Graham Linehan has received a settlement from the Met after being arrested online

The Metropolitan Police has apologized to comedian and campaigner Graham Linehan after he was arrested over gender-critical posts on X in September 2025 and admitted its “worrying concern”.

Five armed officers at Heathrow Airport arrested the Irish comedian on suspicion of inciting hatred under the Public Order Act as he returned from Arizona.

The BBC understands it has reached £25,000.

Responding to the news, Linehan, who now lives in Arizona, said the money would be “very helpful” as he “fights this madness.”

A Met spokesman said: “We recognize the distress caused to Mr Linehan and offer our sincere apologies.”

They previously apologized to Lenihan in May, but issued a second apology as well as a settlement.

After the arrest, Linehan was taken to the hospital because of concerns about his health while they took his blood pressure.

His condition was “neither life-threatening nor life-changing”, police said at the time, and he was released on bail “pending further enquiries”.

Police confirmed the incident and Linn’s arrest was being investigated as a non-criminal hate incident.

The arrest sparked a mixed reaction from politicians and public figures and sparked a debate over policing and free speech.

A month after his arrest, in October 2025, the Met announced it would no longer investigate non-criminal hate incidents, allowing officers to “focus on cases that meet the threshold for a criminal investigation”.

He also said the force is turning the investigation over to Linehan.

Non-criminal hate crimes are acts that are perceived to be motivated by hatred or prejudice against people with certain characteristics, such as race or gender.

They are registered to collect information but not to cause criminal offences.

Speaking to BBC News in September Linehan said: “I don’t regret anything I’ve tweeted – sometimes I’ve tweeted a little more out of frustration that no one is paying attention to this.”

He said he was arrested for more than three posts on his X account.

The first post said: “If a trans man is in a women-only space, he’s being violent and offensive. Make a scene, call the cops, and if all else fails, kick him in the balls.”

X’s second post appeared to be an aerial shot of a group of protesters in the city center and called it a “smelling photo”.

A third expressed his opinion, adding an expletive in which he said, “I hate them,” referring to “contemporaries and homophobes.”

Linehan was supported by the Free Speech Alliance advocacy group through the civil lawsuit.

The group said it would accept the second apology and settlement, but said Linnen should not have been arrested to begin with.

Chief Secretary Lord Toby Young said: “I’m counting the number of cases where the police have arrested someone on Twitter, decided not to take any action and then paid huge compensation for wrongful arrests.

“At some point you’d think it would flip a coin: police our streets, not our tweets.”

It comes two months later, in another case Linehan had his own. He is guilty of injuring a transgender activist. Mobile phone flipped.