Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, used his social media platform X this week to attack the British justice system, offering to fund a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of the family of an 18-year-old university student who died after being handcuffed by police following a stabbing by a Sikh man.
“This poor boy was running away from someone who stabbed him and stole his phone, but the police in the UK attacked him instead of his murderer!” Musk wrote in a post reposting a video of Henry Nowak filmed shortly before his death.
Musk, who owns X, fired off a volley of posts demanding accountability for the officers involved, questioning whether Prime Minister Keir Starmer had even mentioned Nowak’s name and drawing comparisons to the global protests that followed George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis in 2020.
Henry Nowak case: What to know
Vickrum Digwa, 23, is currently on trial at Southampton Crown Court charged with the murder of Nowak, a first-year accountancy and finance student from Chafford Hundred, Essex, who was fatally stabbed on Dec. 3, 2025, while walking home from a night out, the BBC reported.
A postmortem examination found Nowak suffered four stab wounds and a cut to his jaw, with two of the wounds to the back of his legs.
Prosecutors told the jury that Digwa, a Sikh man, denied stabbing Nowak at the scene, instead claiming he had been racially abused and attacked, per the BBC.
Digwa gave a prepared statement saying Nowak had “subjected him to a drunken, racist attack” and knocked his turban off and grabbed his hair and that he stabbed “twice with his kirpan” in self-defense.
However, prosecutors presented video footage from Nowak’s own phone — later found in Digwa’s pocket — which captured the exchange but contained no racial abuse or the alleged turban removal, per the ITV news.
Police initially handcuffed Nowak and started giving him first aid when he then collapsed. A doctor flew in by helicopter, but there was nothing that could be done, and Nowak was declared dead at the scene.
Digwa’s mother, Kiran Kaur, 53, is also charged with assisting an offender by removing the knife from the scene, an allegation she denies, the BBC reported.
Musk compares Henry Nowak case to George Floyd in US
Musk seized on the controversy to amplify comparisons to Floyd, whose killing under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer in 2020 triggered international protests.
“There were massive international protests over George Floyd and those police involved were severely punished with long prison sentences, yet the police responsible here did not even lose their jobs!” he wrote.
He also offered to fund legal action on behalf of the Nowak family, though no formal litigation has been announced, the Hungarian Conservative reported.
Musk clashes with UK politicians
The outburst is far from Musk’s first foray into U.K. politics. During the summer 2024 riots in Britain, Musk posted that “civil war is inevitable” and promoted the idea that British police treated right-leaning protesters more harshly because of their backgrounds.
Musk also posted on X several times in 2025 about the so-called “grooming gangs” child sexual abuse scandal and associating Starmer and the Labour Party with the crimes, suggesting Starmer was complicit by failing to act during his earlier tenure as director of public prosecutions.
Those posts prompted a significant political backlash, with Musk calling for Starmer to be removed from office.
Musk, a South Africa-born U.S. citizen, is prohibited from making a personal donation to a British political party, but his interventions have repeatedly shifted the terms of debate in Westminster.
His online conduct ultimately drove a wedge between him and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, whom he called for replacing after a public falling out, before appearing to switch support to Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch.
X agrees to British crackdown on hate speech
Musk’s latest campaign arrives at a crucial moment for his platform’s relationship with British regulators.
X agreed this month to strengthen protections for U.K. users against illegal hate speech and terrorist content, following months of regulatory pressure from Ofcom, Britain’s media regulator.
Under the agreement, X will review suspected illegal hate– and terrorism-related posts within 24 hours on average and assess at least 85% of them within 48 hours.
The platform also promised to restrict access in Britain to accounts operated by or on behalf of organizations banned under U.K. terrorism laws, and will submit quarterly performance data to Ofcom over the next year.
Ofcom’s online safety group director, Oliver Griffiths, said the commitments were driven in part by concerns over terrorist content and illegal hate speech persisting on large social media sites, and cited the particular importance of those protections following a number of recent hate-motivated crimes against Britain’s Jewish community.
Ofcom said its own broader investigation into X, including its systems for tackling illegal content and issues related to Musk’s Grok chatbot, remains ongoing.
