Antisemitic pensioner fined for harassing his local MP

Worcester Crown Court. Credit: © Bill Nicholls (cc-by-sa/2.0)

A pensioner has been fined after sending antisemitic letters to his local MP.

James Evans, 70, sent Worcester MP Robin Walker around 100 letters between August and November last year.

Evans referred to the ‘death cult’ of ‘Zionist Jews’ who will get ‘lots killed’ in a speculative World War.

His guilty plea to the racially aggravated harassment charge was welcomed by the judge when he appeared at Worcester Crown Court for the verdict on Friday.

This latest conviction is his third such offence.

One offence led to a restraining order preventing him from contact local BBC staff. He breached this order when sending 17 letters to BBC Hertford and Worcester employees in 2 weeks last May.

His letters claimed that ‘Jewish people control the world,’ and that Jewish people were ‘Yids’ and ‘Zionists’. Nor did he consider Jewish people a ‘race’.

The letters made numerous references to the billionaire financier, and Holocaust survivor, George Soros, who has faced an antisemitic campaign against him in Hungary, and in other parts of Eastern Europe.

He had previously sent 70 letters to the BBC office.

Jason Corden-Bowen, District Crown Prosecutor with West Midlands Crown Prosecution Service, said: “Mr Evans motive in this case has never been clear, but people from all communities have a right to be protected from the prejudice at the root of hate crime, and the Crown Prosecution Service is determined to play its part in this.

“It is vital that society recognises and deals with this hostility, from abusive gestures and name-calling and to offensive graffiti and physical attacks.  Often victims are not aware that what they are experiencing is a hate crime.

“Where we have evidence that a crime took place because of hostility to someone’s race, religion, physical ability or sexual orientation we will argue that this is an aggravating factor and the sentence should reflect that.”

The judge imposed a fresh restraining order on Mr Evans and issued a fine.

For the harassment of his local MP, the judge issued him with a £250 fine that he must pay in 28 days.

He did not, however, impose a restraining order, believing that he should only contact his MP again on constituency matters.