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Man who posted ‘vile’ racist messages told he could face jail

Man who posted ‘vile’ racist messages told he could face jail

Categories: Latest News

Friday June 03 2016

The Lancashire Evening Post reports on the trial of a man arrested on a charge of sending malicious communications after a member of the public alerted Greater Manchester Police about his racist Facebook posts.

Garry Farrimond, 45, was arrested in connection with posts found on his Facebook account in November last year.

Wigan and Leigh Magistrates’ Court heard that Farrimond had been involved in collecting signatures for a petition calling for an end to the housing of ‘economic migrants’ at the Britannia Hotel in Standish, Wigan.

Prosecutor Tess Kenyon told the court that a police support officer had been monitoring Greater Manchester Police Wigan West’s Facebook page when a report of ‘racist activity’ on Farrimond’s page was noted by a concerned member of the public on 12 November 2015.

Kenyon told the court a post on Farrimond’s page showed “an image of a Trojan horse with Isis on its forehead and Syrian refugees on its body.”

The post also referred to refugees as being an “Islamic invasion.”

Another post read: “All foreigners teach their kids to hate the English, let’s do this with our own.”

The local paper notes that a post about Black people contained words too offensive to publish. Farrimond followed up that post with another one saying, “I’m not racist, I’m human. Ban the burka.”

Farrimond initially claimed his social media account had been hacked in October but the offending messages were posted in November. He told officers he did not regard is ‘Trojan horse’ post as racist and said he did not remember posting the other messages.

Farrimond later admitted a charge of sending offensive communications.

Farrimond will return to the court on June 9 but was warned that the offences were so serious that he may be sent to crown court for sentencing.

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