Tommy Robinson arrested and jailed

[HAL]

OK I'll try not to do sneering Hal so much.

[thesoretoothsayer]

[Pies4shaw]

The report you impugn as fake news contains the following (apparently live-blogged) material as allegedly read by the prosecutor to the Court:

The first direct message from Mr Robinson, concerned the Manchester attack.

Read to the court by Mr Rees, it said: "Dear Darren...What Salman Abedi did is not the beginning and it won’t be the end. There is a nation within a nation forming just beneath the surface of the UK...built on hatred, violence and Islam."

The message alleged Abedi's local mosque had a Sharia court, hosted radical preachers and had not be [sic] closed down, adding: "Politicians have failed to take the necessary steps to keep us safe.
It has now been left to us, the ordinary people of the UK, to step up and say ‘no more’."

The message invited Mr Osborne to join a silent protest march which Mr Robinson's message would be "impossible to ignore".

The second message from Tommy Robinson to Mr Osborne came on 14 June and detailed the campaign for 'justice' for a woman whose rapists were not prosecuted, the court has heard.

"Dear Darren, we know about he terrible crimes committed against [name redacted] of Sunderland...police let the suspects go and why?
It is because the suspects are refugees from Syria and Iraq, it’s a national outrage…I know you will be there for her and we will get her the justice she deserves."

The message was requesting money to pay a lawyer to pursue the case.

The report also records that "Mr Osborne had screen-grabbed emails from Mr Robinson sent via The Rebel website". The prosecution was plainly alleging that the defendant was radicalized, in part, as a result of direct, personalized mailings from Robinson (or, if you prefer, sent in Robinson's name by somebody else) to him. Putting the two sets of reportage together it also looks very much like the prosecution asserted that there were two emails from Robinson "direct" to the defendant but then qualified the assertion of direct communications by saying something to the effect that the prosecution was not suggesting that the message or messages were sent directly by Mr Robinson personally to the defendant.

It certainly reads - whatever spin one chooses to put upon it - that the prosecution was asserting that a defendant on trial for allegedly trying to run down and kill as many Muslims as he could was radicalized by directly addressed emails sent in the name of Robinson, from an organization with which he was associated and, presumably, with his authority. That is, it looks like the prosecution was saying that these were "direct" messages from Robinson to the defendant but that Robinson didn't actually push the "send" key himself.

Thus, "the nature of the interaction between Robinson and Osborne", as alleged by the prosecution, seems to have been that someone, in Robinson's name (and presumably with his authority) sent emails personally addressed to the defendant that the defendant was intended to take as coming from Robinson. Further, the defendant was alleged to have been radicalized, in part, by them.

It would, of course, be an hilarious universe in which a political activist could allow stuff to be sent out by email over his name and ostensibly from him but say "well, it wasn't from me, really". Happily, most of us do not live in that universe.

Anyway, I suppose you can ask Robinson how much direct responsibility he had for the content of the "Dear Darren" emails sent out in his name. But you might have to wait 12 months and 20 days, roughly speaking, to do so.

In the meantime, Robinson's messages do read uncomfortably like the sort of intemperate material that must, as its logical conclusion, lead to a call to a new kind of Reichskristallnacht.

[thesoretoothsayer]

Whilst you have said a lot I don't feel you've said anything that addresses my point. Is this a standard legal tactic?

[Pies4shaw]

[Pi]

^
interesting metaphor

kind of reminds me of the masked bike lock attacker.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qKCl9NL1Cg

[thesoretoothsayer]

I'm still amazed that the 4chan autists were able to (allegedly) identify this guy. A adjunct philosophy professor who taught:
introduction to philosophy with a background in teaching ethics, critical thinking and comparative philosophy East/West

[David]

Probably a Kantian.

[Mugwump]

^ The Reichskristallnacht was not, I assure you, built upon silent protests requesting a change in immigration policy, and funding for lawyers to pursue cases within existing laws.

It might seem clever, but these Nazi smears are historically vacuous. The status of the Jews of Germany in 1938 and Islam in the West today really are categorically different (as Kant would say).

Robinson is no hero, but he is articulating the views and worries of many Working Class Britons whose interests and concerns have been despised by their elites for far too long. He does so with a fair measure of ignorance and blundering, but one doesn’t find many Demosthenes arising from the slums. He should not be allowed anywhere near real power, but he is better than he might have been, given the traps and associations which lie around his cause.

[Pies4shaw]

For those of you who want to read the first judgment while we wait for the second one to be published, here it is:

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/coc-yaxley-lennon-20170522.pdf

It's short and the discussion of the legal position is simple. Her Honour gave a very helpful indication as to precisely what it was that the defendant could never do again.

Anyway, the site from which that transcript is taken has a helpful link to UK contempt decisions. As it happens that May 2017 judgment is now well down the list (because people get sentenced for contempt with regularity in the UK). The same day, though, a defendant was sent to jail for 6 months (not suspended) for breaching undertakings (given, it would appear, in a very different context) the previous day: https://www.judiciary.uk/publications/committal-for-contempt-of-court-in-open-court-at-the-county-court-sitting-at-liverpool-nawaz/

Here's the main link: https://www.judiciary.uk/subject/contempt-of-court/

[thesoretoothsayer]

Thanks. The original conviction seems pretty clear cut.
As mentioned previously, I don't believe the judiciary have it in for Robinson.
In fact, they've thrown out police cases against him:
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/edls-tommy-robinson-wins-court-case-against-bedfordshire-police-over-football-banning-order_uk_57dff718e4b0d584f7f1fcb1

[Mountains Magpie]

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/thousands-march-for-far-right-activist

[Pies4shaw]

Wouldn't it be difficult to walk down our streets if there were thousands marching for every appropriately convicted repeat felon? Chumps.

[stui magpie]

^

Agreed. We need to have a Chinese attitude toward these protesters. Bring in the tanks.

[David]

I don’t have any problem with it – seems like a perfectly acceptable exercise in freedom of protest to me. But we (by which I mean those of us who aren’t already in cahoots with them) do need to be aware that the far-right are gaining in strength right now and get better at counteracting their arguments (as well as, perhaps more importantly, reaching those undecided people who might be swayed by their dangerous messages).