A viscount has been jailed for 12 weeks after offering money on Facebook for someone to kill Brexit campaigner Gina Miller.
Rhodri Philipps, the 4th Viscount St Davids, had posted online: “£5,000 for the first person to ‘accidentally’ run over this bloody troublesome first generation immigrant.”
The 50-year-old wrote the comment just four days after Ms Miller won a landmark High Court challenge against the Government last year.
Rhodri Philipps was sentenced at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London (David Mirzoeff/PA)
Philipps, of Knightsbridge, central London, described her as a “boat jumper”, and added: “If this is what we should expect from immigrants, send them back to their stinking jungles.”
He was convicted at London’s Westminster Magistrates’ Court of two counts of sending menacing messages on a public electronic communications network.
The other post Philipps was convicted for was in response to a news article about an immigrant and his children.
A five-year restraining order was also placed against Philipps in order to “protect” Ms Miller, along with Arnold Sube, the immigrant he abused online, and Matthew Steeples, who informed Ms Miller about the racist material.
The viscount offered money for someone to kill Gina Miller (Dominic Lipinski/PA)
Senior district judge Emma Arbuthnot ordered the recently bankrupt Philipps to pay £500 compensation, noting that he is of limited means.
She gave him six months to pay up and warned she would send the bailiffs to his home if he did not comply. A £115 surcharge was imposed and Philipps was ordered to pay costs of £250.
The judge told Philipps that he had “tried and failed to justify the racist abuse” by saying that Ms Miller plus Mr Sube and his family deserved the language because they were immigrants.
The judge told him: “You told me proudly in evidence that your family motto is ‘Love of Country’ and that is your motivation, but it seems to me on the evidence I have seen that you are not motivated by love of country, but by your hatred of anybody who has different views to yours and to any who have recently arrived in this country.
“You show this hatred by publicly directing abusive threats at others, which is a criminal offence in this multi-racial society we are lucky enough to live in.”
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