A man accused of using Twitter to send racially and religiously offensive messages will appear at crown court on October 29.
Ricky Davies, 20, of St Leger Crescent, Swansea, faces two charges of causing religiously aggravated harassment, another two of racially aggravated harassment and a charge of sending an indecent message.
South Wales Evening Post, 14 September 2012
As yet we don’t know what precise tweets Davies has been charged over. However, a quick scroll through the @RickyDavies17 Twitter account reveals a range of disgusting comments.
For example, Davies’ response to the killing of Osama bin Laden was: “1 #Muslim 1 billion to go ! #BINLADENISDEAD die Muslim scum ! No more mosques, Muslim scum off out streets”.
His reaction to news of the October 2011 earthquake in Turkey was: “fuck turkey, the only bad thing is only 65 have died so far, hopefully more muslims die soon #Prayforturkey #MuslimScum”. Followed by: “wheres your god allah now? #MuslimScum all dying in turkey hahaha, ohh yea thats right hes to busy fucking children and pigs #pray4turkey”.
The following month he tweeted: “i wish all #muslims would leave the #UK and fuck off back to the desert where they belong the dirty goat fucking child raping pedophile scum”.
And we find a number of examples of racist abuse of other Twitter users. For example: “fucks people commenting me for in some pakie lanuage? i dont understand you black cunts”. And: “excited to start another race war on here tonight now i all of #facebook are migrating over so they can join in! #Muslim Scum #paki DIE DIE”.
It comes as no surprise to find that Davies is also a great admirer of English Defence League leader Stephen Lennon. In February this year he tweeted: “tommy robinson you hero mate! when is the next #EDL demo because i have at least 50 eads from south wales ready fuck up #MuslimScum”.
What is unexpected, and welcome, is that Davies should be charged with a criminal offence over his tweets. After all, they are little different from the sort of comments posted on the internet by EDL supporters day after day, and usually the police take no action at all against them.