Of the hundreds of people arrested in the wake of the riots, one in particular haunts my mind. It’s Julie Sweeney from Church Lawton in Cheshire. She’s a 53-year-old carer for her husband. And this week she was sentenced to 15 months in jail for writing an odious Facebook post while the riots were in full flow. Someone has to ask, and it might as well be me: who benefits from the imprisonment of this lady?
Many will be asking why certain forms of inciting speech seem to be punished more severely and more swiftly than others
Make no mistake: what she wrote was wicked. In response to a Facebook post featuring a photo of people helping to repair the mosque in Southport after it was damaged by riotous bigots, Sweeney said: ‘It’s absolutely ridiculous. Don’t protect the mosque. Blow the mosque up with the adults in it.’ What a vile sentiment.
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