Prosecutions for Antisemitism
2020 Prosecutions
23rd December 2020 - Luke Hunter, 23
Luke Hunter, 23 and of Newcastle, admitted seven charges of encouraging terrorism and disseminating terrorist publications at Leeds Crown Court. He was reportedly tied to the neo-Nazi Feuerkrieg Division, which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation, and apparently produced hundreds of hours of podcasts, multitudes of graphic designs, and dozens of stylised fascist videos” which were disseminated across his websites, numerous Twitter accounts, YouTube, Instagram, Discord and Telegram, on which he had over 1,200 subscribers. Among the posts were material promoting the murder of Jews, non-white people and homosexuals.
Hunter was sentenced to four years and two months in prison.
25th November 2020 - Nicholas Nelson, 31
Nicholas Nelson, 31, admitted to three charges of sending communications of an offensive nature in mid-2018 via telephone calls and e-mails to the Jewish women MPs Dame Margaret Hodge and Dame Louise Ellman, as well as Lord Mann, who was then a Labour MP. All three Labour MPs were critics of Jeremy Corbyn. This conviction was not Nelson’s first offence: in 2018, he was sentenced to twenty weeks in jail – suspended for a year – for harassing another two Jewish Labour MPs, Luciana Berger and Ruth Smeeth, both of whom were victims of significant levels of antisemitic abuse while in Parliament.
Westminster Magistrates’ Court sentenced Nelson to twenty weeks in prison, suspended for eighteen months, as well as a 30-day rehabilitation order, 240 hours of unpaid work and £200 in victim surcharge and costs.
6th November 2020 Paul Dunleavy, 17
Paul Dunleavy, a seventeen-year-old teenager from Rugby who was involved in the neo-Nazi Feuerkrieg Division group pleaded not guilty to preparing acts of terrorism at Birmingham Crown Court. The court was told that he had to pass a test to prove his hatred of Jews, he had “graphic” video footage of a terrorist attack on his telephone, had praised terrorists, and had searched the internet for information about guns, including how to convert a gun that fires blanks into a live weapon. Jurors wer also told that he had adopted Nazi and white supremacist ideology and participated in far-right chat rooms where he aspired to leading his own “local unit” and called for volunteers.
Dunleavy was sentenced to five years and six months in jail, with the judge describing his terrorist efforts as “inept”.
2nd November 2020 - Harry Vaughan, 18
Harry Vaughan, 18, pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to fourteen terror charges and two charges of possessing indecent images of children. Vaughan was said to have begun taking an interest in Satanic neo-Nazism at the age of fourteen. In 2018, he applied to join the System Resistance Network, a white supremacist successor to National Action, which the Government proscribed as a terrorist organisation in 2016 following a long campaign by Campaign Against Antisemitism and others. In a counter-terrorism operation, his laptop was seized, revealing documents relating to antisemitism, Satanism and neo-Nazism, as well as as far-right terrorist book, bomb-making manuals and materials from the Sonnenkrieg Division, a proscribed neo-Nazi organisation. Police also discovered videos of child abuse.
Vaughan was given a two-year prison sentence suspended for two years. He was also ordered to attend a rehabilitation programme.
16th September 2020 - Paul Biaylock and Ian Routledge
Paul Biaylock and Ian Routledge pleaded guilty to racially aggravated disorderly behaviour after they shouted “go back to where you came from” at a group of Jews wearing skullcaps on a Carlisle train.
They were fined at Carlisle and District Magistrates’ Court in Rickergate, with Biaylock ordered to pay £200 and Routledge given a £250 fine. Both also incurred additional costs and a victim surcharge. The fines were higher owing to the racial element of the offences.
10th August 2020 - David Holmes, 63
David Holmes, 63, was arrested after Derbyshire Police identified it from a fingerprint on the neo-Nazi stickers, including phrases such as “Hitler was right” and “Muslim scum out”, that he was affixing to bus stops and street furniture around the county. He admitted his actions and was let out on bail, during which time he displayed Ku Klux Klan and Confederate flags in his window and left racist messages for his neighbours, invoking Nazis, and threatened one of them. He was rearrested and appeared at Derby Crown Court, where he had previously pleaded to numerous charges, including racially aggravated harassment, racially aggravated criminal damage and witness intimidation.
Holmes was jailed for twelve months, given a two-year restraining order not to contact his neighbour and a two-year criminal behaviour order prohibiting him from placing stickers on any items visible to other people.
21st July 2020 - Two brothers aged fifteen and sixteen
Two brothers aged fifteen and sixteen attacked a 54-year-old senior rabbi visiting the UK from Israel for a wedding. They shouted “f*** Jews” and “dirty Jew” during the attack on Shabbat in November 2019 in Stamford Hill before running off laughing. The rabbi was left with an injured back and a bleeding finger and immediately left the UK. The teenagers surrendered to a police station the following month after CCTV footage of the attack was released, and they were charged with racially aggravated common assault.
The two brothers, who pleaded not guilty at Stratford Magistrates’ Court, were sentenced by Stratford Youth Court. They were given a twelve-month Youth Rehabilitation Order and sentenced to an electronically-monitored curfew from 06:00 to 18:00 for just 30 days, as well as a victim surcharge of £21 each. They were also both ordered to attend a ten-day Diversity Awareness Programme.
9th June 2020 - Alice Cutter, 23
Alice Cutter, 23, used the name “Buchenwald Princess” to enter the online “National Action Miss Hitler 2016” contest in June 2016 in order to attract new members to the neo-Nazi terrorist group National Action. Cutter, of Sowerby Bridge near Halifax, had also disseminated antisemitic and racist material and had joked about gassing synagogues and using a Jew’s head as a football. Her entrance into the beauty pageant came just weeks after her then-partner, Mark Jones, 25 and also from Sowerby Bridge, performed a Hitler salute on a visit to the execution chamber of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Jones was reportedly a “leader and strategist” of the organisation and a former member fo the BNP’s youth wing. Both were convicted with membership of a proscribed neo-Nazi terrorist organisation, along with Garry Jack, 24 and from Birmingham, who reportedly self-identifies as a Nazi, and Connor Scothern, 19 and fromNottingham, who was apparently a practicing Muslim and activist with the extremist anti-fascist group, Antifa, before joining National Action.
All four defendants were found guilty at Birmingham Crown Court, with Cutter being sentenced to there years in prison and Jones to five-and-a-half years. Jack was given four-and-a-half years in prison and Southern a sentence of eighteen months in jail. (Another defendant, Daniel Ward, 28, pleaded guilty to being a member of National Action last year and was jailed for three years.) Southern’ sentence was later halved by the Court of Appeal, on the basis that he was aged fifteen and sixteen during his membership of National Action in 2016-17 but nineteen when he was sentenced, so the court quashed the original eighteen-month sentence and replaced it with nine months’ detention in a Young Offenders’ Institution.
8th June 2020 - Mohsin Rasool
Mohsin Rasool was a Labour Party activist in a dossier containing numerous names and incidents to be prosecuted. The dossier was publicised by LBC and referred to the Metropolitan Police by Campaign Against Antisemitism. Rasool was charged with sending on 26th February 2020 by means of a public electronic communications network a message that was grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character, contrary to section 127(1)(a) and (3) of the Communications Act 2003.
Rasool pleaded not guilty, subsequently changing his plea to guilty on 8th June 2020. He was sentenced to an England and Wales Community Order, which included a nine-week curfew requirement. He was also ordered to pay the Victim Surcharge of ÂŁ60 and costs of ÂŁ150 to the CPS.
March 2020 - Adam Cassidy, 20
Adam Cassidy, 20, confronted a Jewish family in broad daylight in August 2019 on a busy high street in St Albans, calling the parents “dirty Jews” and attacking their baby in its pram. He also kicked hoarding at the family. The altercation was filmed and the footage went viral. Raised in Egypt, Cassidy claimed in his defence that the victims had called him a “dirty Arab” first, a contention that the judge did not believe. Cassidy was found guilty of racially aggravated assault and of using an antisemitic slur.
Cassidy was sentenced to six weeks in prison. The judge said that a community order was not imposed because, as it was a racially aggravated office, the sentence was uplifted. No costs order was issued due to limited means.
February 2020 - Andrew Prendergast, 47
Andrew Prendergast, 47, broke into Blackpool Reform Synagogue on 19th November 2019, leaving his blood strewn across walls, offices and the prayer hall. He had also damaged the alarm in a bid to destroy it. He told police officers: “synagogue, synagogue, f***ing blow them up. We don’t want them f***ers over here. I’m f***ing English and f***ing proud,” reportedly admitting to them that burglary was religiously motivated. He pleaded guilty to burglary and racially aggravated criminal damage and appeared at Preston Crown Court to be sentenced. According to the defence, he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and a breakdown and was on drugs at the time.
Prendergast was sentenced to eight months consecutively for burglary and racially aggravated criminal damage suspended for two years, and was ordered to carry out 50 rehabilitation days and a nine-month drug rehabilitation requirement.
16th January 2020 - A teenager pleaded guilty at Highbury Corner Youth Court
A teenager pleaded guilty at Highbury Corner Youth Court to racially and religiously aggravated common assault after setting a Jewish passenger’s hair on fire while using racist epithets. The incident took place in March 2018 on the number 210 bus. The then-fourteen-year-old asked the victim: “are you a P**i or a Jew?” He then proceeded to singe the victim’s hair and, when confronted by the victim, said: “Are you Jewish? You can’t be Jewish because you don’t have horns. Do Jews keep money under their caps?” The teenager also threatened to beat up the victim and smash the laptop that he was working on.
The teenager was sentenced to a four-month youth rehabilitation order and ordered to write a letter of apology to the victim and pay him ÂŁ100 in compensation. The fourth month of rehabilitation was due to the racist nature of the attack. The teenager was also given an activity requirement of eight hours and one-to-one behavioural sessions with educational staff to combat racial discrimination.
7th January 2020 - Jack Reed, 17
Jack Reed, 17, had begun drafting a manifesto titled “A Manual for practical and sensible guerrilla warfare against the kike system in the Durham City area, Sieg Heil”. Other items seized from the teenager’s Durham home included a copy of Mein Kampf and material on explosives and firearms. He was charged with preparation of terrorist acts between October 2017 and March 2019. The prosecution claimed that he had become an adherent of neo-Nazism and described Hitler as a “brave man”, confiding to his diary that he hoped to follow in the Nazi leader’s footsteps. A unanimous jury found him guilty.
Reed was sentenced at Manchester Crown Court to six years and eight months in prison, and was also given a separate custodial sentence for unrelated child sexual offences against a schoolgirl. (A year after the case, following Mr Reed’s eighteenth birthday, a judge ruled that it was permissible to name him.)