…And yet another Judge shows himself to be only one level above plankton on the evolutionary scale.
There’s been a story in the British press over the last few days ( Sunday Express version here). What happened was that Munir Hussain and his brother Tokeer came home to find burglars with knives in the house. The burglars threatened to kill his family.
Munir and Tokeer chased them and beat one of them up (a story in another paper says they used a cricket bat to hit Walid Salem – and they hit him so hard it broke). Salem has 54 previous convictions (that’s convictions, not attempted crimes – heaven knows how much he has gotten away with).
Now, here’s the question: what happened next?
Munir and Tokir have been jailed, and Salem has been let off with a 2-year supervision order – during which time he’ll undoubtedly add to his 54 previous convictions!
You really couldn’t make this up, could you?
The Judge (John Reddihough – the surname itself is enough to explain the gulf between his class and reality) said:
The prosecution rightly made it plain [he can’t even use normal English] that there was no allegation against you, Munir Hussain, in respect of the force you used against Salem in defending your own home and family or of the force used by either of you in apprehending Salem.
However, the attack which then occurred was totally unnecessary and amounted to a very violent revenge attack on a defenceless man.
It may be that some members of the public or media commentators will assert that Salem deserved what happened to him at the hands of you and the two others involved and that you should not have been prosecuted and need not be punished.
However, if persons were permitted to take the law into their own hands and inflict their own instant and violent punishment on an apprehended offender rather than letting the criminal justice system take its course, then the rule of law and our system of criminal justice, which are hallmarks of a civilised society, would collapse.
I wonder if this imbecile realises that Salem and his associates would have got away and not been dealt with by “criminal justice”, and so would have become part of the “civilised society” – of which Reddihough’s class is above, anyway – that justice is pontificating about?
What makes it worse is that the Police said at the trial that they didn’t want Munir and Tokeer jailed.
At least Salem appears to have been put out of circulation by the two heroes. Someone had to, because justice appears incapable of doing anything other than changing its own coleostomy bag, it would seem.
Given some of the idiotic decisions justice makes on a regular basis, it would have been easy to have freed the Hussains. But here we have yet another case of some geriatric panto dame demonstrating his skills at the expense of normal people.
EDIT 20/1/2010: This story has an update – Munir has been freed.