An anti-racism group in Britain has called on the country’s attorney general to re-punish a former university student who was convicted this week of reading classical literature for downloading and bombing nearly 70,000 white supremacist documents. was ordered.
Leicester Crown Court Judge Timothy Spencer said during a sentencing hearing on Tuesday, 21-year-old Ben John avoided prison “by the skin of his teeth”, instead serving him a suspended prison sentence.
Spencer stated that John’s crime was likely to be an isolated “act of juvenile folly” and ordered him to appear in court again every four months to “test” classic literature by Dickens, Shakespeare, Hardy and Austen. Gave.
“Have you read Dickens? Austen? Start with Pride and Prejudice and Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Think Hardy. Think Trollope,” Spencer said on the sentence.
Following the sentencing, the UK-based Hope Not Hate anti-racism campaign group filed a request with Attorney-General Suella Braverman on Thursday to order a new sentence.
“Such lenient sentences encourage other youth to access and share terrorist and extremist content because they will not fear the consequences of their actions,” Hope Not Hate said in a statement on Thursday.
Additionally, the campaign against anti-British Judaism said in a statement that it was “inexplicable that a person who collected about 70,000 neo-Nazi and terror-related documents could avoid a maximum sentence of fifteen years in prison and leave the court without a custodial sentence.”
The group said the judge instead “left Ben John with only a suspended sentence and some English homework.”
Tuesday’s sentencing follows John’s conviction by a jury earlier this month that is likely to be useful for preparing an act of terror – a charge that could carry a maximum sentence of fifteen years in prison.
According to prosecutors, John was first identified as a terrorist risk after his 18th birthday and was referred to the UK government’s counter-terrorism plan. Yet he continued to download “repellant” right-wing documents as well as a copy of The Anarchist Cookbook, which includes diagrams and instructions for making explosives.
Britain’s Attorney General’s office confirmed on Thursday that it has received a request to consider John’s sentencing under an “unreasonably generous punishment” scheme that covers certain types of hate crimes and terrorism-related crimes.
“Law officers have 28 days to consider the matter and make a decision,” a spokesman for the attorney general said.
