Introduction
If the name, or face, of John Nimmo looks familiar, that’s probably because he was in the news back in 2014 when he was sent to prison for sending offensive tweets to Stella Creasy MP and Caroline Criado-Perez.
Well, on 27th July 2016 he was back in the news, and back in Court, for sending anti-semitic and offensive emails to Lucian Berger MP.
He was up in the magistrates court for sentence, but it was decided that it was too serious, and so was sent to the Crown Court for sentence.
Facts
Mr Nimmo sent two emails of Ms Berger. In the first one he said “Justice for Joshua Bonehill-Paine will be sweet, he has friends everywhere. Watch your back Jewish scum, regards your friend the Nazi“. Ms Berger is jewish. Joshua Bonehill-Paine is another individual charged with tweeting racial hatred against Ms Berger.
In the second, a few days later which was sent a couple of weeks after Jo Cox MP was killed, he said “You will get it like Jo Cox did, you better watch your back Jewish scum”.
In a victim impact statement Ms Berger said that this caused her great fear and anxiety (understandably).
Sentence
The offences charged were (we think) under s1 Malicious Communications Act 1988.
This creates an offence if any electronic communication is sent (also a letter, but who writes a letter nowadays?) which conveys :
(i) a message which is indecent or grossly offensive;
(ii) a threat
If “if his purpose, or one of his purposes, in sending it is that it should … cause distress or anxiety to the recipient …“.
This used to be a summary only offence, but is now either way, with a maximum sentence of 2 years.
Mr Nimmo was remanded in custody until the sentence next month. We will come back to it then. Given his lack of response to the previous sentence, he can expect a fairly long prison sentence. We would think that even given his guilty plea it may well be in the region of 12 months.