Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Britain First chief ‘stirred up hatred’ at Belfast rally
A SPEECH by the leader of far-right group Britain First was aimed at stirring up fear and hatred towards Muslims in Northern Ireland, a court has heard.
Prosecutors claimed Paul Golding went beyond criticising aspects of a religion at a rally outside Belfast City Hall where he spoke about “colonisation and Islamification by the back door”.
Golding, 37, and his onetime deputy leader, 32-year-old Jayda Fransen, are among four people on trial over their addresses to the Northern Ireland Against Terrorism event in August 2017.
They are accused of using threatening, abusive or insulting words intended to stir up hatred or arouse fear.
Similar charges have been brought against 61-year-old John Banks, of Acacia Road in Doncaster, and 56-year-old Paul Rimmer, from Modred Street in Liverpool.
All four accused deny the allegations against them.
At Belfast Magistrates Court, defence lawyers argued they are entitled to freedom of expression – no matter how offensive their speeches may be.
With further defence submissions to be made,
District
Judge George
Conner indicated he was likely to reserve his verdict in the case. DOCUMENTS and a computer system containing “significant, sensitive information” about covert police operations have been found during a watchdog probe.
And it can be revealed the discovery of the material, relating to loyalist paramilitary murders, has delayed a number of Ombudsman reports.
The items emerged as the watchdog was looking into events surrounding the 1992 UFF massacre at Sean Graham’s bookmakers on the Ormeau Road in South Belfast.
Campaign group Relatives For
Justice revealed the case “led to
PONI becoming aware of sensitive materials held by the PSNI concerning covert intelligence policing”.
It added the find directly impacts not only those gunned down in the attack on the bookmakers, in which five people died, but several other related killings in South Belfast.
Also, the murder of Damien Walsh by the UDA in West Belfast on March 25, 1993, and a series of 19 other UDA sectarian murders in South Derry and North Antrim during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Ombudsman Dr Michael Maguire said police “have told us the problems came about through a combination of human error arising from a lack of knowledge and experience and the complex challenges associated with voluminous material [some 44 million pieces of paper and microfilm records] that is stored in various places and on a range of media and on archaic IT systems”. The report on the Sean Graham attack, which the Ombudsman had hoped to begin publishing in the coming weeks, will now be held back.
Also delayed will be reports looking into the activities of the South Derry and North Antrim UDA, understood to include incidents such as Greysteel and the murders of Sinn Fein councillor Eddie Fullerton and Damien Walsh.
Relatives For Justice director Mark Thompson said the Ombudsman probes involve 30 UDA murders “in which scores of people were also injured”.
He added: “In respect to the Ormeau Road bookmakers atrocity, the families, RFJ and their lawyers KRW Law have been continually asking and were assured that in the course of the