Mick Hartley

Good news – CPS loses bid to overturn Quran-burner’s acquittal:

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has lost a High Court bid to challenge the acquittal of a man who burned a Quran outside the Turkish consulate in London.

Hamit Coskun was initially convicted last June of a religiously aggravated public order offence after he held a flaming copy of the Islamic text aloft and shouted an expletive about Islam outside the Turkish embassy in February last year.

The 51-year-old successfully appealed against his conviction, having it overturned by Mr Justice Bennathan at Southwark Crown Court in October.

The CPS brought an appeal against that decision at the High Court and asked for it to be reconsidered.

And were told, in legal terms, to fuck right off.

Dismissing the appeal in a decision on Friday, Lord Justice Warby and Ms Justice Obi said: “We are not persuaded that the court left any material factor out of account or relied on any immaterial factor.”

Reacting to the dismissal of the appeal, the Free Speech Union described it as a “humiliating defeat” for the CPS and called on the Director of Public Prosecutions to resign…

Coskun, an atheist, also shouted “Islam is religion of terrorism” and “Quran is burning” during his protest in Rutland Gardens, Knightsbridge

We don’t have a blasphemy law here, and we don’t want one, whatever the CPS may think.

From the National Secular Society, who co-funded Coskun’s defence:

“The High Court has rightly rejected this wrongheaded attempt to introduce a blasphemy law by the back door.

“However offensive some may have found the Quran-burning protest, it was lawful. Criminal law protects people from harm, not from being offended. This judgment makes clear that it is not the state’s job to police religious sensibilities. A hostile – even violent – reaction to speech cannot be allowed to determine whether that speech is criminal.

“There must now be a serious review of how and why the CPS originally came to charge a man with causing harassment, alarm and distress to the religion of Islam and why it chose to pursue this case to the High Court. Public confidence demands answers.”