A former Royal Marine who was accused of stirring racial hatred on Facebook has said he would have been jailed had he not had a jury trial.

Speaking on GB News Jamie Michael said: “Just on my experience with the first two judges, the first judge in the Magistrates’ Court wouldn’t even let me speak because there were errors. The name of my video was ‘This is what I think’, and they put it down as ‘This is what I believe’. And I put my hand up to say that that was wrong.

“There were also errors on the transcript as well. The transcript read that I started a riot en masse, when I said they started to riot en masse. And my actual video that was in the portal for the evidence wouldn’t work. It was buffering all the time, so they were going off a transcript that was incorrect.

“The judge wouldn’t let me speak to correct any of that and told me this wasn’t a place for me to speak, and they remanded me in jail.

“I just think it’s just another way of them taking our rights away again. They’re trying to chip away at our free speech with all this hate crime nonsense and that’s probably half the reason why a lot of these cases are stacking up. I mean, they’re just ridiculous.

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“People shouldn’t be in jail for what they say, unless they’re making direct threats to kill and stuff like that, which I didn’t. I was just basically trying to call for security in schools and parks after what happened in Southport.

“I could have lost my house. My little girl’s mental health would have been wrecked. Even the three weeks I was in prison, she’s autistic, and I’ve never been away for more than a couple of days.

“My parents live away, we look after each other, really; me, my missus and I’ve got two little girls, but my youngest is autistic, and we haven’t really got that much help. So taking me away really meant a big difference.

“That would have meant my missus having to survive on her own, paying all the bills and paying the mortgage and everything else and we probably would have lost the house. My little girl, I think it would have really kind of destroyed her.

“It’s scary, really. And I think it’s just another attack on free speech, because we know the majority of these cases, even the people who have been found guilty have been [sentenced to] under three years. So that’s the kind of people they’re going to be targeting.

“I just think, who does he think he is? [David Lammy] is taking people’s rights away. If it wasn’t for me having a jury trial, I probably would have been in jail because we know now that there is two tier justice going on as well as a two tier policing.

“And all you need is a woke leftist judge planted in front of you if you’ve done anything wrong and then you’re in trouble.”