A Christian preacher has won £10,000 in damages and costs from the Metropolitan Police after being arrested, strip searched and unlawfully imprisoned for wearing a Charlie Hebdo t-shirt and having her property stolen at Speakers’ Corner in London.
Ms Tash said after her payout that she had been “dealing with two-tiered policing for years” and that a “Muslim mob” who gather at Hyde Park seemed to be “above the law”.
Supported by the Christian Legal Centre, Free Speech Union (FSU) member Hatun Tash launched legal action after she was arrested in June 2022 in front of a baying crowd of Islamic extremists at the most famous place in the world for free speech.
Ms Tash, who has nearly 700,000 subscribers on YouTube, is a well-known Christian evangelist who regularly critiques and debates the Qur’an and Islam at Speakers’ Corner
The court heard that as part of her critique of the Qur’an she often brandishes a copy that has holes in it, as a visual representation of the idea that the “standard [Islamic] narrative has holes in it”.
In this incident, she was setting up a camera at a crowded Speakers’ Corner preparing to preach, when a man snuck up on her belongings, grabbed her copy of the Qur’an and ran off through the crowd.
Friends accompanying Ms Tash called the police to report the theft. However, when the police arrived, instead of establishing what had happened, and without any discussion, they tried to draw her away from the growing crowd.
Video footage of the incident, which has never been reported in the mainstream media, shows Ms Tash refusing to move from where she planned to preach, before police officers then put her in an arm lock and frog-march to the waiting police vans. Crowds of Muslim males can be seen pursuing the female apostate as she is led away by police officers of the British state, laughing, filming, and mocking her while they chant “Allahu Akbar”.
According to Ms Tash, the police told her she had been arrested under sections 4a and 18 of the Public Order Act 1986. Her ‘crime’? wearing a Charlie Hebdo T-shirt which depicted the Prophet Mohammed.
Having arrived at Charing Cross Police station, Ms Tash was then needlessly strip-searched, which her lawyers later said breached her Article 3 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) rights. Officers also deliberately removed her glasses so that she could not see. Having deprived the woman whose belongings had been stolen of sleep, officers then interrogated her at 4am.
After 15 hours in custody she was released and told there would be no further action. She was not given any assistance to retrieve her belongings from Speakers’ Corner.
Taking legal action, Miss Tash’s lawyers argued that her rights had been breached under Articles 9 and 10 ECHR.
Under law the police can only interfere with an individual’s free speech rights for “convincing and compelling reasons” and in a proportionate way.
Lawyers said that: “Even if arrest and detention is deemed lawful initially it may subsequently become unlawful” and that “the burden is on the police to show that the detention was lawful ‘minute by minute’.”
They cited legal precedent which presented that there is considerable protection afforded to individuals, such as Ms Tash, who seek to persuade others to change their religion. Judge Martens, for example, said:
“These absolute freedoms explicitly include freedom to change one’s religion and beliefs. Whether or not somebody intends to change religion is no concern of the State’s and, consequently, neither in principle should it be the State’s concern if somebody attempts to induce another to change his religion.
“In principle, however, it is not within the province of the State to interfere in this ‘conflict’ between proselytiser and proselytized. First, because-since respect for human dignity and human freedom implies that the State is bound to accept that in principle everybody is capable of determining his fate in the way that he deems best-there is no justification for the State to use its power ‘to protect’ the proselytised.”
Lawyers concluded that the police: “Did not reasonably believe that [Ms Tash] was involved in the commission of a criminal offence, concerning the first incident it was clear that she had done nothing illegal and concerning the second incident, the officers believed that the easiest solution to the problem was ‘get rid of our client’.”
With no justification for their actions forthcoming, the police agreed to settle the case and compensate Ms Tash.
Responding to the settlement, Ms Tash, who has given the settlement money to an organisation supporting individuals who decide to leave the Islamic faith and face persecution for doing so, said:
“I have been dealing with two-tiered policing for years. Muslim mobs at Speakers’ Corner are above the law and have been allowed by the police to do what they like to silence debate, increasingly by any means.
“I have been treated appallingly by the police and have been repeatedly humiliated when I had not done anything wrong.
“The police have repeatedly taken away my rights and told me that they cannot protect me because they do not want to offend a certain group of people.
“More must be done to properly deal with Islamic violence and intimidation at Speakers’ Corner. We don’t live in Pakistan; we don’t live in Saudi Arabia. I am Christian and by default I believe that Muhammad is a false prophet. I should be allowed to say that in the UK without being stabbed or repeatedly arrested.”
The police payout is the latest in a line of incidents involving the police arresting Miss Tash instead of taking action against Islamic extremists who have repeatedly assaulted her and even tried to take her life.
In 2022, the Met had to pay out £10,000 in compensation to the Christian preacher after falsely arresting her in May 2021. Minutes earlier, pro-Palestinian protestors who incited Ms Tash’s arrest were recorded calling for “Jewish blood”.
The FSU wrote to the Met to complain about this arrest and demanded an apology, which she eventually received – thanks to top-drawer legal representation from the Christian Legal Centre she also received £10,000 in damages.
Over the past few years, Hatun, an ex-Muslim convert to Christianity, has regularly been targeted at Speakers’ Corner, having been repeatedly punched, stabbed, slashed, spat at and knocked unconscious by Islamists, apparently for the ‘crime’ of refusing to be cowed and continuing to profess her faith.
In July 2021, she was repeatedly stabbed by a man in an Islamic robe in front of the police. Disturbingly, the attacker has never been caught and is believed to have escaped abroad.
Earlier this year, an Islamic terrorist, Edward Little, was jailed for a minimum of 24 years after police foiled his plot to murder Hatun with a gun.
In a recent interview with the Spectator’s Tom Goodenough, Hatun said that although she plans to return to Speakers’ Corner in the future, she will stay away for the time being, mostly out of concern for the safety of others. “If someone turns up with chemicals, they might harm someone else,” she explained, quietly exposing the de facto blasphemy code now in operation across large swathes of the country as she did so.
“Why continue to speak out and place yourself at risk?” Tom asks at one point. “I’m not brave,” she responds. “But you’ve got to make a choice. Do you want to deal with it or just keep quiet, and shut down? Once they know they have (silenced you), they can stop you.”
An extraordinarily brave woman. Everyone at the FSU stands in solidarity with Hatun.
