Brits languish in prison for ‘racist’ tweets while terror supporters roam free
British citizens are outraged at the Metropolitan Police’s recent decision not to charge rappers who openly urged fans to murder Right-wing politicians, while Brits who post “offensive” social media content languish in prison.
In November 2023, members of the far-Left Irish rap group Kneecap told fans during a performance: “Kill your local MP. The only good Tory is a dead Tory.” But the Met Police have recently decided not to charge the group under domestic terrorism laws because the statute of limitations has lapsed, according to The Irish Times.
“A range of offences were considered as part of the investigation. However, given the time elapsed between the events in the video and the video being brought to police attention, any potential summary only offences were beyond the statutory time limit for prosecution,” police said in a statement.
“Relevant indictable offences were considered by the investigation team and, based on all of the current evidence available, a decision has been made that no further action will be taken at this time.”
The group was charged for displaying Hezbollah’s flag at another performance, with band member Liam O’Hanna allegedly shouting “Up Hamas, up Hezbollah!” The charges are likely to be dropped following last week’s hearing in which O’Hanna’s lawyer argued that the six-month statute of limitations had expired. It is highly unlikely that O’Hanna will face any prison time.
Meanwhile, UK citizens like Lucy Connolly are in prison for offending migrants on social media. Connolly, the wife of Right-wing politician Ray Connolly, is serving a 31-month sentence for a tweet. After Axel Rudakubana, the son of Rwandan migrants, stabbed three little girls to death in Southport last summer, Connolly posted a furious tweet calling for mass deportations.
“Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the bastards for all I care ... if that makes me racist so be it,” she wrote on X. She deleted the post three and a half hours later, but not before it was reposted 940 times and viewed 310,000 times. She was sentenced to prison for racism, where she has reportedly been beaten and badly mistreated. Prison guards have placed her under 23-hour lockdowns with violent convicts. A judge denied her appeal last month.
Two-tier policing
The Labour government has been accused of two-tier policing, even earning Prime Minister Keir Starmer the nickname “Two-Tier Kier.” Last year, for example, 37-year-old Shaun Tuck was jailed for 15 weeks for a social media post that police considered racist. Thirty-four-year-old Sam Melia was sentenced to two years in prison for selling anti-immigration stickers. But twenty-one-year-old Hamoud Al Soaimi, a Syrian Muslim who participated in the repeated gangrape of a 13-year-old girl while in his teens, was sentenced to just 180 hours of community service. Similarly, in 2023, a 20-year-old woman named Husina Hussain, who drunkenly assaulted a bowling alley employee and shouted racial slurs in public, avoided having to wear a sobriety ankle monitor because she was Muslim.
Last year, the Labour government drew criticism for cracking down on anti-immigration riots triggered by the Southport stabbings while allowing Muslim rioters to rampage freely. White British rioters were imprisoned. Prime Minister Starmer promised to increase surveillance and censorship to clamp down on the “far-Right.”
Meanwhile, police were noticeably absent when hundreds of migrants, mostly Muslim men, attacked a bar, destroyed cars, and chased down journalists. In a similar incident last year, West Yorkshire Police fled from a 2,000-strong mob of Muslim and Romanian rioters who destroyed a police vehicle and set a bus aflame. Police officers on the scene took flight, saying afterward they had been met with “a barrage of bricks and missiles.” The police remained largely absent for several hours as the rioters set fire to the neighborhood. Firefighters refused to enter the area, fearing for their own safety.
A “number of people” were arrested in connection with the riot. According to independent journalists, one of those was a British woman who was arrested on the spot after making “racially insensitive” remarks about the rioters.
Two-tier sentencing
In March, the UK’s Sentencing Council recommended that judges consider giving lighter sentences to minorities and women. The council issued guidance instructing judges to order a pre-sentence report if an offender is a religious, racial, or gender minority. A pre-sentence report lobbies the court for a more lenient sentence by describing the hardships a particular offender may face if they receive jail time. The Sentencing Council said a pre-sentencing report should be produced if a convict is “an ethnic minority, cultural minority, and/or faith minority community.” The guidance specifically says that women, people who identify as transgender, and young adults aged 18-25 are among the groups who should benefit from pre-sentence reports.
