Internet hoaxer and troll sentenced to two years in prison

A prolific Internet troll slash hoaxer from the UK has been jailed for two years for his online activities.

We’ve spoken about the blog The Daily Bale (Brits Against Left-Wing Extremism) – operated by Joshua Bonehill-Paine from Yeovil – a number of times on this website.

In 2013 Bonehill’s blog – which is far-right and racist in nature – falsely claimed that the Globe pub in Leicester had refused to serve people wearing military uniforms for fear of offending minorities. Those rumours led to the pub temporarily closing amidst threats to its staff members.

Later that year, Bonehill created a fake “missing child poster” and falsely asserted that a child named Amy Hamilton had been abducted by an “Asian grooming gang”.

In 2014, his blog also falsely claimed that Tesco produce was found to contain traces of the Ebola virus, and another claim that a church in Wiltshire was to be destroyed to make way for a mosque and those buried in the church’s graveyard would be dug up. The majority of hoaxes started by Bonehill targeted either Muslims or Jews and aimed to stir racial tensions.

The above represent only a few examples of many more Internet hoaxes propagated by Bonehill over the last number of years. In fact, Bonehill had already been awaiting trial for making various online tweets that certain individuals were paedophiles.

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However it was his harassment of Liverpool-Wavertree MP Luciana Berger that earned him his two year custodial sentence. Over a series of online communications, anti-Semitic Bonehill branded Berger an “evil money grabber”, a “dominatrix” as well as several claims that Jewish MPs were “a problem”. Bonehill has even tried to start an online campaign against Berger, which he called the “Filthy Jew B***h Campaign”.

Giving evidence, Berger said the posts had made her feel sick and “under attack”. She told jurors she feared for her safety because “what happens online does not always stay online”.

While the defence asserted that the content Bonehill was posting was satire and fell under freedom of speech, the prosecution asserted that Bonehill had refused to stand in the witness box because he would have been unable to provide any “sensible” explanation for his online actions.

Jurors took little over an hour to convict Bonehill who now faces a two year custodial sentence for “racially aggravated harassment” to be served consecutively with other charges resulting from his Internet activities.

After release, authorities will be able to monitor his online activities for another five years.