Man Jailed for 20 Weeks Over Threats to Kemi Badenoch
A former teacher has gone to prison for emailing Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch with threats to shoot her. The sentence came at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Monday.
Twenty weeks and a restraining order
Kieran Kyle, 43, from Gillingham in Kent, admitted two counts of sending communications of an indecent or offensive nature. He entered the guilty plea on 22 September. Sentence followed at the same court on Monday: 20 weeks in prison.
The judge added a restraining order. For five years he may not contact Badenoch, her husband or her parliamentary office.
A defence that did not convince the judge
Defending, Baiju Thittala told the court that Kyle did not know who Badenoch was when he wrote. According to the defence, he only realised once the emails had gone. Asked how a former secondary school teacher could miss it, Thittala said Kyle had simply searched online and found she was the opposition leader.
The judge did not accept that. The first emails had gone to Mr Badenoch, so Kyle had looked up her husband's details first. The judge concluded that he clearly knew who she was.
What the messages said
Kyle sent three emails on 2 May, and the court heard he claimed in them to have been in the IRA. Two contained racist references, among them: "I'm ex-IRA, so Bloody Sunday references from you are going to give you trouble."
A separate email reached Hamish Badenoch on 29 April. It used a racist term, said she had a big mouth and told him to rein her in. Ben Holt, prosecuting, said Badenoch, MP for North West Essex, and her husband were upset and distressed, most of all by the racist wording and the threats of violence.
Cheryl Bacon, who heads Badenoch's parliamentary office, found the emails disgusting and distressing to read.
The Bloody Sunday video
The 2 May emails were sent on the day Badenoch apologised for using Bloody Sunday footage by mistake. The footage appeared in a social media clip posted on 28 April, which attacked the Labour government's Northern Ireland Troubles Bill. In the clip she said the legislation would pull Troubles veterans back into court.
Badenoch said she had not approved the video and that it had been put out by very young people.
Bloody Sunday is 30 January 1972. Paratroopers from the Army's Parachute Regiment shot dead thirteen unarmed civilians at a civil rights demonstration in the Bogside area of Londonderry.
The family's statement to the court
Badenoch and her husband submitted a victim impact statement that was read out in court. They said the harassment hurt them personally, but their main worry lay elsewhere. In their view it also undermined "a healthy democracy".
Their statement argued that public life depends on people prepared to stand for their communities, often at real personal cost. Those who do so, they said, meet growing hostility and attempts to silence them.
Source: BBC News