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Jailed race-hate pair win go-ahead for appeal
TWO men jailed for spearheading a race-hate campaign on the internet were yesterday granted permission to appeal against their convictions.
Simon Sheppard, from Selby, and York university graduate Stephen Whittle were sentenced on Friday after being found guilty of publishing racially inflammatory written material. Jurors had rejected the pair's claim that the articles were beyond the reach of English law because they were published on a website registered in the United States.
But the Court of Appeal in London ruled yesterday that Sheppard and Whittle should be given the chance to raise the point again at a hearing before appeal judges.
It is viewed as a landmark case as the pair are believed to be the first UK citizens to be convicted of publishing racist material online.
Sheppard's barrister Adrian Davies said a date for the hearing had yet to be arranged, but added that the case was unlikely to be heard before October.
Sheppard, 52, of Brook Street, Selby, and Whittle, 42, of Avenham Lane, Preston, jumped bail and fled to the US after being found guilty at Leeds Crown Court last year.
They claimed political asylum in California, but the case was thrown out by an immigration judge who rejected claims that they were victims of "a three-year campaign of harassment" by the Labour Party.
The pair were deported last month. Sheppard was sentenced to four years and 10 months in prison and Whittle was jailed for two years and four months.
Sheppard's website, to which Whittle contributed, featured grotesque images of murdered Jews alongside cartoons and posters ridiculing ethnic groups.
Material on the website included descriptions of Auschwitz as a holiday camp for Jews provided by the Nazis, while articles written by Whittle described black people as "sex-crazed bloodthirsty savages".
The convictions came at the end of a major police investigation which began in 2004 when copies of a pamphlet, Tales of the Holohoax, were pushed through the letterbox of a Blackpool synagogue and sent to a prominent Jewish academic in London.
After the pamphlet was traced back to a post office box in Hull registered to Sheppard, police raided his flat and discovered the racist website.
Police raided Whittle's home in 2006 and seized computer equipment containing more than 300 emails sent between the two men.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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