Grimsby man jailed over Facebook race-hate posts

A father-of-two who used Facebook to encourage attacks on the Asian community has been jailed.

Martin Hartshorn, of McCauley Street, Grimsby, posted messages on the social networking site on 9 August as rioting broke out in several English cities.

He admitted charges of intentionally encouraging or assisting an offence and publishing written material intended to stir up racial hatred.

Hartshorn, 22, was jailed for three years at Grimsby Crown Court.

Web warning

A judge heard that the comments went beyond simply encouraging others to riot in his home town, and including inciting potential rioters to target the Asian community.

He posted the comment: "Let's do our riot different. Let's burn all the Paki shops and takeaways."

Another post said: "And the Islamic Centre, we can't forget that."

After the sentencing Det Sgt Dave Pattison, of Humberside Police, said: "We have seen incidents in our area recently which have led to the general public viewing certain material and taking matters into their own hands.

"This could lead to whoever posted the material facing charges for inciting that activity even if the outcome was not as they intended it to be.

BBC News

Welsh Defence League links with neo-Nazis are unmasked

Former football hooligan Jeff Marsh set up the Welsh Defence League

An undercover investigation by BBC Wales into a group campaigning against Muslim extremists has found links with neo-Nazi supporters.

Secretly-filmed footage in Monday's Week In Week Out programme also exposes criminal activity among some Welsh Defence League (WDL) supporters. Publicly, the WDL says it is a non-racist organisation. A judge who has examined the evidence in the programme said some were acting to "inflame racial hatred".

The WDL - aligned to the English Defence League - was set up last year by an ex-soccer hooligan and author Jeff Marsh in response to Muslim extremists abusing troops returning from Afghanistan. It has attracted hundreds of followers and held demonstrations in Cardiff, Swansea and Wrexham.

Posing as a new member of the group, an undercover journalist accompanied a number of Welsh supporters to a protest. Some were caught on camera and online, making racist comments about Muslims. Two admitted involvement in racist violence at demonstrations organised by the defence leagues in other parts of the country. One invited other WDL followers to join him in burning a Koran and joked online about how best to kill black people. Another talks about driving Muslims out of the south Wales valleys.

Examining the evidence in the special programme, Judge Mark Powell QC said: "It's mindless, it's racist, the purpose of what they are doing is to inflame racial hatred. I think from what you have shown me it is criminal behaviour and no doubt something that the police would want to look at."

Shadow Welsh secretary Peter Hain, who has campaigned for years against racist groups, said: "I think every mainstream politician in Wales, wherever they are based, should make it a priority to talk to young people to explain the WDL is in a long line that goes back through the Nazis. And I don't say that lightly because, that is the exact political situation in which Hitler was able to come into power because mainstream politicians did not deal with the grievances in Germany.

"Now I'm not suggesting the WDL is anything like as powerful as Hitler's Nazi party became, the WDL is a tiny marginalised [group], but once you allow these groups to gain credibility that's where you could end up."

Jeff Marsh, who uses a variety of aliases and wears a balaclava to broadcast online, says he has disbanded the WDL because of the racist element. He has set up another organisation against Muslim extremists called The Welsh Casuals. He insisted that the group is non-racist.

Another group calling itself the Cymru Defence League has emerged out of the WDL. The English Defence League now has around 60,000 followers on the social networking site Facebook and thousands have attended protests around Britain.

Saleem Kidwai of the Muslim Council for Wales said most people were opposed to extremists.

"We have extremist groups and they are as ignorant as the Welsh Defence League, or the English Defence League," he said. "We can condemn them as much as anyone else. They are misguided youngsters being misinformed and used by extremist ideologues who want to use religion for their own political motives.

The programme also highlights the potential cost as police forces are called to marshall demonstrations, both by the WDL and the counter-demonstrations they could spark. It is estimated the bill to the taxpayer could be as much as £500,000.

Det Ch Supt Adrian Tudway, national co-ordinator for domestic extremism, advises local forces on the threat posed by the various defence leagues.

"I think it's a very significant threat," he said. "It's one I know the police service are taking very seriously, together with the Home Office and local authorities."

"Unmasked: Welsh Defence League" is on BBC One Wales at 2030 GMT on Monday 6 December.

BBC

White supremacists jailed over 'vicious' online messages

Two white supremacists were jailed today after being convicted of posting violent and vicious racist messages on the internet.

Michael Heaton, 42, and Trevor Hannington, 58, described Jews as "scum" and called for them to be "destroyed". The "proud neo-Nazis" were unanimously cleared of soliciting murder at Liverpool Crown Court yesterday but Heaton was jailed today for 30 months after being convicted of four counts of using threatening, abusive or insulting words likely to stir up racial hatred.

Hannington previously admitted two counts of stirring up racial hatred, two further counts of possessing information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism and disseminating a terrorist publication. He was jailed for two years.

Sentencing, Mr Justice Irwin told Heaton, of Leigh, in Wigan, Greater Manchester, his internet posts were "vicious and repulsive". He added: "You saw yourself as the leader of a potentially significant and active National Socialist group. Your sustained racist rants were intended to bolster that group. You wanted to start a race war. You are clearly filled with racial hatred and also with violent and angry beliefs."

The judge told Heaton his words were of the most "insulting and extreme nature" marked by "violent racism" and said only a significant jail term was acceptable.

Hannington, from Hirwaun, Cardiff, was described as a loner by the judge, who told him: "You are a long standing racist who has never hidden your views, which are violent and vicious in the extreme. You are a lonely man with little in your life. You habitually told lies about a non-existent army career and your knowledge of survival techniques in an attempt to gain status. You are, to some degree, pitiable in this, however repugnant what you said."

Heaton, a packer for a food company, was jailed for 30 months for each of his four offences, to run concurrently. He nodded to the judge and said he understood as he was taken to the cells. He admitted in police interviews he was a founder member of the Aryan Strike Force (ASF), whose goal was "the eradication of ethnic minorities from Britain", the prosecution said.

In one posting on the ASF website, he said of Jews: "They will always be scum, destroy 'em with whatever it takes."

He also wrote: "I would encourage any religion or race that wants to destroy the Jews, I hate them with a passion."

And in another posting he said Jews were leeches and "treacherous fucking scum" and that black people were "less intelligent than other species".

Heaton made more than 3,000 posts on the ASF site between January and June 2008, before he had a "bust-up" with the organisation and created his own, the British Freedom Fighters (BFF). The website changed its name to Legion 88 and then Wolfpack, before it was closed down.

The trial jury, nine of whom returned to court for today's sentencing, were told the number eight refers to the eighth letter in the alphabet, H. So 88 stands for HH, as in Heil Hitler, a common greeting for neo-Nazis. Both men had a number of user names when they posted their comments on the website. Heaton called himself Wigan Mike, and then later Lenny.

David Fish, mitigating for Heaton, said the defendant had been banned from accessing the internet while on bail and was no longer involved in the BFF. He said: "(Heaton) has, in effect, shed the habit and lost interest in putting up these posts."

Hannington admitted he was an administrator for the ASF, Legion 88 and Wolfpack websites and gave himself the user names Fist, Lee 88 and Paul. He pleaded guilty to inciting racial hatred with internet posts stating his beliefs that Jews were "parasites feeding on others" and "utterly evil sub-beings". The self-employed builder also posted the message: "Kill the Jew, Kill the Jew, Burn down a synagogue today! Burn the scum."

Hannington admitted owning the Anarchist's Cookbook, Kitchen Complete and The Terrorist Encyclopaedia, all of which are considered useful tools to someone preparing or committing an act of terrorism. He also admitted publishing a post on the internet with instructions on how to make a flame thrower out of a water pistol.

Richard Mansell QC, for Hannington, said: "There is a significant element of the fantasist about him and the jury's verdict accepts the posts were made without a great deal of thought but are, nevertheless, extremely offensive. Having had the terror books he never made any effort to produce such items or seek components for them. He has reflected on the language he used and his conduct and he also recognises he has problems with alcohol and anger management."

Hannington showed no emotion as he was jailed for a total of two years for all his offences. As he was convicted under the Terrorism Act he must inform the police of his home address for the next 10 years.

Independent

The odd couple - The BNP and Hizb ut-Tahrir

The white far-right and the Islamist fringe fight for their survival

Born of a National Front splinter-group in 1982, the far-right British National Party has never had an easy relationship with anti-racism laws. Nick Griffin, the BNP’s Cambridge-educated leader, was temporarily banned from standing in local elections after a 1998 conviction for inciting racial hatred. (The offence doesn’t stop him from holding a seat in the European Parliament, however.) On February 14th the party suffered its latest legal indignity, when it reluctantly agreed to drop its longstanding whites-only membership policy, following a court order. If its new constitution is approved by the judges, blacks and Asians will at last be able to join a party that campaigns for their “voluntary repatriation”. A stampede is not expected.

In another shadowy corner of Britain’s political landscape, a different extremist group is preparing for battle with the law. Hizb ut-Tahrir, an international Islamist outfit that wants to establish a caliphate in what it calls the Muslim world, is facing calls from the opposition Conservatives for its proscription. The party, which is banned in much of the Middle East and restricted in Germany, was targeted in 2005 by the Labour government but managed to save its skin. The Tories are determined that it will not escape again.

The two parties are more alike than they might think. The surly young men who lurk at the back of their meetings are more or less identical but for the hairstyles. Both parties officially denounce violence and are occasionally let down on this front by their members. And both have won a higher profile of late, which now threatens to come back to hurt them.

The BNP’s electoral gains in the European Parliament and London Assembly last year won its leader a place on the BBC’s main current-affairs debate programme, “Question Time”. But they also caught the eye of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the official watchdog that brought the case against the BNP, which Mr Griffin says has cost the party over £100,000 ($157,200). Now the government is supposedly mulling a ban on BNP members working in schools. (They are already barred from the police and the prison service.)

The party also faces discontent in its ranks. Mr Griffin has already upset the hard core by dragging the party fractionally closer to the centre ground. Following the BNP’s retreat over its whites-only policy, he e-mailed members to reassure them that the party was not “going soft”, citing the roughing-up of a Times journalist by BNP security staff as evidence of the party’s commitment to its old values.

Hizb ut-Tahrir faces a similar balancing act between its party faithful and the real world. Britain’s laws against glorifying terrorism force it to watch its language: suicide bombers may no longer be described as “martyrs”, for instance, to the dismay of some hotter-headed members. And not everyone has approved of the party’s strategy of engagement, which once saw it providing advice to the government and inviting the media to public debates.

Those tactics now seem to be changing. Since the noisy departure of some of its more moderate members and the ramping up of the Tory campaign against it, Hizb ut-Tahrir has gone on the offensive. Maajid Nawaz, a former senior member who cut his ties with the party in 2007 and is now co-director of the Quilliam Foundation, a counter-extremism think-tank, says hardliners within the party have been able to argue that the softer approach didn’t work. The rhetoric has certainly heated up: Hizb ut-Tahrir’s rare press conferences are now cross little affairs in which its enemies are robotically condemned as “neocons”.

The party may yet survive the Conservatives’ plans, just as the BNP seems to have got the courts off its back for the time being. But both parties have learned that a higher profile has its drawbacks.

Economist

Midland hospital snubs BNP donation

Selly Oak Hospital: refusing to fall for the BNP's charity con-trick

Hospital snubs BNP donation for our heroes

A Midland hospital which treats hero soldiers wounded in Afghanistan has refused a donation from the British National Party. Bosses at Selly Oak hospital in Birmingham turned down money from the far-right party after its members made the collection, claiming it would be donated to build a burns unit for injured squaddies.

The BNP, whose leader Nick Griffin is MEP for the North West, say they were selling stickers calling for troops to withdraw from Afghanistan in a bid “to help our brave and wounded soldiers”.

But a spokesman for Selly Oak Hospital, which houses the army’s Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, said: “The British National Party is selling merchandise with the promise of donating the proceeds to the Selly Oak Hospital burns unit. Neither the University Hospitals of Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust nor its official charity, UHB Charities, have been contacted by the BNP about this venture, and the Trust does not accept money from any political party,” said the spokesman.

Labour MP for the area Dr Lynne Jones said: “I think the BNP is using the good name of the hospital to further its distasteful views.”

In October the hospital was at the centre of a political storm when Mr Griffin claimed injured soldiers on Selly Oak’s wards had to pay to watch television. Griffin was attempting to justify his wearing of a poppy on a televised debate against the wishes of the Royal British Legion. He said he would remove the poppy if the Legion would put pressure on the Government to stop “charging young British soldiers with no legs in Selly Oak Hospital” to watch TV. His claims were described as “absolute rubbish” by an Army spokesman who stressed military patients had free access to internet, television and phones.

Last night, John Walker, the BNP’s spokesman, said the party was disappointed by the hospital’s decision not to accept their donation.

“I am sure that it’s because it’s the BNP that they are doing this,” he claimed. “We have as much right to campaign on soldiers and these issues as any other party. If Selly Oak won’t take the money, we will find a soldiers’ charity that will.”

Earlier this year, a group of senior military commanders attacked the BNP for hijacking the sacrifices of soldiers in order to gain votes. After the BNP used images of Winston Churchill to fight their European election campaign, former heads of the British Army General Sir Mike Jackson and General Sir Richard Dannatt wrote an open letter saying the party was “fundamentally at odds” with the values of the British military.

“We call on all those who seek to hijack the good name of Britain’s military for their own advantage to cease and desist,” the generals said. “The values of these extremists – many of whom are essentially racist – are fundamentally at odds with the values of the modern British military, such as tolerance and fairness.”

Griffin, who was convicted of inciting racial hatred in 1998 for publishing material appearing to deny the Holocaust, responded by comparing the generals to Nazi war criminals.

Sunday Mercury

BNP will not use London Colney mosque dispute to score a political point

A controversial proposal to create a mosque in London Colney – which provoked objections from around 180 residents – was rejected at a planning meeting last night, with councillors keen to prevent the far right British National Party scoring political points on the back of the issue.

Residents turned out in force to oppose an Islamic Centre in the village, citing parking, traffic issues, road safety and noise as the prime objections.

Members of the Bangladeshi community, who also attended to hear the decision, had applied to change the use of Cemex House in Barnet Road, close to Riverside Industrial Estate, to accommodate up to 50 worshippers. But residents feared the facility would attract more visitors than indicated in the application, and that numbers could not be controlled. After hearing representations from both parties, councillors sitting on the district council's plans south committee refused the application, despite recommendations from an inspector to approve the proposals.

But district councillor Dreda Gordon, who represents London Colney ward, stole an opportunity to scupper the BNP's political campaign while opposing the plans on behalf of residents. She said the extremist party, which is seeking to gain a foothold in the village, had used the dispute as a golden ticket to canvass support. London Colney is a tolerant community and over the years it has accommodated people from many ethnic back grounds," she said.

"These various groups made London Colney their home. They raised their children there, we are a culturally diverse community. People have worked and lived alongside each other in this area. I don't want decent and tolerate people branded with loathsome politics of the far right which have raised their ugly head on this issue."

But speaking to the Review after the meeting, actor Philip Madoc, who has lived in Waterside for 30 years, said: “The reasons aren’t biased, they’re logical. I’m not interested in whether it’s a mosque, or a synagogue or a big Welsh chapel, it is of no interest to me. It’s an establishment in the silliest place. The village is a delightful place and old London Colney has got character. This summer has been the best I have ever seen it. It’s a glorious place and we want to preserve that or improve that. I hope that it will be as is.”

The application follows years of failed attempts to establish a mosque in the village to serve the Muslim community, who currently congregate at the Morris Playing Fields Pavillion. Fahim Karim, Chairman of London Colney’s Islamic Centre, said: “We are disappointed and we are disheartened. There was no planning issue, they had to scratch to find a planning excuse. They refused it with no grounds. We are going to appeal and then someone outside the district will decide.”

BNP member Danny Seabrook, who is vying for a seat on London Colney Parish Council following the death of Robin Cooper, insisted the planning decision would not derail his party's election campaign. Mr Seabrook, 37, whose party has been accused of inciting racial hatred after distributing 'offensive' leaflets to homes in the village, insisted his focus, if elected, would be the proposed railfreight terminal in Radlett.

St Albans and Harpenden Review

The neo-Nazi 'asylum seekers'

Whittle and Sheppard - a pair of freaks by any standards

They looked like a pair of cranks straight out of a Louis Theroux documentary. One was an unrepentant woman hater whose racist and anti-Semitic views were too hard-line even for the British National Party. The other, his long-haired sidekick, sought the protection of a pseudonym that he used to make extremist rants.

Their hunger to stir up controversy saw them flee from justice in the north of England and stage an unlikely claim for political asylum in Los Angeles. But their journey has now ended with jail sentences in the UK.

Jurors at Leeds Crown Court decided neo-Nazis Simon Sheppard and Stephen Whittle were not just harmless oddballs, but dangerous propagandists dedicated to whipping up racism. On Friday, Sheppard was jailed for four years, 10 months and Whittle for two years, four months.

In a landmark case, they have become the first Britons to be convicted of inciting racial hatred online, having printed leaflets and controlled websites featuring racist material.

The court heard the investigation into the pair began when a complaint about an anti-Semitic comic book called Tales of the Holohoax was made to the police in 2004 after it was pushed through the door of a synagogue in Blackpool, Lancashire. It was traced back to a post office box in Hull registered to Sheppard, 51, a former BNP organiser kicked out of the far-right party after he was jailed in 2000 for distributing a racially inflammatory election leaflet.

The spotlight fell on the publishing activities of Sheppard, of Selby, North Yorkshire, a self-styled "scientific publisher", whose online ramblings took in a hatred of women and a morbid fixation with cannibalism. But a police investigation discovered that his prime motivation was racism and he dedicated himself to producing what prosecutors called "obnoxious and abhorrent'' books, pamphlets and web pages.

On his website, Sheppard employed Whittle, 41, of Preston, Lancashire, as a columnist under the pseudonym "Luke O'Farrell".

Although their vitriol was variously directed at black, Asian and other non-white people, most of the material shown to the jury was virulently anti-Semitic. The language and racial slurs used by the pair cannot be repeated here, but some of the excerpts presented to the court offered a flavour of their discourse. One leaflet claimed that Auschwitz had not really been the location of industrial mass murder but had been, instead, a holiday camp provided by a benevolent Nazi regime for Europe's Jewish population.

Jonathan Sandiford, prosecuting, told the jury that it held up survivors of the Holocaust to "ridicule and contempt", accusing them of lying about the genocide of six million Jews. Another story was illustrated with photographs of dead Jews. Sheppard also wrote that Holocaust victim Anne Frank's diary was "evil".

Reviewing lawyer Mari Reid, of the Crown Prosecution Service's counter-terrorism division, said members of the public were entitled under the law to hold racist and extreme views. But she added: "What they are not entitled to do is to publish or distribute those opinions to the public in a threatening, abusive or insulting manner either intending to stir up racial hatred or in circumstances where it is likely racial hatred will be stirred up."

The defence argued that the online material did not fall under the jurisdiction of UK law, because Sheppard's site was hosted on servers in California. But in a landmark ruling, the judge dismissed this - potentially paving the way for further prosecutions against the owners of other hate sites who believe they are exploiting a legal loophole. Jurors, too, rejected the defence's claim that the pair's writings were merely satirical.

Sheppard was found guilty of 11 offences and Whittle was found guilty of five offences in July 2008. Sheppard was found guilty of a further five charges in January 2009. But the pair were not in court to hear the verdicts against them. Before the jury in the first trial could return verdicts, both men fled to Los Angeles International airport and attempted to claim political asylum. But their bid was thrown out by an immigration judge, and they were held at Santa Ana prison in California until they were returned to the UK to serve their sentences.

The irony of two racists attempting to exploit the immigration and asylum system was lost on no-one who followed the case.

BBC