EGN NEWS DESK
The Metropolitan Police have agreed to pay a Christian preacher £10,000 in damages after she was arrested, strip-searched and detained for 15 hours.
Hatun Tash was arrested as she was making ready to evangelise at Speakers’ Corner, a spot in London’s Hyde Park that has a protracted custom of free speech and public debate.
She was sporting a Charlie Hebdo T-shirt on the time and had a prop Quran with holes in it that she meant to make use of as a visible support to argue that Islamic theology has holes in it.
As Miss Tash was organising on Sunday 26 June 2022, a person grabbed her Quran and ran off with it. When her Christian companions referred to as the police to report the theft, officers requested Miss Tash to go away the world. Disturbing video footage reveals her being dragged to a police van in entrance of a jeering crowd after she refused to go away.
The Christian Legal Centre (CLC), which supported Miss Tash in her authorized motion in opposition to the police, mentioned that after being put within the police van, her belongings had been left unattended at Speakers’ Corner the place they might have been stolen.
It says she was informed by officers that she was being arrested for ‘felony injury’ and for sporting a Charlie Hebdo T-shirt that depicted the Prophet Muhammad.
She was taken to Charing Cross Police Station the place she was strip-searched and interrogated at 4am earlier than finally being launched at 9am after 15 hours in custody. She was informed that no additional motion could be taken, however was not given any help to retrieve her belongings from Speakers’ Corner.
Lawyers argued that the police “didn’t fairly imagine that [Miss Tash] was concerned within the fee of a felony offence, regarding the first incident it was clear that she had carried out nothing unlawful and regarding the second incident, the officers believed that the best resolution to the issue was ‘do away with our consumer’.”
Miss Tash has donated the settlement cash to an organisation supporting people who expertise persecution after leaving the Islamic religion.
Commenting on the settlement, she accused the police of “two-tiered policing” and advised that “Muslim mobs” at Speakers’ Corner gave the impression to be “above the legislation”.
“I’ve been handled appallingly by the police and have been repeatedly humiliated once I had not carried out something unsuitable,” she mentioned.
Miss Tash is director of the ministry Defend Christ Critique Islam and often preaches at Hyde Park. It is the second time the Met has paid her £10,000 after arresting her on the similar spot in 2022. In that incident, she was arrested after reporting to officers that she was being harassed and threatened by Islamic demonstrators.
She was stabbed in the identical place a 12 months earlier however her attacker has by no means been caught. In September 2022 she was the goal of a foiled homicide plot by Muslim convert Edward Little who was sentenced to life in jail final December after pleading responsible.
Miss Tash continued, “More should be carried out to correctly cope with Islamic violence and intimidation at Speakers’ Corner. We do not dwell in Pakistan; we do not dwell in Saudi Arabia. I’m Christian and by default I imagine that Muhammad is a false prophet. I must be allowed to say that within the UK with out being stabbed or repeatedly arrested.
“I’m involved that energy has been handed over to Muslim mobs on Britain’s streets, and that there isn’t any getting back from this. The British public urgently want and deserve higher policing.”
CLC chief govt Andrea Williams mentioned the footage of Miss Tash being marched away from the world represented “one other lamentable episode of policing at Speakers’ Corner” and a “totalitarian strategy to anybody who stands in opposition to Islam in London”.
“If it’s not protected to critique Islamic ideology at Speakers’ Corner then nowhere is protected,” she mentioned.
