Aristocrat jailed after offering £5k to run over anti-Brexit campaigner
AN aristocrat who offered a reward of £5,000 to run over leading anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller in a series of Facebook posts has been jailed.
The 4th Viscount St Davids, Rhodri Philipps, said Miss Miller was a ‘bloody troublesome first-generation immigrant’ and said any migrants who challenged Brexit should be sent back to their ‘stinking Jungles’.
The 50-year-old made the comments on November 7 last year – four days after Miss Miller won a landmark High Court challenge to the Government’s bid to trigger Article 50 without a vote in Parliament.
In the post he wrote: ‘£5,000 for the first person to “accidentally” run over this bloody troublesome first-generation immigrant ... If this is what we should expect from immigrants, send them back to their stinking jungles.’
He also posted a message responding to a news article about Arnold Sube, a Cameroonian migrant with eight children, who he described as a ‘monkey’.
He wrote: ‘I will open the bidding. £2,000 in cash for the first person to carve Arnold Sube into pieces. Piece of s***.’
Philipps initially rejected that
Abuse: Rhodri Philipps the posts were racially motivated, claiming he had ‘a number of Muslim friends’, and denied three counts of sending menacing messages. However, he was found guilty of two of the three charges on Tuesday.
Philip Stott, prosecuting, read out a statement from Miss Miller, which she said she was left ‘scared’ by the racist abuse she received online.
‘Since the initial ruling regarding article 50 have been subjected to a viscous hate campaign and vilified on social media outlets,’ she said. ‘I feared for my safety and had to employ private security. This has had a huge impact on my personal life and continues to cause worry and effect my work,’ she said.
Addressing the judge, Philipps told the hearing: ‘I wholly accept my comments were unkind and unnecessary and wholly selfindulgent expletives of anger.
‘I apologise for that lack of self control that was also wholly un-Christian.’
However, Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot questioned why Philipps had changed his attitude after the prior hearing.
She said: ‘Two days ago he was explaining to me his racist views and saying his comments weren’t menacing.
‘Now after I told him prison was my first port of call he says he is disgusted with himself and is ashamed.’
Sentencing Philipps to 12 weeks for the posts, Judge Arbuthnot said: ‘ You claimed you were motivated by love of country but you were actually motivated by hatred of anyone with different views to your own or anyone who has recently arrived in this country.
‘You claim you had an epiphany in the last two days but your racist views are deeply held and caused substantial distress to Miss Miller.
‘These offences are so serious as to warrant a prison sentence.’
Mr Philipps was also ordered to pay £500 compensation to Miss Miller as well as £250 cost and a £115 victim surcharge.
He was also banned from mentioning either Ms Miller, Mr Sube and Matthew Steeples who discovered the post and altered her to it, on any social media platforms.
Guyana-born Miss Miller, 52, a mother of three, spearheaded the legal challenge to the Government’s bid to trigger Brexit last year last year.
She argued Parliament needed to be consulted before Article 50 could be invoked.