Cornwall man pleaded guilty to eight racial hatred counts for broadcasting “extreme hatred towards Jews” from garage studio.
A UK radio host from Cornwall who pleaded guilty to spreading anti-Semitic messages on his online show was given a 32-month prison sentence, reported BBC News.
In June Graham Hart, 69, pleaded guilty to eight racial hatred counts for incidents that occurred between 2016 and 2020.
Hart was also banned from broadcasting for 10 years.
Harts’s hateful rants were heard by the court, including examples of him calling Jews “filth” and “like rats” and saying that they should be “wiped out,” reported the Jewish Chronicle.
He allegedly said, “If you’re listening, Mister Jew, we’re coming to get you. Let’s get rid of the Jews, it’s time for them to go. After Christmas I’m going to work, going on the attack because I’ve had enough. I don’t want bloodshed but if that’s what it takes to get it done.”
Hart also stood accused of saying, “Why did Hitler want to gas them? Why did Hitler hate the Jews? Why have they been kicked out of 79 countries 199 times? Because they’re filth, that’s why.”
The judge said that Harted hosted or guest hosted radio broadcasts to “abuse, vilify, insult and threaten Jewish people” and that he converted his garage into a radio station to “peddle hatred.”
Prosecutor Dan Pawson-Pounds described Hart as taking about “taking up arms” to take back the country.
Hart’s lawyer, Mary McCarthy, had argued that her client was taken in by what he read on the internet and that the underlying reason for his hateful rants was “depression and obsession,” according to a BBC report.
“Graham Hart used his position to influence people as a radio host to stir up racial hatred and incite violence against the Jewish race,” said Nick Price, head of the Head of the Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Division of the Cornwall Police Service. “The CPS are committed to prosecuting hate crime and will continue to work as an independent body to ensure justice is served.”
A compilation of Hart’s anti-Semitic rants were submitted by Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) to police.
“The offences he committed constitute some of the most extreme hatred towards Jews that we have ever encountered. It is vital that the Jewish community is protected from this man, and we hope that the sentence will also send a message to like-minded people that hate towards British Jews will not be tolerated,” Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Stephen Silverman said.
(Arutz 7).