Woolwich attack: Student sentenced for 'joke' tweet

BBC NEWS

A student who said on Twitter that people wearing Help for Heroes T-shirts "deserved to be beheaded" was arrested after complaining to police about threatening replies, a court has heard.

Deyka Ayan Hassan, from Harrow, sent the tweet in the aftermath of Drummer Lee Rigby's death in Woolwich, south-east London.

The 21-year-old student admitted sending a malicious electronic message. She was ordered to complete 250 hours of unpaid work by Hendon magistrates.

Yet another example of the draconian online social network laws being abused by the British powers.

Seems we're getting one of these a week at the minute.

The most worrying part of the whole thing is this though.

We accept you didn't intend to cause harm and you felt it was a joke.

So even though it was fully accepted as a joke with no harm intended it's still classed as a crime.

Also, this girl received threats of rape and murder, yet the police seem more bothered by her joke than what should be seen as very serious offenses.

Anyone who backs this type of thing is a worry to me, they're basically falling into the hands of the governments and doing their evil bidding for them.

How long before you can't criticise the government on line for fear of prison? We're not far off that now in my opinion.

If this tweet was a joke, then the writer has a sick sense of humour.

How anyone could make light of this situation is beyond me. However it doesn't condone the replies she received.

Another highlight for twitter, where grammar is nothing and diatribe is everything, how did we ever live without it?

This should never have gone to court. The fact it did, and the fact that nothing appears to have happened to those who threatened to kill and rape her, proves what a #ed up country this is. The judge is wrong and incompetent. The police are corrupt. The military are no #ing heroes.

reply to post by bates


This is very concerning to me.
I have said before that this is trial by mob. If enough people are outraged by something then the target is arrested. But you'll notice that the many people who then directly threatened her in response are not even investigated.

There are thousands upon thousands of distasteful jokes out there on the internet, and if we applied this law to all there should be thousands of court cases a day! But in this current insanity there are people picked out for punishment because enough people complain about it.

No one in their right mind can say that what she did was right, or decent, but people have the right to be wrong, or offensive. I don't want to live in a country where the mob decides who should be punished simply because they disagree with what someone says or thinks.

This is extremely worrying, and civil liberty groups - and legal professionals - should be all over this.

Originally posted by bates
BBC NEWS

A student who said on Twitter that people wearing Help for Heroes T-shirts "deserved to be beheaded" was arrested after complaining to police about threatening replies, a court has heard.

Deyka Ayan Hassan, from Harrow, sent the tweet in the aftermath of Drummer Lee Rigby's death in Woolwich, south-east London.

The 21-year-old student admitted sending a malicious electronic message. She was ordered to complete 250 hours of unpaid work by Hendon magistrates.

Yet another example of the draconian online social network laws being abused by the British powers.

I'm a pretty callous type and I never would have said anything like that. I joked about the guys who committed the crime getting shot.

But even that made me feel a little bad when I saw his wife on the news saying "I thought he was safe".

She deserves a week of community service I think. No jail time. Something to make her think to be more sensitive.

In the country of MY birth there has always been the distinction between a "Joke and ,an damn joke". This was a "Damn joke". He should have know better. This is inciting crazy people to do even more crazy stuff! Once the political Islamists get fired up then the EDL camp followers will get fired up and then even more innocent people will be at risk!

Why fan any more hatred???

reply to post by bates


No 1st or 2nd amendment protections.....
I gurss that is the price you pay to be a subject on the land rather than a true free man or woman.
I sure hope we across the pond sort out our politicians and corporations before we end up dead and or in shackles like our brothers across the pond.
Now if only we could overlook our little wedge issues...

While i strongly agree those who made threats against the woman in the story should have been investigated and charged, i still think what she said was worthy of the light punishment she got.

Community service isn't such a big deal...she'll be cleaning graffiti off walls, weeding public land and picking up rubbish etc.

Hardly throwing the book at her.

The reason i feel this is justified, is because what she said could easilly be classed as incitement to religious hatred by saying that 'people wearing help for heroes shirts deserve what happened to that poor bloke'...if that's not inciting others to hunt down and attack people weaing such shirts, it's very close to it.

Silly cow should think twice before she decides to say such crap again.

Originally posted by Tiger5
In the country of MY birth there has always been the distinction between a "Joke and ,an damn joke". This was a "Damn joke". He should have know better. This is inciting crazy people to do even more crazy stuff! Once the political Islamists get fired up then the EDL camp followers will get fired up and then even more innocent people will be at risk!

Why fan any more hatred???

It was a female believe it or not. You expect them to be more sensitive at a time like this.

reply to post by MysterX


So where would you draw the line? You say she deserves to be punished for what she said (remember that's all she's done here. said something on twitter) so what do you think we can and can't say?

If someone moans about the binmen and makes a joke that the binmen deserved it if they crashed their bin lorry avoiding a lot of rubbish they'd failed to collect properly would you given them 250 hours?

What if George Galloway got blown up by Palestinian militants in the middle east doing some sort of "the middle east is safe and the Palestinians need our support" rally. Would you be allowed to joke about the irony of or would it be something that deserves 250 hours of picking up litter?

What if someone says something jokey about Richard Ramirez who has just died, he's a person with family or whatever. Is he fair game for 'jokes' or is that now off limits as well?

The people who support this punishments are probably those who'll bang on about how we thought to maintain our freedoms from the Nazis, and will use this type of thing of an example as to why they don't want Islam in the west.

I'm amazed anyone can support it, truly amazed.

reply to post by Miracula

She deserves a week of community service I think. No jail time. Something to make her think to be more sensitive.

I say you need a week of jail time to make you less sensitive. Who cares what somebody says?

This is ridiculous. How is this legally justifiable in the first place?

reply to post by Miracula

It was a female believe it or not. You expect them to be more sensitive at a time like this.

I also expect females to whine about lack of sensitivity, but you seem to be a guy, so.......

Originally posted by bates
You say she deserves to be punished for what she said (remember that's all she's done here.

Yes, but she didn't say it to a close knit group of friends who are just as twisted as she is.

A man was beheaded and his wife might see her comments. She said it publicly on the internet. On a non-private forum.

Everyone has their moments of stupidity on the internet, but geesh a man was killed in a gruesome way.

The literature used by the female is an offence under the Malicious Communications Act 1988. This so-called 'joke' was disgusting and would have caused distress and outrage to those that had the displeasure of seeing it. Fortunately, there are laws in place to deal with these sorts of crimes. Lee Rigby's death was an act of terror. I live a few miles away from the location where Lee was hacked to death and tensions between communities are still high - offensive tweets do not help.

How can a comment incite anything?...

This person was clearly against the British government soldiers and what they do probably in Iraq and so on. Are they now not allowed to speak an opinion. This is weird.

I mean are you serious????? You think people wont or will behead due to a comment some student makes.

I expect more of people, I mean you think it was a JOKE what she said?!

It was a grossly offensive comment. I find it offensive myself.

However, grossly offensive comments should not be illegal in a free society.

It would appear we have some seriously malformed legislation being applied to social media in a capricious manner.

Okay let me spell it out - it was not a joke. This person said it was a joke to avoid any harsh sentence.

This comment was a look into the minds of some of the youth today. Who maybe dont agree with the British Governmental army. Okay???

What happened to reading between the lines.

I dont think for one minute that such comments would set off a series of beheadings by a sudden manifestation of psychopaths.

reply to post by ProfessorT


We all know what the malicious communications act is, and we all know it's one of the most outrageous pieces of 'law' ever brought in by a so called western democracy.

It is such a loose 'law' that no person in their right mind could possibly support it.

What you post does not make a difference, your intent does not make any difference, it is all down to how other people reading your post interpret what you have written. Potentially every single thing you have ever published online is a potential crime that carries a prison sentence or community service (which is a prison sentence in all but name).

People accused of malicious communications are then given a choice of pleading guilty or they face trial and receive a much harsher sentence (this is the part that really scares me). So if you're rich or famous, you can't really be touched as you can get a legal team who would laugh most of the accusations out of court, they'd never even get to court. If you're just a normal joe public and you can't afford a proper legal team you have to bite your lip and take the punishment regardless of whether you've actually broken a real law or committed a crime.

When we're locking people up, or giving them community service, for making jokes (in this case it has been accepted as a joke by all sides) you have to really worry. The malicious communications act has been abused by those in power for too long, it is used to suppress and control the population and lately it's main use appears to be as a form of appeasement for online pitch fork mobs.

If enough people make noise about what you say, you will be punished. The government have worked an act in that makes this a mere formality and amazingly huge members of the public actually support this.

Virtually everyone convicted of a crime under this outrageous act hasn't even been aware they were committing a crime, they genuinely weren't committing a crime in the eyes of the law at the time they were doing it. It was only when people were 'offended' that it became illegal.

Your content or intentions no longer matter, it's what I think about it that does. You can make a completely innocent comment on something and if enough people don't like it, you have a big problem.

Turn the people on each other and you can pretty much destroy our freedoms overnight. It's genius in it's simplicity but scary in its effectiveness.

Every thread we have on this you get people supporting the 'law' simply because they have an emotional connection to the case or subject in hand, subjectivity is a great tool to use and the powers that be know how to exploit it for their own gains. You can even tell people what you're doing and they'll still go along with it if you can pull the right heart strings.

I'm going to make it my mission on here to highlight as many of these cases as I can, the more people we can get to stand up to this, the better chance we have of regaining some control.

Originally posted by ProfessorT
Lee Rigby's death was an act of terror.

Like hell it was. It was murder plain and simple. Sure, violent crimes do cause terror, but it was not a terrorist attack. No innocent people were killed. They had every opportunity to kill innocent people, but its obvious that was not their intention, and until proven otherwise, it should not be considered a terrorist attack. The only reason it is is because a soldier was targeted. If this was a terrorist attack, then every single killer in the british military active in other nations is also a terrorist, and spend their lives behind bars, as they are doing the EXACT SAME THING as the two murderers. Only they are doing it for money and corporate interests, which makes it a whole lot worse.

The real terrorism at work here is the policing of the tweet incident.Its the authorities, through the media spreading fear. The whole handling of the murder. It was not in any way worth giving her a criminal record over. She received far worse in retaliation to what she did and nothing happened to any of them idiots did it? But thats the double standards of this #ed up country. IMO everyone has the right to say/type whatever. Words are one thing, actions are another.

reply to post by bates


I agree or its back to communist russia. Where words are censored.

What an ordinary person says doesnt incite behaviour unless that person is a - a leader of sorts.
End of....

I hear people say lots of crazy things, always have. This hasnt changed my behaviour. Nor anyone else.

A comment wont create lots of psychopaths who suddenly think its okay to behead people.