Pro-corbyn ‘anti-semites’ may be charged

Police say abuse found on Facebook groups meets the ‘high threshold’ for hate crime prosecution

PROSECUTORS are considering bringing charges over six Corbyn-supporting Facebook posts calling for violence against Jews.

The Metropolitan Police believes the anti-semitic posts “meet the high threshold” required for the Crown Prosecution Service to start hate crime proceedings.

It comes after specialist officers spent the past six months trawling through hundreds of vile social media posts containing insults such as “Adolph (sic) you should have finished the job” and describing Israelis as “murdering Jew scum.”

The investigation followed a complaint to the Metropolitan Police by 11 Jewish peers, including Lord Sugar, that a number of pro-corbyn groups were displaying “anti-semitic rhetoric stirring up racial hatred”.

The cross-party group, led by Lord Polak, a Conservative peer, wrote to Cressida Dick, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, describing the groups as promoting “hate speech” on social media platforms and suggesting that they were in breach of the Public Order Act 1986.

The peers gave examples, including one relating to a member of a Facebook group called Supporting Jeremy Corbyn & John Mcdonnell, who had written: “Adolph (sic) you should have finished the job.” Another example they cited was from a group called Jeremy Corbyn Leads Us to Victory. They revealed that its members had posted pictures of journalists at the New York Times and CNN with the Star of David pasted on to those they believed to be Jewish.

There were other posts denying the Holocaust, with one claiming: “Six million is a fallacy. Best people stop having the wool pulled over their eyes.”

The peers protested: “These messages seem to go well beyond what can reasonably be considered as free speech, and we believe those which incite violence should urgently be investigated to establish whether they were made with serious intent.

“It is our strongly held belief that this anti-semitic rhetoric not only stirs up racial hated, which threatens the very fabric of community cohesion throughout London and the UK, but also poses a possible physical threat to the Jewish community.”

The Daily Telegraph has learned that the Special Inquiry Team of the Metropolitan

‘These messages seem to go well beyond what can reasonably be considered as free speech’

Police had last week contacted the peers to confirm that they were passing six of the worst posts to the CPS “seeking advice with regard to possible prosecutions”.

Six posts were “deemed to possibly reach the high threshold where the CPS might consider a prosecution”. Lord Carlile QC, a leading lawyer who was among the signatories, said he would be “shocked and disappointed” if the CPS did not pursue prosecutions.

“I am very pleased that the Met has done careful analysis of these posts,” he said.

“The fact that they found six amount to possible criminal offences is very significant. It sends out a warning to people who post these kinds of messages that they are under close scrutiny and may be committing a crime.”

It is not known how many people were involved in posting the messages or their precise content. Two of the messages are believed to have been posted online from outside the London area.

Lord Carlile said the “keyboard antisemites should be watching themselves”, adding: “The use of Adolf Hitler’s name in anything like this is deeply offensive to those of us who lost close relatives in the Holocaust.”

He accused Mr Corbyn of “failing to get a grip” on anti-semitism within Labour following the furore over the party’s initial reluctance to adopt the official International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-semitism.

In 2007-08, hate crimes accounted for 1.3 per cent of the total caseload for the Crown Prosecution Service.

This almost doubled to 2.5 per cent in 2016-17. However, there were fewer people prosecuted for hate crimes last year. Figures reveal that 14,480 were prosecuted for hate crimes in 2016-17, compared with 15,442 the year before.

The CPS has said that it was working with the police to understand the reasons for the fall in prosecutions.