How Not To Protest

Stealing someone else’s property and destroying it in protest is not going to win people over to your cause. This fool only reinforces the notion a lot of Britons still have that one side is just as bad as the other. The fact that he was given 70 days for burning the Koran and 30 days for stealing it is ridiculous but that argument is now lost as the man is a thief and has lost the higher ground.

Daily Mail… ‘What about burning poppies?’: The cry of the man sent down for burning Koran in front of shoppers.

A man who burned a Koran in front of city centre shoppers has been jailed for 70 days.

Andrew Ryan, 32, stole a copy of the holy book from Carlisle Library and then set it on fire with a lighter as a crowd gathered to hear his protests in front of a monument.

Police arrested Ryan, of Summerhill, Carlisle, shortly after the lunchtime incident in English Street on January 19.

Sentencing him at Carlisle Magistrates’ Court, District Judge Gerald Chalk said: ‘This is a case of theatrical bigotry. It was pre-planned by you as you stole the book deliberately. You went out to cause maximum publicity and to cause distress.’

He told Ryan that people were entitled to protest but not in the manner he chose. The court heard the defendant had six public order convictions between 2002 and 2010 including racial chanting at a football match and assault with intent to resist arrest.

Judge Chalk said: ‘You are a man who has a history of violence and disorderly conduct.’

Ryan pleaded guilty to religiously aggravated harassment and theft at an earlier hearing.

Prior to the hearing, a Facebook page created by the ‘English Defence League Carlisle Division’ urged visitors to support ‘Division Member’ Ryan in his court appearance.

Around 10 men sat in the public gallery but walked out when District Judge Chalk announced the sentence. Comments of ‘what a joke’ and ‘call that justice’ were made as they left the courtroom.

Before he was led to the cells, Ryan said: ‘What about burning poppies?’

The court was told that Ryan’s former probation officer witnessed him shouting and waving a book at Carlisle Cross outside the Old Town Hall in the city centre.

Ryan told him he intended to burn the Koran in a protest against the Muslim faith. He failed in his first attempt with matches before he succeeded with a lighter.

Ryan then continued to shout abuse about the Muslim faith as he held the burning book, before he threw it to the floor and walked away, the court heard. He then updated his Facebook page to reveal what he had done.

When arrested and interviewed by police, Ryan told officers: ‘I just hope I have not caused World War Three.’

Margaret Payne, defending, said: ‘Mr Ryan has said to me that the incident was silly and it is not something he would do again.

‘He wants to make it clear that it was directed towards radical Islam such as the burning of poppies and flags.

‘He would certainly not want Muslim people to think he had problems with their beliefs.

‘Mr Ryan was brought up to respect the Armed Forces. Some members of his family were in the Armed Forces and he himself served in the Army between the ages of 16 and 20 in Northern Ireland.

‘What caused him to ‘lose it’ on that day was that he had been looking at a website which had shown radical people burning poppies and abusing British troops returning from abroad.’

The defendant joined the library with the intention of borrowing the Koran but instead stole it.

His solicitor said the incident was relatively short and he acted alone.

Unemployed Ryan was also sentenced to 30 days in jail for the theft of the book, to run concurrently.

Following sentencing, Inspector Paul Marshall, of Carlisle CID, said: ‘Today’s result shows how seriously we take hate crime in the county.

‘This incident was highly unusual for Cumbria as we have such low levels of hate crime in the county.

‘However, when it does occur we investigate thoroughly so that offenders, and the local community, know that hate crime will simply not be tolerated.’

4 Replies to “How Not To Protest”

  1. The bloke has SIX such convictions in the last 9 years, and he’s surprised he’s been sent to jail for a miserly and pitiful 70 days of which he will only serve 30. If anything this is a soft sentance considering he’s been arrested for public order offences on SIX separate occasions!!!

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1378172/Andrew-Ryan-jailed-70-days-setting-Koran-What-burning-poppies.html#ixzz1JuGHAcvg
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    not a first offense… theft… destruction of public property…

    idiot..

    (though I secretly cheer for him)

    I hope he makes it out alive..

  2. Those islamics and eastern people who caused massive pollution with their extreme burning and who burned effigies and what not with their big islamic mob chanting hate speech is even much worst. Again the media chose to unfairly pick on a solitary guy rather than pick on dangerous islamic mob criminals who had caused much more harm and danger to our free society.

  3. He was given 70 days for burning a book? The forces of liberty are in retreat. “Hate crime”, is just a euphemism for “not being left wing”, not agreeing with the powers that want to destroy his country.

    30 days for not taking a book back to the library, that’s half the population in jail straight off.
    jeez what a pathetic country we’ve become.

  4. Better to single out one petty thief who had the right intentions than to attempt to arrest entire communities for disturbing the peace and preaching sedition.

    Way to go, Britainistan!