London: In an unusual development, a 12-year-boy has become the youngest person in England to be sentenced in connection with widespread anti-immigration riots in the UK that stemmed from a stabbing incident in Southport in July, claiming the lives of three girls aged from 6 to 9. The boy had previously pleaded guilty to violent disorder after being involved in rioting in Southport after he was caught on CCTV throwing an object at police officers before riding off on a bicycle, according to the Guardian.
The violence erupted on May 30 after social media posts said the suspected attacker in Southport, who fatally stabbed three girls and injured 10 others, was a radical Islamist who had just arrived in Britain and was known to intelligence services. However, police said the 17-year-old suspect was born in Britain and they are not treating it as a terrorist incident. The suspect's parents had moved to Britain from Rwanda.
Protests, mostly involving a few hundred people, had spread across the country, with shops looted and mosques and Asian-owned businesses attacked. Cars were set on fire and some unverified videos on social media have shown ethnic minorities being beaten up. This is UK's worst unrest in more than a decade led to some 1,100 arrests. The government pledged that rioters who hurled bricks at police, looted shops and attacked mosques and hotels used to house asylum-seekers would feel “the full force of the law.”
What was the 12-year-old boy's sentence?
The boy, who cannot be named because of his age, appeared at Liverpool youth court on Tuesday afternoon. He was sentenced a 12-month referral order and a three-month curfew, between 9 pm and 7 am, while his father was given a six-month parenting order and ordered to pay 200 pounds, on the boy’s behalf, in compensation to the mosque at the heart of the disorder.
The court heard that he lived near the scene of the violence and had been out riding his bike with a friend at about 8:30 pm when he became involved in the riots. He had thrown two stones in the direction of the police, the court heard. Serena Kennedy, the chief constable of Merseyside police, said the "level of aggression" directed at the police officers was "unprecedented".
Judge Wendy Lloyd said she accepted that the boy's actions had not caused injury to anyone, but she said he had joined an “angry group of people” and that he “must have known straight away” that doing so “was wrong”. A statement from the chairman of the mosque in Southport, which was targeted in the disorder, was also read out in court.
Imam Ibrahim Hussein said inside the mosque, he, three worshippers and some men who said they had been sent by the Home Office to act as security for the mosque, had all armed themselves with metal poles in case they were attacked, BBC reported. "I believed they would kill us," he said. When the smoke from fires that had been deliberately started during the violence came in through the mosque windows, he said he thought “if we do not get killed by the crowd, we’re going to die by smoke inhalation from the fire”.
Boy 'acted foolishly', had problems with alcohol
In defence of the body, advocate Heather Toohey said the defendant had no previous convictions and had shown remorse for his actions. She also said the boy had not attempted to conceal his identity, nor had he gone to the area specifically with the intention to cause trouble. "He knows he acted foolishly, he knows he acted out of stupidity," she added.
Judge Lloyd also observed that the boy led a sad young life, adding that he had problems with alcohol at the age of 12, which was "extremely concerning". "What you did that night was very wrong. It really was a horrible situation, and you made it all the more horrible by joining in and throwing stones," she said.
A referral order is a sentence available to the courts when dealing with young people below the age of 18 who have admitted an offence. It requires them to take part in a rehabilitation programme aimed at preventing them from offending in the future. The boy was a few months younger than another 12-year-old boy who was sentenced earlier this month in connection with rioting days later in Manchester.
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