Cherie lets attacker go free

Sunday 24 January 2010 01:00 GMT

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Cherie Booth has allowed a Muslim man who broke someone's jaw in a fight in a bank queue last summer to walk free on "religious" grounds.

Ms Booth QC, sitting as a judge at Inner London Crown Court last Thursday, told Shamso Miah, 25, that she would suspend his sentence because he was "a religious man", and had "not been in trouble before".

Mr Miah, from Redbridge, north-east London, fractured Mohammed Furcan's jaw after a row over who was next in line at Lloyds Bank in East Ham.

Ms Booth, the wife of the former prime minister Tony Blair, said violence on our streets "has to be taken seriously", but let Mr Miah, who had just been at his local mosque, go.

The bank's CCTV footage showed Mr Miah striking Mr Furcan twice.

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Cherie lets attacker go free

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