[Twosugars]

Study shows disparity in sentencing for similar online offences

Islamist offenders convicted of online extremist crimes received prison sentences three times longer than those of their far-right counterparts, according to new analysis.

Researchers found that Islamists received on average 73.4 months compared with 24.5 months for far-right offenders, despite the government’s ambition to treat both strains of extremism in the same way.

The study by the Henry Jackson Society (HJS), a foreign policy thinktank, said a primary reason for the disparity was a failure by the Home Office to proscribe far-right groups, making them harder to prosecute than their Islamist equivalents.

Although National Action became the first and only far-right group to be banned as a terrorist organisation in 2016, other organisations such as the neo-Nazi System Resistance Network, which advocates zero tolerance of non-white people, and of Jews and Muslims, has yet to be outlawed.

By contrast, it is illegal for a British citizen to be a member of at least eight Islamist organisatations, including Sunni militia group Ansar al-Sharia and the Islamic State.

“The lack of far-right groups subject to proscription in the UK, when compared to Islamist groups, has left the authorities reliant on hate-crime legislation rather than specific terrorist offences which carry heftier sentences,” said the report’s author Nikita Malik. She added: “The government needs to keep this situation under review in a fast-moving online world, where offending causes real and significant harm.”
More at https://www.theguardian.com/law/2020...ine-extremists