Friday October 6, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
A man who posted racist messages on a website in memory of murdered black teenager Anthony Walker was jailed for more than three years today.
Neil Martin, 30, emailed at least six comments to the website - less than a week after Anthony was killed with an ice axe in a racist attack in Huyton, Merseyside, last year.
The site was set up by a school friend of the 18-year-old, who was killed with an ice axe by racist thugs in Huyton, Merseyside, last year.
Posting under the pseudonym Genuine Scouser, Martin suggested that white people should celebrate the murder, that Anthony's family should be burned and made references to slavery and a "banana boat".
After the verdict, Anthony's mother Gee Walker said she was satisfied by the sentence and did not accept Martin's apology.
When he was arrested in September, officers also found 33 images of child pornography on his computer.
Martin, from Maghull, Merseyside, pleaded guilty at earlier hearings to publishing material likely to stir up racial hatred and to making indecent photographs of children.
He was sentenced at Liverpool Crown Court to two years and eight months for the race hate crime and six months consecutively for the child pornography offences.
Judge Henry Globe QC, the Recorder of Liverpool, told Martin: "The intention of the website was innocent, honourable and well motivated.
"You accessed that website and you abused its use. You posted highly abusive, insulting and racist messages on the site."
During police interviews, Martin admitted posting the messages but insisted he was not racist. He told the officers he had intended to stir up an argument on the website but did not believe in what he had written.
Heather Lloyd, defending, said Martin had no history of racist behaviour and that he felt "deeply ashamed".
She said: "He was isolated and living in a fantasy world, spending hours on his computer in his room where his persona could be as he made it, good or bad."
The court heard that Martin had also created an internet profile using Anthony Walker's name and photograph, and that he also posed as a schoolgirl on teenage chatrooms.
Miss Lloyd said that her client had written a letter of apology to both the court and to the Walker family.
Speaking outside court, Anthony's mother Gee Walker said: "After hearing what he said in those messages, I don't buy it. I don't accept it. He had time to think about it and he did it six times. I don't accept his apology.
"Hitler started with an idea, slavery started with an idea, so it is good that this was stopped in time."
