was earlier found guilty of a religiously aggravated public order offence

Turkey-born Coskun, who is half-Kurdish and half-Armenian and lives in England, had his legal case funded by the National Secular Society (NSS) and the Free Speech Union (FSU).

His appeal case was also attended this week by shadow justice secretary, Robert Jenrick, who said while he did not agree with what Coskun had done, "I don’t believe it’s a crime".

Campaigners had argued the prosecution and conviction was akin to blasphemy being reintroduced "by the back door, inadvertently, by our court service".

Reacting to the news of the successful conviction appeal, Mr Jenrick labelled it an "important victory for free speech".

He wrote to X: "Hamit Coskun has been cleared. Good.

"I didn’t like what Mr Coskun did; burning a religious text was not pleasant. But it was also never criminal.

"So, this is an important victory for free speech. Parliament voted to abolish blasphemy laws 20 years ago.

"It was disgraceful that the authorities attempted to re-create them by the back door."