Two South Asian men who participated in a racist gang attack that left the victim needing surgery have been allowed to skip prison by a British judge.
23-year-old Urfan Amjad and 20-year-old Fahim Shukat were convicted of participating in a “violent and sustained attack” against a white victim in Manchester.
At one point, the gang struck the victim so hard in the head with a glass bottle that it shattered, then used its jagged shard to stab him, cutting open his head and leaving him with a “serious” wound in the calf muscle of his leg that required surgery, according to a Manchester Evening News court report.
Sentencing, Mr Recorder Usher said the pair “were part of that group that inflicted terrifying injuries. He thought he was going to die,” adding that their victim “was minding his own business and someone in your group decided that he wasn’t welcome where you were and made a racist remark to him. You two joined in, and neither of you had to. What then followed was a serious and sustained assault that both of you took part in.”
The “racist remark” in question was “You white bastard, we don’t want to see you around here again!”
Despite this, and despite claiming the be “considerably concerned” that Shukat went on to be convicted of possessing cannabis and cocaine and carrying a bladed article well after the attack, the judge handed down a weak sentence of just 14 months, which would not have to be served in full — and then suspended it, so it would not have to be served at all without convictions for further crimes.
Amjad received 24 months, also suspended, with Mr Recorder Usher letting him off because he supposedly “lacked maturity” at the time of the attack and has a “realistic prospect of rehabilitation” — as if this could not take place in a custodial setting.
The thugs may have attracted less derisory sentences had the authorities not settled for convictions for violent disorder rather than pursuing them for serious, racially aggravated assaults — but such softness is not unprecedented in cases where the victims are white.
In 2019, for example a 20-strong gang of South Asian heritage launched a shocking attack on three tree surgeons they excoriated as “white bastards” who were in their “country” — namely Rochdale, England — which saw the principal victim, a teenager, have his ribcage caved in and his hand cut off with an axe, was not treated as racist, which would likely have seen attracted heavier sentences under English “hate crime” law.
Most infamously, not a single so-called grooming gang rape case has been treated as racially aggravated, with judges and prosecutors appearing to be in denial about the racial element of the abuse despite several victims clearly indicating their abusers held racist views and the abusers themselves openly expressing racist views with respect to white women.
Meanwhile, British judges have also taken the extraordinary position that predators who prey on South Asian girls should be punished more severely than predators who prey on white girls, because of the “shame” the victims and their families experience in their communities.
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