Man assaulted three Asian women he berated for their appearance

I think the Telegraph got this almost verbatim from local Yorkshire newspaper the Telegraph and Argus, whcih I’ll use for the main story. But I like the national newspaper headline the best

THREE defenceless women were attacked in broad daylight by a man for not wearing traditional Asian dress as they cowered in a car at a petrol station. In a 51-second attack that was captured on CCTV Muhammed Hassan grabbed the driver and slammed her head on the dashboard, grabbed another woman’s hair and punched her in the head, and then punched the third woman.

Bradford Crown Court heard it described as “an outrageous public display of misogyny”.

Prosecutor Ayman Khokhar said the three women, who were known to Hassan, had stopped to fill up their car at the Prince of Wales Service Station on Harrogate Road in Bradford en-route to going for dinner on May 25 this year.

All three decided to wait until he had left as he had previously objected to their non-traditional dress and make-up, verbally abusing them as “slags” and “prostitutes” and demanding that they dress conservatively.

However, after paying Hassan marched straight to their car to throw punches and push the women aggressively.

He then drove off and the women called the police.

Mr Khokhar said: “In broad daylight he has attacked three females at a petrol station. The offence appears to be motivated by sexist attitudes towards women.”

Mitigating, Fuad Arshad said Hassan’s behaviour on the day was “very much out of character” and that he was “very regretful”. He said the background to the incident revolved around Hassan’s belief that the three women had “played some role in how a marriage ended” but that Hassan accepted what he did on the day was “unjustified”.

Sentencing Hassan to six months in prison suspended for two years, His Honour Judge Colin Burn said: “Whatever the motivation was for this it’s still utterly inadequate to justify the violence that you perpetrated against [the victims] when they were sitting in a car effectively cowering from you. The three people on the receiving end of your violence were women who were in a vulnerable situation. [This was] an extremely abusive, controlling, and violent incident.”

The sentence handed down included 35 rehabilitation activities, 180 hours of unpaid work, electronic tagging for four months and £500 costs.

It had to be a non custodial sentence; our prisons are full. Since the expressions of our discontent at the beginning of the month so many men and women are currently serving prison sentences for such things as expressing anger on social media, observing a demonstration from a distance, shouting at a police dog and using bad language outside a mosque.