Viscount jailed after offering cash for killing of Brexit campaigner
Rhodri Philipps offered 拢5,000 on Facebook for the "first person to 'accidentally' run over" the "bloody troublesome" Gina Miller.
Thursday 13 July 2017 17:10, UK
A viscount who offered money on Facebook for someone to kill Brexit campaigner Gina Miller has been jailed for 12 weeks.
Rhodri Philipps, the 4th Viscount St Davids, wrote on the social media site: "£5,000 for the first person to 'accidentally' run over this bloody troublesome first generation immigrant".
The 50-year-old wrote the comment days after against the Government last year over the triggering of Article 50, the formal mechanism for leaving the European Union.
Philipps, of Knightsbridge, central London, described her as a "boat jumper", and added: "If this is what we should expect from immigrants, send them back to their stinking jungles."
He was found guilty at Westminster Magistrates' Court of two counts of sending menacing messages on a public electronic communications network.
The other post was in response to a news article about an immigrant and his children.
Philipps also had a five-year restraining order placed on him to "protect" Ms Miller, along with Arnold Sube, the man he abused online, and Matthew Steeples, who told Ms Miller about the racist material.
Senior district judge Emma Arbuthnot ordered the recently bankrupt Philipps to pay £500 compensation.
He was given six months to pay, with the judge warning him she would send bailiffs to his home if he did not comply.
The judge told Philipps he had "tried and failed to justify the racist abuse".
She told him: "You told me proudly in evidence that your family motto is Love of Country and that is your motivation, but it seems to me on the evidence I have seen that you are not motivated by love of country, but by your hatred of anybody who has different views to yours and to any who have recently arrived in this country.
"You show this hatred by publicly directing abusive threats at others, which is a criminal offence in this multi-racial society we are lucky enough to live in."
The judge noted that it was only since his conviction two days ago, when he was warned that he might go to prison, that Philipps had expressed remorse.
She said it was "a sudden conversion after many months when you have expressed racist views".
"You accept now your posts were a self-indulgent release of anger. I accept you have an alcohol dependency. At the time, you believed your behaviour was an example of freedom of speech."
Philipps, who represented himself, argued he had uploaded the material in anger, had only meant to send it to his friends and that he did not mean to publish it widely or to cause offence.