Far-Right pair jailed over rape trial hate campaign
‘Draw attention to race and religion’
LEADERS of the far-Right group Britain First were jailed yesterday after a judge said they had exploited a Muslim rape trial for their own political cause.
Paul Golding, 36, and Jayda Fransen, 32, were found guilty of religiously aggravated harassment after uploading videos to their followers showing them intimidating innocent Muslims and branding them ‘vile’.
They were ‘ threatening and abusive’ towards the family members – including children and a pregnant mother – of two defendants being tried for raping a 16-yearold teenage white girl, Folkestone Magistrates’ Court heard.
Summing up, District Judge Justin Barron said he had no doubt it was the defendants’ intention to use the trial – which involved Muslim immigrants in a ‘particularly brutal and emotive rape’ – for their own political ends. He sentenced Britain First deputy leader Fransen, who won notoriety last year after President Trump retweeted anti-Muslim videos on her Twitter page, to 36 weeks in prison. Her co-founder and party leader Golding was jailed for 18 weeks.
As they were sentenced, the courtroom descended into uproar as Fransen began a political rant, rapturously applauded by more than a dozen supporters in the public gallery.
She shouted that it was a ‘ sad day for British justice’, adding: ‘Everything I did was for the children of this country.’
They were arrested in May last year during an investigation into online videos and leaflets attacking Muslims handed out during the rape trial at Canterbury Crown Court in Kent. Four men were being tried for the rape of a 16-year- old white girl above a takeaway but had not then been convicted. Three Muslim men – Tamin Rahmani, Shershah Muslimyar and a teenager – were subsequently jailed for rape.
After hearing about the case, Fransen, acting as reporter, and Golding, as cameraman, drove to Kent to confront the defendants when they were yet to be found guilty, the court was told. On May 5, the Britain First leaders were said to have visited a takeaway owned by Rahmani, despite him not being there, and were ‘threatening and abusive’ to his partner, his children, and a friend inside. During the trial, a video was shown of Fransen banging on the windows, shouting ‘you dirty monsters’, and encouraging them to come out and face her. Both Fransen and Golding were found guilty of religiously aggravated harassment on this count. Fransen was also convicted of the same offence for uploading a video showing her mistakenly identifying an innocent man as one of the defendants. In addition, she was found guilty of visiting the home of Tamin Rahmani, and shouting racist abuse through the front door while his pregnant partner Kelli Best was inside.
Miss Best said the alleged abuse had brought about a stillbirth and left her son terrified whenever there was a knock on the door.
The court heard Fransen believed doorstepping was ‘a legitimate method of reporting’ and she had ‘a duty to raise the profile of these issues’. The defendants smirked and whispered during yesterday’s hearing. District judge Barron said: ‘This was a campaign … to draw attention to the race, religion and immigrant background of the defendants.’
He said it was ‘absurd’ to suggest that the videos were some form of journalistic response, adding that they lacked ‘even a pretence of objectivity’.
He said the defendants knew their confrontation in Kent would ‘cause harassment, alarm or distress’ and that the more they provoked their victims the ‘better for their propaganda purposes’.
The couple founded Britain First in 2011 and run it from a £400,000 house in Penge, south-east London. There have been calls for it to be listed as a terror organisation.