Golfer jailed for seven months after drunken racist assault on Muslim taxi driver

A golfer from Birmingham has been jailed for seven months after he racially abused and assaulted a Muslim taxi driver while on a golfing holiday, the South Wales Argus reports.

Kevin Dunne, 57, attacked Shabir Ahmed after wrongly accusing him of being linked to the killing of Drummer Lee Rigby.

Newport Crown Court heard Dunne said to Ahmed: “You know what happened last week in London? It was one of your brothers who done it. Where are you from?”

After Mr Ahmed ignored the comment and asked for his £12 fare Dunne gave him a bit of change and a 20 pence tip, saying: “That’s all you’re having. **** off out of here, you ******* Paki.”

Dunne then assaulted Ahmed by head butting him and punching him in the face. The taxi driver grabbed a wheel brace to defend himself. A security guard from the hotel intervened but Mr Dunne shouted: “**** off you Welsh ****”.

Dunne continued hurling abuse at the police when they arrived and handcuffed him, shouting: “People have fought and died for this country and I am the one in trouble? You lot know what I’m on about, there’s been trouble this week. Are you Welsh? I would expect this from you lot. He came at me with a bar and you are taking his side even though he came at me.”

Dunne admitted during police interview that he was “intoxicated” and that he had attacked Mr Ahmed but denied he racially abused him. Dunne later accepted the charge of racially aggravated assault.

In sentencing Dunne to seven months in prison, Judge Gaskell, blasted him for getting “hopeless drunk” and said his actions were “obnoxious”.

He added: “First of all you referred to an atrocity that occurred in London, suggesting that was in some way his responsibility. It quite clearly wasn’t.

“In fact on the basis of what we know it wasn’t the responsibility of someone in his racial group, but it was something you pursued.”

“The racially aggravated part is significant, that leaves him (Mr Shabir) with an ongoing persistent fear that he’s going to be subject to further assault for no other reason than that he is Asian.”

Dunne was fined £110 and ordered to pay £85 costs by magistrates in Cwmbran for a public order offence relating to his abuse of the security guard and police at the time of his arrest on May 26.

News of this attack comes in the same week as the attack on Glaswegian cabbie, Mohammed Afzal. After waiting 41 days for a police response to his client’s complaint of a racial incident, Afzal’s solicitor accused the Scottish police of ‘institutional racism’.

The Institute of Race Relations has in briefing paper drawn attention to the vulnerability of Asian and other minority taxi drivers to racial abuse and physical assault. Some taxi companies have responded to the growing threat of violence to staff by installing CCTV in taxis.