Hatun Tash: No arrest of her assailant, intimidation continues, until this afternoon the police finally took control at Speakers Corner

Regular readers might remember that back in July I reported about the assault on Miss Hatun Tash, the Christian evangelist to Islam. She was speaking at the famous (infamous these days) Speakers Corner in Hyde Park, as is her right and as is traditional on a Sunday afternoon, pointing out the flaws in the Koran and Islam in general when one of the group of Muslim men who heckle and abuse her produced a knife and slashed her across her face.

The man did this in front of many witnesses, in an area with a high police presence, plenty of CCTV and he was filmed by bystanders. Despite this (and clearer pictures of his face being supplied) no arrest has been made. Comment was made only last month that the police were quick to identify and arrest someone who made a threatening tweet about an MP (who had herself called fellow MPs ‘Tory scum’ and worse in a drunken rant at Labour Party Conference) but could not apprehend the armed assailant of a law abiding preacher woman.

Most of what I can find out about Miss Tash’s continuing evangelical work is from twitter, in particular the tweets of Steve Speakers Corner, a man I know to be balanced, accurate and reliable.  He wrote about the stabbing/slashing assault here in his blog.

Miss Tash has refused to be cowed and has returned with her team to Speakers Corner as often as possible since. Harrassment continued, both at Speakers Corner and in the vicinity.

“Its come to something when Christian woman Hatun Tash cant go for a meal out in London without being harassed by pro Palestinian muslims wearing horror masks!”

Last Sunday, 31st October she was accompanied by Jay Smith of the Bretheren in Christ Mission. They were surrounded again and abused. The men threatening and jostling her were wearing similar horror film type masks, as you can see in this screen shot I took from an extract of video, from here, courtesy of Steve again. Miss Tash is the short young woman in the bottom right hand corner. The thug in the middle is, well, a thug.

I’m not in a position to attend Speakers Corner myself at the moment. Indeed, several womens’ groups meet elsewhere in Hyde Park for safety. This is why I admire Hatun Tash so much. So I consulted twitter this afternoon with some unease. But instead I found some relatively good news.

As Steve put it: “Muscular policing today at Speakers Corner” and “Masked muppets and Waleed finally evicted from Speakers Corner, well done to the police. Intimidation, threats and thuggery will not be tolerated”.

As one of the comments said “If these officers keep doing this for next four weeks, speaker corner will be back to normality”

I’m not holding my breath. The assailant needs to be arrested, charged, and once convicted robustly sentenced. That might stop the continuous intimidation.