A conspiracy theorist has been jailed for anti-Semitic remarks regarding the victims of 2017's Grenfell Tower fire.
The infamous blaze took the lives of 72 people, with 70 others injured and 223 managing to escape. It's one of the UK's worst modern disasters, and inquiries into the incident are still taking place nearly five years later.
Tahra Ahmed, a London woman who reportedly worked as a volunteer with victims of the fire, made hideous social media posts in the wake of the deadly fire.
As per The Guardian, the 51-year-old posted 'virulently' anti-Semitic conspiracy theories on social media, claiming all 72 victims were 'burnt alive in a Jewish sacrifice' in a video posted just four days after the tragedy.
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'I’ve been at the scene, at the protest and at the community meetings and have met many of the victims … some who were still in the same clothes they escaped in,' she said in the post, and later linked Grenfell to an anti-Semitic conspiracy around the destruction of the World Trade Centre.
'They are very real and genuine, their pain and suffering is raw and deep and their disgusting neglect by authorities continues. Watch the footage of people trapped in the inferno with flames behind them. They were burnt alive in a Jewish sacrifice,' she added. In other posts, she also claimed that Jews were 'behind ritual torture' and 'the murder of children'.
She was reported to the police by a number of Jewish communal organisations, the Community Security Trust and the Campaign Against Antisemitism. An investigation was later ordered after The Times posted a report focusing on people who attended public meetings after the fire, with officers finding a history of anti-Semitic comments.
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Ahmed denied any wrongdoing, claiming her posts were political rather than discriminatory. However, following a trial at the Old Bailey, she was found guilty of two counts of stirring up racial hatred by publishing written material and sentenced to 11 months behind bars.
Prosecutor Hugh French argued that her posts 'crossed the line as to what is acceptable in a liberal society', illustrating her 'strongly-held beliefs' and that two posts in particular were 'clear demonstrations of racial hatred'.
'Looking at the language of the posts, the crude racial stereotyping and the insulting tone, the Crown say that you can infer that she posted them either intending to stir up racial hatred [or] that racial hatred was likely to be stirred up,' he told the court.
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Topics: UK News