A girl who posted offensive comments in response to a man's Facebook rant about dead soldiers, has been sentenced by a court and told she can't hide behind the "virtual world" of the internet.

Amy Wilby, 20, admitting posting grossly offensive messages on the social networking site, when she appeared at Kirklees Magistrates' Court in Huddersfield. Her comments were made in response to Azhar Ahmed's rant that "all soldiers should die and go to hell", made two days after the deaths of six British soldiers in Afghanistan.

Wilby's comments are too extreme to print in full in a family newspaper. But they saw her slapped with a community order after District Judge Marie Mallon told her that she could not hide behind a "virtual world" when airing her views.

Wilby, of Gladstone Court in Dewsbury, was a teenager when she made the comments on her personal profile page on March 9. Vanessa Schofield, prosecuting, said that following Ahmed's comments numerous other people posted angry responses on Facebook. Many were cautioned but police decided to charge Wilby.

Judge Mallon was told that she posted five comments on her profile page under Amy Jane Wilby. In one she made a vile sexual statement regarding Ahmed and his religion. One statement that can be printed read: "I wasn't racist until I read this." Judge Mallon was told that following these messages police tracked Wilby down and looked at her phone.

She sentenced her to a 12 month community order, including 15 days of activity and 100 hours of unpaid work. Judge Mallon told Wilby that she would also have to pay £85 court costs.

Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 12 October 2012

Evidently Wilby is the individual who was bailed back in June on suspicion of inciting racial hatred.

Without seeing the offending messages it is difficult to say for certain, but based on the description in the Examiner report, which indicates that Wilby's posts were far more extreme than the comments made by Azhar Ahmed, and given that she herself stated that she was a racist, it is difficult to see why she wasn't charged with that much more serious offence.

So, as things stand, the outcome of all the online hatred and death threats provoked by Azhar Ahmed's arrest would appear to be that four people have been cautioned and just one has been prosecuted. When a well-known EDL supporter like Lacette Brooks, for example, posted the comment "Fuckin die cunt!" on the EDL's Facebook page, why wasn't she charged with any offence?

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Azhar Ahmed, the young Muslim from Yorkshire who was convicted of posting offensive Facebook comments about British troops in Afghanistan, was sentenced at Huddersfield Magistrates' Court today to a £300 fine and 240 hours of community service.

Here is the entirely predictable response of the English Defence League to Ahmed's sentence, featuring their usual hypocritical whine about a "two-tier system":

Of course, there is indeed a two-tier system in operation. Only last week an EDL supporter named Kenneth Holden was in court for sentencing after being convicted of posting death threats against Muslims on Facebook. He wasn't even fined, but received only a 12‑month community order placing him under the supervision of the probation service "so his attitudes towards Muslims could be looked at".

You can imagine how differently a Muslim would have been treated if they had posted similar threats on Facebook.

In fact, what was unusual in Holden's case was that he was even prosecuted in the first place, as EDL members post threats against Muslims on Facebook on a regular basis without being charged with any offence. When Azhar Ahmed appeared in court back in March, the EDL's official Facebook page was filled with sickening threats of violence against him. News of his sentencing today provoked comments like these.

Azhar Ahmed's Facebook post, though undoubtedly offensive, contained no actual threats of violence at all, yet he was charged under the Communications Act 2003 which makes it an offence to send "by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character".

The police response to the threats of violence against Azhar Ahmed was very different. Instead of being prosecuted, the individuals concerned were let off with cautions (a fifth individual arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred was bailed, but it is unclear if any further action was taken). Here is the real "two-tier system" in operation.

[This post has been amended to take account of the cautions given back in June which I have to admit I had overlooked, though it doesn't undermine the point about the double standards applied to Azhar Ahmed and the individuals who threatened him. Thanks to Yakoub Islam for the info.]

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