Man put under restraining order after threatening to "burn mosque down with youse in it"

Categories: Latest News
Monday August 11 2014
The Chester Chronicle and The Mirror report on an anti-Muslim hate crime incident in Chester where a 42 year old man hung bunting bearing KKK slogans and threats to burn down a mosque with Muslims inside it on the grounds of a proposed mosque.
Martin Sallis claimed he had hung the bunting up as a ‘joke’ but later admitted to wanting to “cause fear, alarm and distress to the Muslim community”.
He scrawled slogans such as “Abu Hamza burn in hell”, “burn in hell forever” and “burn mosque down with youse in it” on the bunting as well as symbols like “a swastika with an SS added” and “KKK” and the initials “APINF” before draping it over the mosque site.
Sallis, who was drunk at the time of committing the offence, claimed he had picked the views up from ‘school exercises’ and ‘TV shows’.
His defence lawyer added that it was “two pieces of bunting, nothing of any great size, not something that would have been visible”.
Sallis pleaded guilty to racially or religiously aggravated harassment. Chester magistrates imposed a restraining order requiring that he stay away from the proposed mosque site for 12 months. He was also sentenced to a 12 month supervision order, with a drug rehabilitation requirement, a three month curfew, and ordered to pay £145 – including £85 court costs.