The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has decided to charge only one person from a group of Labour party activists accused of engaging in antisemitic hate speech, abuse and violence, it was reported on Wednesday.
The actions of the Labour members in question were brought to the attention of authorities by the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), which more than a year ago revealed a secret 86-page Labour document detailing 45 serious cases of antisemitism — including 17 described as “race-hate incidents,” which require informing the police.
The dossier was passed by CAA to former Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) commander Mak Chishty, who found at least four cases he felt should be investigated as possibly criminal.
These cases included one in which a Labour activist called a Jewish Labour MP a “Zionist extremist” who “hates civilized people” and was “about to get a good kicking” for spreading “Zionists propaganda.”
In another, an activist posted Holocaust-denial materials and antisemitic cartoons on social media sites.
A third involved a Labourite saying, “We shall rid the Jews who are a cancer on us all” and “these Jewish […] are the devils.”
The last case concerned a party member who physically and verbally attacked a seven-year-old child, calling him a “Jew-boy.”
The CAA reported the dossier to Dame Cressida Dick, the commissioner of the MPS, live on a call-in show broadcast on the LBC radio network.
Both Dick and the Crown Prosecution Service said they had received the information and were committed to investigating further.
On Wednesday, it was confirmed that of ten cases under current CPS consideration, five would remain so, four would be dropped and one would be prosecuted.
CAA’s Chief Executive Gideon Falter said in a statement on Wednesday that the matter had “received national media attention as part of one of the most explosive political issues of our time — anti-Jewish racism at the forefront of British politics. ”
“This is not complex,” he pointed out. “Labour activists posted extreme Jew-hatred on social media. The evidence is there in black and white.”
“The evidence has been reviewed by the commander formerly in charge of hate crimes at the Met and a former director of public prosecutions,” Falter noted. “Yet the CPS dragged its feet for over a year, only now to conclude that it has charged just one solitary offender.”
“This sad tale exemplifies why two thirds of British Jews have lost faith in the CPS, which simply cannot be relied upon to bring anti-Jewish racists to justice,” he added. “This unacceptable outcome shows that the CPS is not fit for purpose when it comes to prosecuting antisemitism.”
Falter said that the CAA was now considering whether to bring a private prosecution against the activists involved and judicial review proceedings against the CPS, as it has done in the past.
“We had hoped that these measures would not be necessary every time antisemitic hate crimes come before the CPS,” he emphasized, “but yet again we find ourselves having to consider our options with our lawyers in order to deliver justice for the Jewish community, because the CPS has failed us.”
The Algemeiner (c) 2019 . Benjamin Kerstein
{Matzav.com}
