BBC NEWS | UK | Scotland | Beheading video man sent to jail
A man who used his mobile phone to replay footage of a beheading in Iraq to a hotel shop worker has been jailed for 60 days. Subhaan Younis, 23, played the images to shocked Charlotte McClay last September at a hotel in Glasgow.
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Euan Edment said jail was a fitting penalty for the breach of the peace.
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"Miss McClay was shocked, upset and distressed by the images. This is a serious offence and something she will remember for a long time, perhaps for the rest of her life."
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The court had heard how Younis, of Baliol Street, Glasgow, had been speaking to Miss McClay in the shop at the Moathouse Hotel in the city's Congress Road on 27 September 2004.
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Defence lawyer Dominic Sillar said: "This was a colossal mistake on Mr Younis's part.
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"He fully accepts he was responsible for causing her upset. That was not his intention and he apologises for it."
Maybe I'm missing something here, but what exactly was the crime here? Someone showed someone else a video on a phone (the images themselves apparently not illegal), and for that he ends up in prison? Who would even report that to the police in the first place?
Now if he'd tied her up, pinned her eyes open Clockwork Orange style, and forced her to watch the film, then fair enough. A small pic on a mobile that she could perfectly easily look away from is another matter entirely. Mr Younis may not have acted in the best of taste, but I wasn't aware of that becoming a crime.
What a complete and utter waste of judicial time, effort and money, and what a needless criminalisation of a young man's actions.
1 comment:
Agreed. It does not sound like Charlotte was compelled or tricked into watching. The only conceivable basis for presecution would be some existing law or precedent forbidding possession or display of the violent images (for the protection of children, for example).
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