Father And Son Jailed For Boozy Attack
15th September 2008
A father and son have been jailed for 12 months each for attacking and religiously abusing a Muslim taxi driver in Henley after a night out drinking.
James Ireland, 21, and his father Martin, 52, sought out the cabbie at a taxi rank in Hart Street and screamed abuse at him before beating him up.
Tim Boswell, prosecuting, told Oxford Crown Court that the attack happened in the early hours of December 22nd last year.
Murat Okalani had been sitting in his taxi when he saw the pair talking to the driver in the cab in front.
The men then came to speak to him and James Ireland placed his head through the cab window and asked: “Are you Muslim?” When Mr. Okalani said he was a Muslim, he was abused.
Mr. Boswell said: “Martin Ireland was pushing and kicking his car.”
When the driver got out of his car, the men attacked him, hitting him until he passed out. Mr. Boswell said: “He felt something sharp hit his face but he did not see any object. He then passed out.
“When he came round his face was covered in blood.”
Door staff at the Catherine Wheel pub who witnessed the attack called police and the Irelands were arrested. Mr Okalani was treated in hospital for cuts and bruises on his face, neck and head.
Martin Ireland, from Feltham, and James Ireland, from Highmoor, had admitted religiously aggravated assault occasioning actual bodily harm at an earlier hearing.
Katherine Mansfield, for James Ireland, said her client had been drinking and had “no idea where this came from”. Mary Poku, for Martin Ireland, said he blamed “a small amount of alcohol” combined with medication he was taking.
Jailing the men, Judge Mary Jane Mowat called the attack ‘absolutely intolerable’.
Source; Henley Standard
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