As many regular readers of this blog will be aware, I was arrested on the 22nd October 2019 by officers from Sadiq Khan’s ‘hate crime hub’ for allegedly creating a meme that mocked the high profile Islamic activist. The meme in question, mocked this person, who along with the organisation that he founded, has had a nasty habit of wanting more and more censorship of comments critical of Islam and Muslims, which portrayed him as a fake Pokemon character called ‘Taqiyyatron’. Previous updates to this story and other information are linked below this main piece.
Up until a few weeks ago I had heard nothing from the arresting officer, a PC Choudhury of the Met’s ‘hate crime hub’. The whole investigation had gone somewhat quiet. I have as is my right under the Freedom of Information Act made a subject access request from the Metropolitan Police and from West Mercia Police along with our local Children’s Services department who made a routine visit following my arrest. The reason for requesting CS information is that a plainly false complaint from the police who visited during the arrest that our home was unfit for children because he said that our bookcases were unsafe, something that I dispute and which eventually a social worker from Children’s Services went a long way to dismissing. Nothing wrong was found with the construction of our bookcases. For the record all our bookcases for our 2500+ books are held to the wall with M10 Rawlbolts with a 30 Kilonewton ( 3 ton) sheer breaking strain strength. I will of course be asking for any inaccuracies (and there appear to be quite a few) that I’ve found in both the WMP and Children’s Services reports to be corrected.
The Metropolitan Police have refused point blank to entertain the idea that they should release to me information that I am legally entitled to have which includes background information, any communications with other forces, police radio traffic transcripts and police bodycam footage. I shall be following this matter up in due course. I understand from speaking to others who have had to deal with making FOIA requests to the Met that they are one of the very worst forces in Britain when it comes to complying with legitimate FOIA requests.
The information that I have received from West Mercia Police is notably and noticeably incomplete. West Mercia (yes, the same force that ignored the rape of 1000 girls in Telford by Islamic Rape Gangs) have denied that they have bodycam footage available even though bodycams have been issued to police officers in this area since 2017. All West Mercia Police have supplied me with is video from the custody suite that is worse than useless in documenting the actual arrest in which PC Choudhury refused to tell me why he wanted to speak to me prior to breaking my door down in order to arrest me.
What I have managed to piece together from the information disclosed to me by West Mercia is that the Metropolitan Police have expended an awful lot of public money, at it seems the instigation of the complainant (who is very well connected in Government circles), in order to arrest me. The initial complaint about me was seemingly made by him in late 2018 and the Met were going to arrest me sometime in January 2019 but this didn’t occur for some reason. This means that at a time when London was going through a period of very bad street violence, with a stabbing virtually every day, the Met was spending who knows how much on targeting myself rather than dealing with genuine crime problems such as street violence. For the record Sadiq Khan’s vanity project ‘hate crime hub’ has cost London taxpayers approximately £1.9M since it was set up, money that I and others believe could have been better spent on general policing. After all what’s more important to society a few ‘hurty words’ or London’s citizens, disproportionately minority ones, stabbing each other in the streets?
As I have said, I have heard nothing from the Met Police until I received a letter from PC Choudhury, which was incidentally undated, earlier this month. This stated that the delay in the case has been caused by more serious cases having to take priority and that any IT items that were not relevant to the case would be returned to me. You can see a copy of the letter in the appendices.
I am going to fight this as a free speech case as I believe that we should have the right to criticise and mock anyone we choose. The right to mock is especially required when the mockery is against those whose groups or projects are in receipt of large amounts of public money and where value for money seems to be non existent and where these groups go out of their way to avoid addressing the public’s criticisms by blocking critics on social media. The only restrictions on freedom of speech and free expression should be whether or not a statement is making a credible and immediate threat of violence, something that I have plainly not done. This is the only legitimate reason for the police to be involved in matters of speech. To quote John Stuart Mill from ‘On Liberty’: ‘If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, an only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind’. For too long free speech in the UK has been under attack from thin skinned individuals and groups with various agenda, using the law to silence both critics and opponents. It is surely now past time that such behaviour stopped and that a culture of free speech, of the sort that was born in Britain but exported to the United States, was returned to us.
I will be starting a crowdfunding scheme in order to pay for my defence should this investigation result in a criminal charge. However, it would not in my view be ethical to take money off of people for a legal defence if a charge does not occur. Therefore I will wait to see what happens.
Thank you to all those thousands of people who have read the account of my arrest and who have contacted me to offer their support. I will give further updates as and when they are necessary.
Appendices
Appendix 1
Links to previous updates and the original story
https://www.fahrenheit211.net/2019/10/26/im-back-and-have-i-got-a-tale-to-tell/
https://www.fahrenheit211.net/2019/11/10/update-on-arrest-for-hate-speech/
https://www.fahrenheit211.net/2019/11/24/fahrenheit-211-makes-the-flemish-press/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85-rPNFv0C8
The original ‘offending’ article
https://www.fahrenheit211.net/2016/11/20/have-you-played-pakemon-yet-catch-and-deport-them-all/
Appendix 2
Letter from the Met Police
Thanks for the update.All the best in this matter.
Many thanks for the support. I’m going to fight this not only because it concerns myself, but also for the thousands upon thousands of other Britons who have been abused by these ‘hate speech’ laws. In 2016 alone there were 3300 Britons arrested or convicted of ‘hate speech’ offences for what are often mere words that some find ‘offensive’ rather than genuine incitements to violence.
You have my wholehearted support. I think there is a high probability that this will end with no charges. It is simply the harassment that they hope you will find distressing enough to shut you up. The bookcase safety issue is a classic example, whereby they have threatened to remove your children on safety grounds. So great is the concern for one’s children it would be enough to make the vast majority of people back off.
They are absolute scum.
Thank you. I hope you are correct about your reading of the possible end result. I’m not so sure as the complainant has managed to get one person gaoled for calling them a ‘taqiyya artist’ (see https://www.fahrenheit211.net/2017/03/31/man-convicted-of-abusing-alleged-islamic-grievance-monger/ ). If it does not and it does come before the courts, I will fight this all the way. I’ve learned a lot about the MO of the complainant from some of his previous cases and forewarned is as they say forearmed.
There is indeed the strong smell of state harassment surrounding this case not just over the bookcase complaint made by the police or other lies they told about our living conditions, but also by what the police did NOT look at or confiscate. They never searched my car or my shed something I would have expected and something that I would have done had I been a police officer. The search was notably ‘perfunctory’ and lacking in the sort of vigorous professionalism. All this does as you say indicate intimidation.