Baladi News - Journals
The Syrian refugee who was allegedly ‘waterboarded’ by a school bully is taking legal action against Facebook over claims he attacked English girls.
Lawyers acting for 16-year-old Jamal are preparing to sue the internet giant for allowing English Defence League founder Tommy Robinson to peddle false accusations about him on its site.
In a highly unusual case, Facebook stands accused of allowing Robinson to make a series of poisonous rants about Jamal because the far-Right activist’s popularity makes the company money. The boy’s legal team says the social media company was ‘fully aware of the reckless and pernicious nature’ of Robinson’s videos and has ‘profited from defamation’.
They have also launched legal proceedings against Robinson for falsely claiming that Jamal attacked three girls and a boy.
Two months ago, shocking footage emerged of Jamal being headbutted and dragged to the ground by the neck before his attacker threatens ‘to drown him’ by pouring a bottle of water over his face as fellow pupils at Almondbury Community School, just outside Huddersfield, cheer.
Theresa May said she was horrified by the callous attack on the refugee who had sought sanctuary from the horrors of war-torn Syria. But Robinson, who was made a political adviser to Ukip days earlier, poured scorn on the sympathy shown to Jamal.
ust hours after the video of the attack spread across the internet, Robinson claimed Jamal, then 15, was ‘not innocent’ and had previously terrorised other classmates.
In one Facebook video, Robinson, 36, said: ‘A young girl was beaten badly by Muslim girls. While those Muslim girls were beating her up, Jamal was involved in kicking and biting her. She was bitten, she was black and blue.’
He added: ‘He’s not innocent and he violently attacks young English girls at school. He beat the s*** out of an English kid.’
Robinson even told his 1 million followers on Facebook that the case went to court, but a spokesman for West Yorkshire Police said they were not aware of any such reports, and Robinson later admitted he had been duped.
But by then the videos had been watched more than a million times. Some of the footage can still be found online.
In an exclusive interview with the Mail, Jamal said: ‘I felt scared that people would think wrong about me because I hit girls when I didn’t. I was scared because I feared people would attack me more because they would be believing in what Tommy Robinson said about me.
‘I cannot go to my school any more and there are people who hang around outside my house and video me on their phones. They call me “little rat” if I go outside. One of my neighbours threatened me outside my house just yesterday.’
After Jamal was attacked, more than 10,000 people donated about £150,000 to help relocate the boy and his family to a house outside Huddersfield. The family will receive the money when they find a suitable house. None of the funds will be used for legal battles against Facebook or Robinson.
Source: The Mail Online.