UK: Free Speech Advocates Outraged After Man Jailed for 2 Years for ‘Far-Right’ Stickers
Melia’s wife said that the judge gave Melia a harsh sentence to deter people with the same beliefs from spreading the message.
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Sam Melia’s wife’s statement after he was convicted:
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3,300 People in Britain were arrested for comments that they made on social media.
Watch full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r7GRx8Sl-s
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Free speech concerns have been raised after a Leeds man was sentenced two years in prison after being found guilty of inciting racial hatred with a library of stickers.
Sam Melia, 34, was in charge of an online collection of downloadable stickers that contained anti-immigration messages for activists of the “Hundred Handers” group.
At Leeds Crown Court last month, Melia was also found guilty of encouraging racially aggravated criminal damage because his collection was involved in multiple “stickering” incidents.
During the trial, jurors were told that members of the group would access the downloadable stickers that they could download and stick around their communities.
The prosecution argued that the stickers were intended to stir up racial hatred.
The far-right organiser claimed that they were intended to “start a conversation” and that he was unaware that the stickering would count as criminal damage.
Melia was charged in December 2022 after evidence showed he established and maintained the database of around 200 stickers.
Counter Terrorism Policing North East said that many of the stickers were racist and antisemitic in nature.
They reportedly contained slogans such as “We will be a minority in our homeland by 2066”, “Mass immigration is white genocide”, “intolerance is a virtue” and “they seek conquest not asylum.”
The force added that Melia administered an encrypted social media channel that had over 3,500 subscribers, where supporters were encouraged to place the stickers throughout their local areas.
Fraser Myers, deputy editor of spiked online, told GB News: “You do not have to agree with a single thing Sam Melia believes to find his two-year sentence utterly chilling. Many violent criminals have been punished with far less ferocity than Melia has been for the ‘crime’ of producing some stickers.