Irish-born comedian Graham Linehan was arrested at Heathrow Airport Monday by armed officers for comments he made on transgender issues, setting off a maelstrom of backlash against the British government — from celebrities like J.K. Rowling and even from Prime Minister Keir Starmer — for its overreach on censorship. 

“The moment I stepped off the plane at Heathrow, five armed police officers were waiting. Not one, not two — five. They escorted me to a private area and told me I was under arrest for three tweets,” Mr. Linehan, a staunch anti-transgender activist, wrote in a first-person account of the incident on his Substack newsletter.

The comic claimed that the three posts on X were from April and were relatively innocuous. He was charged with inciting violence.

“If a trans-identifed male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act,” one of the posts on his X account reads. “Make a scene, call the cops, and if all else fails, punch him in the b—s.” 

In a second post on X around the same time, Mr. Linehan commented on a photo from a trans rally along with the caption, “A photo you can smell.”

Mr. Linehan describes in his piece that the squad of officers confronted him as he stepped off an American Airlines flight from Arizona.

“When I first saw the cops, I actually laughed. I couldn’t help myself. ‘Don’t tell me! You’ve been sent by trans activists,'” he writes. “The officers gave no reaction, and this was the theme throughout most of the day.”

Officials with the Metropolitan Police in London confirmed the arrest in a statement.

“The man in his fifties was arrested on suspicion of inciting violence. This was in relation to posts on X,” a Met spokeswoman said in a statement to the Times of London. “After being taken to police custody, officers became concerned for his health and he was taken to hospital. His condition is neither life-threatening nor life-changing. He has now been bailed pending further investigation.”

News of his arrest on Monday drew condemnation against the British government for detaining the comic simply for making quips online, including from Mr. Starmer, who said through a spokesman that the Metropolitan Police should keep their focus on issues that “matter most to their communities.”

“This is an operational matter for the police, but the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have been clear about what their priorities on crime and policing are: that’s tackling antisocial behavior, shoplifting and street crime as well as reducing serious violent crime such as knife crime and violence against women,” the spokesman said in a statement to the Telegraph.

“The Prime Minister has spoken previously about how he is strongly in favour of free speech and the long proud history of free speech in this country, and he will continue to do so.”

A Conservative member of the British parliament, Neil O’Brien, said the incident, “would be laughable [if] it wasn’t so serious.”

“Britain is now a total laughing stock — a country where we arrest the authors of light comedies and interrogate them about their tweets,” Mr. O’Brien said on X.

Ms. Rowling, who has often spoken out in opposition to transgender issues, also took England’s government to task for the arrest.

“What the f— has the UK become?” she wrote on X. “This is totalitarianism. Utterly deplorable.”

Prominent figures across the Atlantic have also weighed in.

“You can go to jail for tweets in the UK?” Meghan McCain asked in a post on X. “They would put me in a gulag for life!! I don’t even want to travel there now.”

Mr. Linehan, the creator of British comedies like “Father Ted” and “The IT Crowd,” also described in his Substack post how he was read his rights and then detained at Heathrow’s police station in a holding cell before being questioned until he was sent to the hospital for high blood pressure, which he claims was brought on by the stressful incident.

“Eventually, a nurse came to check on me and found my blood pressure was over 200 — stroke territory,” he writes. “The stress of being arrested for jokes was literally threatening my life!”

Mr. Linehan was eventually released from custody under the condition that he would not post on X any further until additional questioning by investigators happens in October.

Earlier this year, Mr. Linehan was arrested and charged with harassment and criminal damage in a series of incidents with transgender activist Sophia Brooks, allegedly harassing her on social media this past October and then damaging her phone during a confrontation at a conference in London where he was a speaker that same month.

He has denied the charges and is due back before the Westminster Magistrates Court at London later this week.