The woman who launched an unprecedented e-petition calling for Article 50 to be revoked said she has been left shaken after receiving death threats by phone.
Margaret Georgiadou, in her seventies, said she had received three death threats in the space of 10 hours, after starting the record-breaking petition which had topped 4.5 million signatures by Saturday evening.
She said she has been forced to closed down her Facebook account as a result of abuse, adding that she had been hacked.
“In the past 10 hours have had three death threats over the phone, my fb account has been hacked and had a torrent of abuse on Facebook. Am closing my FB account,” she wrote on Twitter.
In a following post, she said: “Hi - am the person responsible for the Revoke Art 50 petition. Just needed to tell you that 1. am currently visiting Cyprus. and 2. last night I had three telephoned death threats. (!) Who wants Brexit so much that they are prepared to kill for it?”
Georgiadou said she could not attend the People’s Vote march in London on Saturday, which drew an estimated 1 million-strong crowd.
The retired lecturer’s petition has broken the record for the most signatures on Parliament’s website, surpassing the record previously held by another Brexit petition.
She said she started the petition to stop people “moaning” about how awful they thought Brexit was going to be, the BBC reported.
The appeal, which is hosted on the official parliament website, has already passed the point at which an automatic debate among MPs is triggered.
Polls which reach 100,000 signatures are almost always debated, but this is unlikely to occur before the UK’s exit, previously timed for 11pm on 29 March, but which could now be 12 April at the earliest.
Article 50 can be unilaterally revoked at any time until the UK leaves the EU.