Judge’s blasphemy law ruling on Koran burning
At Westminster magistrates’ court yesterday, Hamit Coskun, a Kurdish-Armenian asylum-seeker from Turkey, was found guilty of a religiously aggravated public order offence, namely, ‘disorderly behaviour within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress’.
Incredibly, the person who district judge John McGarva decided had been caused such distress, and who was used as part of the prosecution’s evidence, was a Muslim man who witnessed Hamit’s protest and proceeded to violently assault him, chasing and attacking and kicking him on the ground, while brandishing a knife.
It’s a shocking verdict. Hamit’s book-burning threatened no one. The right to peaceful protest and freedom of expression, regardless of how offensive or upsetting it may be to some people, should be and once was sacrosanct.