The Metropolitan Police have agreed to pay a Christian preacher £10,000 in damages after she was arrested, strip-searched and detained for 15 hours.
Hatun Tash was arrested as she was preparing to evangelise at Speakers’ Corner, a spot in London’s Hyde Park that has a protracted tradition of free speech and public debate.
She was wearing a Charlie Hebdo T-shirt on the time and had a prop Quran with holes in it that she intended to make use of as a visible aid to argue that Islamic theology has holes in it.
As Miss Tash was establishing on Sunday 26 June 2022, a person grabbed her Quran and ran off with it. When her Christian companions called the police to report the theft, officers asked Miss Tash to depart the realm. Disturbing video footage shows her being dragged to a police van in front of a jeering crowd after she refused to depart.
The Christian Legal Centre (CLC), which supported Miss Tash in her legal motion against the police, said that after being put within the police van, her belongings were left unattended at Speakers’ Corner where they might have been stolen.
It says she was told by officers that she was being arrested for ‘criminal damage’ and for wearing a Charlie Hebdo T-shirt that depicted the Prophet Muhammad.
She was taken to Charing Cross Police Station where she was strip-searched and interrogated at 4am before eventually being released at 9am after 15 hours in custody. She was told that no further motion could be taken, but was not given any assistance to retrieve her belongings from Speakers’ Corner.
Lawyers argued that the police “didn’t reasonably imagine that [Miss Tash] was involved within the commission of a criminal offence, regarding the first incident it was clear that she had done nothing illegal and regarding the second incident, the officers believed that the simplest solution to the issue was ‘do away with our client’.”
Miss Tash has donated the settlement money to an organisation supporting individuals who experience persecution after leaving the Islamic faith.
Commenting on the settlement, she accused the police of “two-tiered policing” and suggested that “Muslim mobs” at Speakers’ Corner appeared to be “above the law”.
“I even have been treated appallingly by the police and have been repeatedly humiliated once I had not done anything flawed,” she said.
Miss Tash is director of the ministry Defend Christ Critique Islam and commonly preaches at Hyde Park. It is the second time the Met has paid her £10,000 after arresting her at the identical spot in 2022. In that incident, she was arrested after reporting to officers that she was being harassed and threatened by Islamic demonstrators.
She was stabbed in the identical place a 12 months earlier but her attacker has never been caught. In September 2022 she was the goal of a foiled murder plot by Muslim convert Edward Little who was sentenced to life in prison last December after pleading guilty.
Miss Tash continued, “More should be done to properly take care of Islamic violence and intimidation at Speakers’ Corner. We don’t live in Pakistan; we do not live in Saudi Arabia. I’m Christian and by default I feel that Muhammad is a false prophet. I ought to be allowed to say that within the UK without being stabbed or repeatedly arrested.
“I’m concerned that power has been handed over to Muslim mobs on Britain’s streets, and that there isn’t any getting back from this. The British public urgently need and deserve higher policing.”
CLC chief executive Andrea Williams said the footage of Miss Tash being marched away from the realm represented “one other lamentable episode of policing at Speakers’ Corner” and a “totalitarian approach to anyone who stands against Islam in London”.
“If it will not be protected to critique Islamic ideology at Speakers’ Corner then nowhere is protected,” she said.
