A drunk who drew swastikas and KKK symbols on children’s bunting and hung it outside a proposed mosque in Ellesmere Port, claimed he was influenced by school and TV shows.
Martin Peter Sallis strung up a plastic England flag and garden bunting scrawled with racist slogans and symbols, with messages threatening to “burn down the mosque” with Muslims in it.
The 42-year-old alcoholic said he learned the hateful slogans while he was “at school” and from recent TV shows, before drawing them in red on the bunting which he had spotted hanging in his mum’s garden.
Unemployed Sallis said he carried out the crime because he wanted to “fit in” with the local community who he claimed were against proposals for an Islamic cultural centre in King Street, Ellesmere Port.
Sallis, of Sutton Way, Great Sutton, initially claimed he strung the bunting outside the religious building as a “joke” when he was drunk, but later told police he had wanted to “cause fear, alarm and distress to the Muslim community” following the hate crime between June 27-30 this year.
Chester magistrates today (August 8) imposed a restraining order forcing him to stay away from the proposed religious centre for 12 months. He was also sentenced to a 12 month supervision order, with a drug rehabilitation requirement, a three month curfew, and ordered to pay £145 – £85 of which was court costs.
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