Alex considers how seriously vandalism and intimidation should be taken, especially in the case of a group that already faces intimidation.
At Patheos, JT Eberhard writes of a young British couple jailed for a year for harmlessly pranking mosque members with ‘easily removable’ bacon, whose small child will suffer in foster care while the parents ‘rot in jail’ ‘because this building and the people who own it are special’ – a ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ for what was only strictly speaking vandalism.
There’s another story about three hooded white supremacists who trespassed on private religious property to intimidate Muslims, harassed the only man inside as he tried to pray, threw objects around and desecrated the area to cause occupants distress, humiliate them and make them feel unsafe. I find this one more plausible.
Yes – I do too. Public discourse is one thing, but getting up in people’s faces is another. Disputing or mocking a religion is one thing, but putting the frighteners on people is another.
This part of Alex’s account is telling.
When Lambie’s mobile phone was examined by authorities, sent messages reveal her having bragged of ‘Going to invade a mosque, because we can go where we want.’ She and her accomplices hoped to intimidate worshippers by telling them they’d entered it unbidden – orders of magnitude more disturbing, fairly obviously, than an immature couple’s misjudged practical joke. According to the Scotsman, ‘a man who was inside the mosque praying [described by EEN as the only person in the building] . . . heard something hitting the prayer room window’, and judging by EEN‘s reference to a ‘glass partition‘, this was an interior window. Whoever threw uncooked bacon at it, which had been bought a few hours beforehand, did indeed invade the building.
The Edinburgh Reporter replicates this account but also states the man had already ‘noticed the trio at the door appearing to wave at him and (assuming they were coming in to pray) returned to his worship’. Rather than ‘hanging bacon on door knobs and tossing a few strings inside’, Lambie, Cruikshank and Stilwel – all of whom were hiding their faces under hoods – threw an object at the window of the room where they knew he was. I can’t speak for JT, but if three hooded strangers walked into my private building, found me alone and started hurling things in my direction, I’d feel attacked.
So would I.
That doesn’t mean I think the sentence was necessarily the right one; some good old community service and re-education seems more to the purpose. But the mosque invasion sounds like very overt bullying, which is not a minor thing.
As i noted elsewhere, even as a non-religious meat eater i would take someone hanging raw on the exterior of my front door as a threat.
These folks went well beyond the front door.
Anyone who claims all this is overblown religiously motivated over sensitivity has likely never been threatened in a way they took seriously.
Quite so. It’s possible I would have claimed that three or four years ago.
Dawkins is claiming it now, which I suppose is not surprising.
What they did was bullying. Perhaps a year in prison is a bit long but it will give them time to consider the results of being bullying assholes.
Dawkins needs to get a minder who will keep him off of Twitter and away from Face Book.
Several of Richard Dawkins’ books — beginning with “The Blind Watchmaker” — have been extremely helpful to me (a Roman Catholic seminarian during almost all my teenager years, which as a result were blighted, along with the years that have followed them, in ways that I have never been able to escape completely) in clarifying my thoughts about and finally breaking away from this church and the very concept of religion. For this, I am extremely grateful.
That said, I’m also reluctantly obliged to endorse Al Dente’s remark about Dawkins’ Twitter and Facebook activities. Clearly, he has no clue about how to use them effectively. (Few others do, either, but that’s another argument).
It frequently seems that each new mini-comment of his that gets posted and publicized is like another bullet to his already Swiss-cheese-perforated feet and, alas, reputation.
Perhaps he should consider the immortal words of Goldfinger, spoken while watching a laser beam burn inexorably toward the crotch of the strapped-down yet still indefatigably wisecracking James Bond: “Choose your next witticism with care, Mr. Bond. It may be your last.”
Scottish law sure is different. Amending the indictments during the trial and majority verdicts seem really weird to me. Obviously a crime motivated by bigotry, and I’m confused by why anyone would think differently
@ 3 Al Dente
Reading Alex’s piece, that is putting it mildly, Al Dente. Apparently they were organized white supremacists involved in racially motivated intimidation campaigns. Not just bullies, but hatemongers.
So they had a small child who is doomed to spend the period of their incarceration in foster care, and likely emerge permanently damaged. As if the child’s fate should cause us to be lenient on that child’s parents, who are clearly assholes.
Why weren’t that child’s PARENTS thinking about such parental topics as, oh, I dunno, setting a good example for their child? Taking care of their child instead of going out at night? Leading a quiet and unassuming life of domestic tranquility, and extending their goodwill toward others who wished to do the same?
We as societies can’t allow bullying. Bullies who engage in bullying will face consequences, which they should look into and carefully consider before they go out to indulge their bully urges. Regardless of the details, people who thus demonstrate that they are dangerous to society must be kept separate from society, and ideally rehabilitated (an option that seems to be sadly lacking from US and UK criminal incarceration systems).
I’m terribly sorry for their child. I’m terribly sorry that poor child ended up with such shits for parents. I only hope that this child’s year in foster care turns out to be enlightening for the child, who will even at such a tender age gain perspective his/her parents have yet to learn.
Oh, and reading the JT Eberhard link left me feeling dirty and disgusted. I wish JT Eberhard would just STFU.
As Alex has noted, it is not in evidence that one of the men is indeed the child’s father. News reports say that the mother was arrested at her boyfriends. It is not reported that her boyfriend was arrested or that the child’s father was arrested. I guess the notion comes from the “benevolent” misogyny of thinking that a young woman could not possibly be a neo-nazi herself and is just in it because of her man.
As for the rest: Yes!
First of all, while in the richer European countries foster care is way from perfect, it is not the shithole the US system is. I know, I know, the USA are exceptional, only that in all things social this means exceptionally bad.
Secondly, maybe a woman who commits a violent racist attack and who then has the “maturity” to deny her involvement despite being caught on camera is probably not the right person to raise a child in a spirit of mutual respect and tolerance and with a whiff of a sense of responsibility…
As for Richard Dawkins, muslims are clearly not people. Because he clearly tells us that nobody was harmed, right? So, since every sensible person would agree that hooded persons violently attacking the place where you’re alone cause obvious fear and severe distress and that this qualifies as harm, clearly this man cannot be a person.
I’m wondering, if somebody pointed a weapon at an atheist and then shot the wall next to them, would Dawkins claim that nobody was harmed except for the wall so what’s the fuss?
I think if a group of Islamists turned up at an atheist building (let’s say Conway Hall in central London, that’s where most atheist events are held), wearing hooded robes, when only one person was present and started throwing raw halal meat around having previously posted online that their religion entitled them to go where they liked Dawkins and others would think differently.
My example is far milder because there’s not much of an equivalent for the distaste muslims often have for pork and atheists in the UK are not a persecuted group as such. If the lone person was an ex-Muslim then we might have an equivalent in the level of fear.
@Giliell
“As for Richard Dawkins, muslims are clearly not people. Because he clearly tells us that nobody was harmed, right? So, since every sensible person would agree that hooded persons violently attacking the place where you’re alone cause obvious fear and severe distress and that this qualifies as harm, clearly this man cannot be a person.
I’m wondering, if somebody pointed a weapon at an atheist and then shot the wall next to them, would Dawkins claim that nobody was harmed except for the wall so what’s the fuss?”
This argument is so silly that I can’t be sure it is seriously meant. If it is, then it unscrupulously assigns to Dawkins an attitude which it is most unlikely he holds. His argument (right or wrong) is obviously about what counts as harm- not who counts as a person.
If it is meant as a joke, in a serious discussion, it should be better flagged as one.
The reason I have got activated about this is that it is a common technique (usually among right-wingers) to make outrageous statements in the hope that if they are unquestioned, they will still leave some mark on the debate; while if they are challenged, they can always back off, and imply that the challenger lacks a sense of humour.
Y’know I’ve heard of black families getting upset when strangers in hooded white robes set up a burning cross on their lawn. I’ve no idea why. Who could possibly be harmed by a couple of pieces of burning wood in the middle of a lawn? Clearly just some harmless pranksters.
(/satire)
I may be wrong, but I’d imagine that there would be much less attempted minimization of this story if this was an attack on a synagogue. When such things have happened, they have rightly been categorised as antisemitic and hate-crimes.
Even taken at face value, wrapping bacon around door handles certainly isn’t a mere act of petty vandalism in this case, no more than it would be if it was a vegan’s home. The aggravating element, the personal nature of the attack, is so clear.
The sentences in this case may be useless without education and community action, but I see no reason not to think of the perpetrators as Extremists, given how regularly (and casually) that label is applied to Muslims espousing similarly hateful views.
it strikes me that some people believe that because religious doctrine may be ridiculous or debatable, then it must also be a trivial act to debase and attack someone via those doctrine.
So if they had spray-painted an enormous penis on the side of the mosque, they would face a maximum of three months in jail. But hang easily removable bacon on the door handle? You can rot in jail for a year, because this building and the people who own it are special.
I completely agree. This sentence is way over the top. It’s also an example of how even the judicial systeme must bow to the religious sensitivities a certain constituency. The law is being deliberately skewed here in an attempt to pacify a ‘faith’ group and to pander to its supremacist sentiments.
An utterly futile enterprise, by the way.
Would ‘The Left’™ be equally sanguine if this had been done to a synagogue?
Why the scare quotes around the word faith?
This is just bullshit of the highest order. How does this pander to “supremacist sentiments” of the victims? The only supremacist sentiments were on the part of the actual supremacists, members of the Scottish Defence League, carrying out the attack!
Tellingly, you quoted that all they did was to “…hang easily removable bacon on the door handle…”, which is simply not what happened. This was a racially motivated attack by members of a disgusting racist organisation, and carried out against people as well as property. The intention was to abuse and intimidate.
They were convicted if Threatening or Abusive Behaviour, which under the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Bill apparently carries a sentence of up to 5 years imprisonment (one year for a summary conviction). So these sentences aren’t even at the higher end of the scale.
Tellingly, you quoted that all they did was to “…hang easily removable bacon on the door handle…”, which is simply not what happened. This was a racially motivated attack by members of a disgusting racist organisation, and carried out against people as well as property. The intention was to abuse and intimidate.
Oh here we go again.
You take it to be racist because the vast majority of Muslims are non-white.
Likewise the vast majority of Christians are non-white, yet you can burn down churches and no one cries racism. Is denouncing the homophobia of a Black Christian magistrate who refuses to marry a same-sex couple also racist?
I don’t think it is.
What they did is not right, but in what way exactly did they THREATEN anyone.
It’s a stupid prank by a couple of dimbulbs
And as the author in the link states; perhaps instead they should have spray-pained a giant penis on the mosque’s walls seeings that would only have netted them 3 months.
A little consistency here please.
The Edinburgh Central Mosque is right by Edinburgh University and runs a mosque kitchen, where you can buy a cheap and tasty curry for about £4. It’s very good value and very popular with students. It also has occasional open days. It’s quite a popular institution. You can get intimidating Muslim areas in some British cities – but not in this one. It seems to be a case of members of a white racist organisation trying to scare an ethnic minority. So making light of it because it’s “only meat” is as stupid as people saying “they’re only words” of abuse.
The SDL is a very small outfit compared to the EDL (which itself is falling apart). I doubt if they could get 20 people on a demonstration.
Then they would have been charged with vandalism, rather than abusive or threatening behaviour. The reason for that is because a giant penis is not specifically directed at a protected characteristic of the victims; the burden of evidence would not be met, ad almost certainly the victims would not perceive the same threat.
The link is missing most of the details of the case, and is therefore utterly misleading. That you continue to rely on it, despite the full account being easily available elsewhere is a bad move.
Spray-painting a giant penis on a synagogue would also not carry the same level of aggravation as throwing pork at it (or painting a Swastika).
They attacked a place of worship using an anti-muslim symbol – the threat was in the act, and explicit in the text message (probably) Lambie sent: “Going to invade a mosque, because we can go where we want”.
The intent was to invade and intimidate.
I take it to be racist because the perpetrators belong to a racist nationalist organisation which uses racist and xenophobic language to describe Muslims. Most Muslims in the UK are non-white, and the rhetoric of the anti-Muslim bigots very much reflects and relys upon that.
No.
That is a very poor analogy.
That is an equally poor analogy, because commonly church burning is an act of sectarian violence, where it is a racist act against a minority ethnic group, then it would rightly be called racism.
They were tried and convicted a specific crime, and your attempts to pretend that they weren’t are simply foolish.
It’s also worth mentioning that Chelsea Lambie (the woman) had a significant past record:
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/local-news/ned-fined-for-racist-outburst-2542099
That article was published on the 25th of January 2013, the Mosque attack took place on the 31st of January 2013.
Her lawyer’s assessment that “she accepts that this kind of conduct is completely unacceptable in a modern-day Scotland” seems to have been somewhat optimistic.
Decker
Look how the solitary person inside the mosque who had things thrown at the door of the rrom he was in by three hooded thugs vanishes *poof*. No real person to be seen here, no crime happened.
@ 18 My dispute is with the sentence.
The perps were given a YEAR in prison for wrapping bacon around the door handle of a mosque.
This kind of selective jurisprudence with regards to all things islamic and ‘islamophobic’ is just too much.
Last month in Montréal a muslim father was ‘sentenced’ to 40 days community service.
The crime? He murdered his 12 year-old daughter ( slapped her to death) because she didn’t do her chores properly. Some sources have suggested that those “chores” were actually her daily prayers.
40 days community service for murder, a year in prison for wrapping bacon around a door handle.
@ 17 That is an equally poor analogy, because commonly church burning is an act of sectarian violence, where it is a racist act against a minority ethnic group, then it would rightly be called racism.
Muslims are neither an ethnic group nor a race. They are adherents to a particularly nasty form of theology and can have any skin colour and be from any ethnic background.
I’d bet you dollars to doughnuts that at least a few of the members of this mosque are blond, blue-eyed Bosnians.
C’mon, Ophelia. We all know you’ve produced this article brown-nosing Alex Gabriel because you had opposite views on the Brandeis/A.H Ali scandal. The likes of Gabriel, Sarah Jones, and Heina Dadabhoy all had you down as an Islamophobe because of your defence of her. This article is an attempt to shift the suspicion, and an admittance that you actually do privilege religion.
Won’t work.
PS – Keep an eye on Pastebin! 😉
There is an ocean between Edinburgh and Montreal and they have completely different historical and cultural bases for their systems of law. The people convicted were not convicted of “wrapping bacon around the door handle of a mosque”- or not only of wrapping bacon around the door handle of a mosque, but for putting on hoods and masks and setting out to intimidate the one person who was in the mosque.
As for concern over the daughter of one of them, she doesn’t seem to have shown much concern for her daughter’s upbringing and it must be questionable as to just how suitable a parent she is anyway.
My point was that punishment for crimes committed by non-Muslims against Muslims are far more severe than those meted out for crimes committed by Muslims against non-Muslims or against each other
You invoke ‘intimidation’ against the sole worshipper in the mosque as justification for the sentence.
Yet on several occasions Peter Tatchel has invaded churches during Sunday mass and launched into rants on the altar, and yet he wasn’t given a year in prison.
Sure Tatchel was denouncing homophobia, but I doubt many of the traumatized/intimidated seniors in the pews even knew what he was talking about or who he was. Their fear was quite real.
However, were he to do likewise in a mosque during Friday Prayers, I’m confident he’d get jail time because pointing out Islam’s homophobia would be considered a racist hate crime.
It’s clearly a case of two weights, two measures where sentencing is disproportionate.
By the way, the law systemes in both the UK and Canada are quite similar.
Decker
You’re an apologist for racism here, nothing more. Three hooded people entered the mosque he was alone in and started to vandalise the place. But of course he’s just looking for a reason to be offended. If he can’t take being threatened for his religion he shouldn’t have come to Britain!
Peter Tatchell- who has also denounced muslim attitudes at mosques- enters crowded places alone and without disguise nor does he physically attack or threaten people.
A different code of law to Scotland’s, but much closer than Montreal’s: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/dec/06/muslim-vigilantes-jailed-sharia-law-attacks-london
Decker – but I already said, in the post, that what I say in the post doesn’t mean I think the sentence was necessarily the right one. I suggested community service and re-education as a better alternative. But that doesn’t depend on minimizing the actual vandalism combined with intimidation.
I suggested community service and re-education as a better alternative. But that doesn’t depend on minimizing the actual vandalism combined with intimidation.
I agree. Community service is a much better option. However, I think the harsher sentence they received was handed down partly out of fear. I think the judge could have been under some pressure. Threats to community cohesion and such.
then again, I’ve no proof to offer up in support of that assertion.
Yeah, but who cares as long as you can spread harmful stereotypes about an already marginalized minority?
I remember this case from 10 years ago:-
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/muslim-womans-body-found-in-hospital-morgue-covered-with-bacon-745706.html
“A £5,000 reward is being offered by police after the body of a Muslim woman was found in a hospital mortuary, covered with rashers of bacon.
The desecration was discovered when the family of the grandmother, aged 65, was waiting to see her body after she lost her fight with cancer.
The Metropolitan Police’s racial crime task force was called in to investigate the incident, at Hillingdon Hospital in west London, and an extensive inquiry was launched.
It is strictly against the Muslim religion to touch or eat pork and the woman’s family, who do not want to be identified, have been left deeply traumatised.”
I suppose a strict utilitarian (ie an idiot blind to any social or emotional context) as Dawkins portrays himself to be on Twitter would say, silly family, the woman was dead, it was the pig you feel sorry for. And this Eberhard guy would say, “harmless prank”.
The thing that is wrong there is is not the twelve month sentence.
Are you an expert on the application of law in scotland, particularly with respect to charges of abusive or threatening behaviour? Where is the selectivity? You’re inventing facts. The sentences were at the lower end of the scale for this offense.
The three elements of this offense (taken from this example if you really want to see the harsh application of this particular legislation):
– Behaving in a threatening or abusive manner;
– In a way likely to cause a reasonable person to suffer fear or alarm; and
– The accused intends to cause fear and alarm or is reckless as to doing so.
They were bang to rights in this current story. The sentence may be debatable, but as I understand it, this was a indictment, and therefore the application of the sentencing guidelines here place this towards the lower end of the custodial range. An indictment can result in a custodial sentence of 5 years.
What you’re implying is that all the ones who aren’t brown, are foreign?
You may want to think about that when you’re discussing the intersection of islamohobia and racism.
Criminal law isn’t even necessarily the same in England and Scotland, and certainly the sentencing and charging decisions in Canada aren’t meaningfully linked to this in Scotland – a travesty in one case doesn’t demonstrate that, “The law is being deliberately skewed”. Which is what you have claimed.
To the best of my knowledge, Peter Tatchell has never invaded a Scottish church in order to intimidate a lone churchgoer with anti-religious objects. The analogy simply doesn’t hold. Again.
When Tatchell protested in Canterbury Cathedral, he was charged with indecent behaviour and fined £18 plus costs. However, the analogous case here is not that of the Scottish Defence League bigots, but that of the protester who heckled David Cameron (linked to above) who was given 100 hours community service.
This law does carry harsh penalties, but I can see no evidence of it being applied unfairly.
Try to look at this logically, Decker. One of the 3 convicted was breaking the conditions of his bail in respect of a previous offence. One had been convicted only days before this happened of abusing and threatening a Muslim man. The third we don’t know at this stage.
All three were members of a white supremacist group. All three had full legal representation – and Scotland tends to produce good lawyers – one pleaded guilty long ago, the other two had a full trial over 5 days.
After Cruikshank and Lambie were convicted by the jury, the Sherrif called for full reports before sentencing. These would be looking into both criminal record and social circumstances, perhaps psychiatric reports too. After all that the sentences were set down. With good behaviour both will be out in half the time.
Community service is generally regarded as being useful if the offence was an error of judgement or resulted from momentary over-reaction. Neither of those applies here – this was planned. It has also proved to be more use if the person sentenced to that community service shows signs of being able to learn from past mistakes. Clearly the reports did not indicate much hope of this, therefore a custodial sentence was imposed.
One final point, Decker – just because you don’t understand something that doesn’t prove it was wrong. It may simply be different.
@Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk-
Why would you say something that you know is not true ?
I’m not one to put Dawkins on an altar and worship him but I don’t see the point of telling outright lies about him.
What does that accomplish ?
Could I have a citation for this, please? I googled and all I came up with is this post.
And not that it’s necessarily relevant since I don’t even know if the case you’re talking about exists or that you got the details correct, but Quebec’s law is even different in some ways to the rest of Canada–it’s based more on France’s Civil Code than on English common law.
Oh, right, because foster care is automatically abusive? No. This child will be far better off in foster care, as her mother is clearly incompetent.
Because it was more important to terrorize the local Muslims, duh! (snark, obvs.)
Wholeheartedly agree, doubly so with your note that rehabilitation is lacking in the US prison system.
Steve Oberski
Since you missed it the first time I wrote it, here it is for you again:
There was an actual person in the mosque when this attack happened. A lone man who was praying, who was suddenly confronted with three masekd people who threw objects around. I don’t know, maybe you’re Spiderman or Captain America or something like that, but for me that would be clearly terrifying. Which means that there was real actual harm caused to a human being.
Richard Dawkins (and others) clearly deny this, which means that they discard the humanity of this person.
Yeah, but who cares as long as you can spread harmful stereotypes about an already marginalized minority?
Muslims aren’t being marginalized by anyone. A significant number of Muslims are actually quite chauvinistic and supremacist in outlook and so they choose to self-segregate. Their choice to marginalize themselves is not because of our discrimination, but rather the result of theirs. We are not responsible for that tendency any more than we could be held responsible for gender segregated mosques and madrassahs.
Islam is an extremely Manichean ideology. It divides ALL of humanity right down the middle; us and them, believer and unbeliever, pure and impure. When I see Muslimahs in France completely covered but for a slit to see through, they are signaling to everyone that they utterly reject the surrounding society and do not wish to interact with it.
Likewise, when I see entire streets taken over on Fridays at noon hour by thousands of Muslim males for chauvinistic prayer displays ( while nearby mosques sit empty) forcing the non-Muslim residents to remain indoors and forcing non-Muslim shop-keepers to close their stores and forcing non-Muslim women through various gestures of intimidation to cover up, I understand just who is marginal and who is mainstream.
It’s a situation that just craps all over ‘intersectionality’.
@34 Very little is available about this on the web.
I found out about this murder 4 years ago when I caught the tail-end of a report shown on a french network here ( TVA). At the time the reporters were interviewing a neighbour who had struck up a friendship with the girl. In that report the neighbour claimed the girl had stopped saying her prayers and that her father was very angry about it.
Between then and the father’s conviction only weeks ago, nothing at all was reported on the case…at least that I know of.
Also certain facts have changed. The father claims he accidentally killed her because she wouldn’t do her chores. No mention about daily prayers. Also the family was pleased with the verdict and they said they found it in their hearts to forgive their father. No word on whether the young girl in question has…
All I know is that the girl was 12, had been beaten to death and that the father received community service as punishment. I had stated it was 40 days when in fact it was 60. However, those 60 days were reduced to 39 because the father had spent 3 weeks in jail following the murder.
The father was 70 at the time of the killing.
You might try googling The Montréal Gazette.ca for info, but much of their material is behind a pay wall.
You could also try “Reseau TVA” ( the network with the initial report), but it’s mostly in french.
An interesting sidelight: there’ve been several mentions of “rehabilitation” and “re-education” as one of the purposes of the sentences imposed. A lot of humane people favour imprisonment for that purpose, but do people- should people?- have the right to remain ignorant and bigoted if they want to? In fact, is imprisonment with the aim of punishment, prevention and deterrence more humane than imprisonment for rehabilitation? Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were among the advocates of reform through imprisonment. Merely locking someone up looks fairly kindly compared with that..
This: http://www.montrealgazette.com/jail+sentence+father+killed+daughter+with+slap/9862901/story.html seems to be the case Decker refers to. Isn’t Quebecois law based on the Code Napoleon, which would mean it has a completely different basis? All the same, there were very different circumstances to the Scottish case.
In the case referred to in the Montreal Gazette it doesn’t sound at all like the light sentence had anything to do with the judge being afraid of offending Muslims. It wasn’t an “honor killing” but a parent slapping his child for mumbling under her breath which led to a ruptured artery and accidental death. In the article the judge said he was trying to find an “appropriate sentence.” I think he failed badly. The man did plead guilty to manslaughter, and while I’m not familiar with Quebec’s sentencing guidelines I would think it deserved more than 60 days of community service. All that being said, it doesn’t sound like it was “Muslim privilege” but “Parents privilege” i.e. parents have the right to physically discipline their children and while it led to a child’s accidental death “surely that was punishment enough.” The guy should have done serious time, but an example of Muslims being treated with kid gloves while those who harass Muslims get the book thrown at them it isn’t.
In the news report that aired on the day of the murder, the neighbour I cited above claimed the young girl had been bleeding profusely from her ears, eyes, nose and mouth as she was placed in the ambulance. That neighbour had also claimed the young girl had recently stopped praying and that here father was very angry with her. Subsequent news reports claimed she didn’t do her chores. We can never confirm what actually happened because the family members, the only people who witness the aggression, have closed ranks around the patriarch and have ‘forgiven’ him.
Yeah he slapped her.
Nonetheless, she’s dead, MURDERED, and the father does a few days of community service for a crime that should should merit prison time, whereas in the Glasgow case the perps got a year in prison for a crime that only merits community service, albeit more than 60 days.
And those invoking the Napoléanic Code to justify this ridiculous sentence are grasping at straws.
@42-The PROSECUTION was willing to accept a plea of manslaughter, which I presume means they didn’t think they could win a conviction on intentional murder with the available evidence. Yes, the sentence he got was absurdly low. That does not mean a band of white supremacists in another country should have gotten only community service for attempting to terrorize Muslims.