US considers offering refuge to UK man who burnt Koran

The Trump administration is reportedly in talks to accept Hamit Coskun, a man who set fire to a Koran outside the Turkish embassy in London, as a refugee from the United Kingdom if he loses a legal case this week.

State Department officials are preparing to assist Coskun should the High Court rule against him in a hearing on February 17, The Telegraph reports. 

Coskun, of Armenian-Kurdish descent, originally travelled from his home in the Midlands to the Turkish consulate in Knightsbridge on February 13 last year. There, he set fire to the Koran and held it above his head, shouting: "Islam is religion of terrorism" and "f--- Islam."

During the incident, a passer-by, Moussa Kadri, attacked Coskun with a blade and kicked him after he fell. Kadri received a 20-week prison sentence, suspended for 18 months.

Coskun was initially charged by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) with harassing the “religious institution of Islam,” but the charge was later amended after advocacy groups argued he was effectively being prosecuted for blasphemy, an offence abolished in the UK in 2008.

At his trial, CPS lawyers maintained that Coskun was not being prosecuted for burning the Koran, but for “disorderly behaviour in public.” He was convicted of a religiously aggravated public order offence and fined £240. That conviction was overturned at Southwark Crown Court in October 2025.

A senior US administration official said Coskun’s case was “one of several cases the administration has made note of.”

By Sabina Mammadli