A woman standing trial in a British courtroom for inciting racial hatred claimed on social media that victims of a massive London fire were "burnt alive in a Jewish sacrifice,” BBC News reported.
Tahra Ahmed, 51, was accused of stirring up hatred on social media when shortly after the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire, in which 72 tenants of the low-rent housing complex died, she made two inflammatory anti-Jewish social media posts.
“Ms. Ahmed published two posts that were virulently antisemitic and crossed the line as to what is acceptable in a liberal society,” prosecutor Hugh French said to the jury.
Four days after the fire, on June 18, 2017, Ahmred allegedly posted a Faceboko video of the blaze, describing it as a “Jewish sacrifice,” the court was told.
The post said: "I've been at the scene, at the protest and at the community meetings and have met many of the victims...some who were still in the same clothes they escaped in. They are very real and genuine, their pain and suffering is raw and deep and their disgusting neglect by authorities continues. Watch the footage of people trapped in the inferno with flames behind them. They were burnt alive in a Jewish sacrifice."
Ahmed also allegedly made a January 2017 post that referenced an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
French told the jury that people had a right to make “outspoken” or “offensive” views known on social media but there was a line that could not be crossed.
The rights of others, especially minorities, to live without fear of abuse had to be taken into consideration.
In November 2020, the ethics panel of Britain’s pharmaceutical regulatory agency ruled that a member’s claim that “Zionists” were guilty of “murder” in the Grenfell Tower fire was “offensive but not anti-Semitic,” and the pharmacist was cleared.