SUE REID: The thieves and thugs’ mantra ‘no face no case’

His head draped within the keffiyeh scarf, the younger man stood in Hyde Park final Saturday able to march via London alongside pro-Palestine protesters.

To guarantee not even the color of his eyes may very well be seen, he topped off his headgear with a pair of sun shades.

Walking previous him have been poppy-wearing individuals in darkish garments. They have been heading for the afternoon’s Festival of Remembrance on the Royal Albert Hall.

‘Why is he hiding his face?’, I heard one middle-aged man ask his spouse, placing a protecting arm round her shoulder as they pushed their means via the crowds waving Palestinian flags.

Why certainly? But the keffiyeh-wearer was not alone in doing so. 

The distinctive scarf, an emblem of Palestinian nationalism, has turn into an important accent amongst many pro-Palestine marchers. Others select completely different strategies of protecting up their faces. Masks with the brand ‘Free Palestine‘ will be purchased for a number of kilos on-line. Still extra go for Covid medical masks.

I noticed kids carrying masks final Saturday alongside their moms, who had infants in buggies. Some of the kids have been so small they have been struggling to carry their Palestinian black, white, and inexperienced flag upright as they walked alongside the pavement.

Two law enforcement officials have been photographed posing with a toddler who was carrying a crimson and white keffiyeh to cowl their face. It was so environment friendly at hiding their identification that it was unattainable to inform whether or not they have been a boy or a woman.

Quite why so many protesters really feel the necessity to cowl their face is much from clear. It absolutely cannot be the case that each one of them are intent on committing crimes and utilizing the anonymity to keep away from police.

But there is no such thing as a doubt that for the reason that pandemic, when masks have been normalised, protecting up faces has turn into endemic in our society. In many instances, these masks are getting used as a weapon of crime.

For it’s not simply protesters. Shoplifters, moped thieves, muggers and drug sellers within the streets are all carrying masks within the data that if their faces are hidden it is going to assist thwart police makes an attempt to determine them.

However good the CCTV, it can not see via the masks to indicate facial options which might be essential to identification. And criminals get greater than a sporting probability of escaping detection because of this.

Scotland Yard lately launched footage of an armed man carrying a black masks, with a equally attired confederate, holding workers at gunpoint in a Tesco retailer in Camden at 5.40pm on October 1.

While the primary pointed a handgun at workers, the opposite stole a number of gadgets and ran. According to the police account, 40 minutes later the identical males entered a Nisa Local grocery retailer seven minutes’ stroll away and carried out a theft. Days later they have been again on the similar Nisa retailer with a gun, a knife and a hammer and stealing as soon as once more. They have not been caught.

And what of the tried theft in Mossley Hill, Liverpool, when two males with face coverings and armed with an axe approached a driver and tried — unsuccessfully — to open the money field he was delivering to Barclays financial institution?

The September raid was described by police as a ‘horrifying assault’ on somebody ‘simply doing their job’. The masked gang fled in an Audi and are nonetheless to be recognized.

Then there was this 12 months’s so-called ‘no face, no case’ trial of two males jailed for a mixed complete of 15 years and 9 months for a string of robberies of money, alcohol and cigarettes at shops in Leeds.

The masked duo, armed with a samurai sword, have been solely recognized when a intelligent detective recognised one in all them from his gait and his voice, captured on CCTV. ‘We know that offenders like them brag about ‘no face, no case’ in the event that they put on masks whereas committing offences, however [we] have proven them that their conceitedness is misplaced,’ police mentioned when the pair have been jailed.

So commonplace is the apply of carrying face coverings that, a number of weeks in the past, masked males appeared within the public gallery of Belfast’s Crown Court throughout a homicide trial linked to a paramilitary organisation.

The Lady Chief Justice of Northern Ireland labelled the intimidation unacceptable and has since demanded an investigation. This perverse legacy of Covid needs to be addressed. The time has come to power individuals to indicate their faces, even when it treads on delicate points comparable to using the burka for Islamic girls.

Despite our proud custom of tolerance, masks ought to be banned at protests and in shops. Shopkeepers should not have any qualms about stopping individuals from coming into until they present their faces.

Every day, lots of of crimes are being dedicated by these with their faces obscured. The criminals are laughing at us.

The irony is that just a few years in the past individuals have been being fined for not carrying a masks throughout Covid.

Now the boot is on the opposite foot, for nowhere have masks been taken up extra fervently than amongst anti-Semites, terrorist sympathisers, Hamas apologists, thieves and thugs.

On Thursday, a pro-Palestinian protest appeared to tip into criminality when a masked man used a mallet to smash up the roof of defence agency Leonardo’s manufacturing facility in Southampton. Protesters from Palestine Action mentioned they aimed to ‘halt the manufacturing of weaponry used to focus on and bloodbath’ the individuals of Gaza.

In a separate improvement this week, the Metropolitan Police launched a hunt for 11 males, a few of whom wore ‘Hamas-style headscarves’, waved pro-terror indicators and allegedly incited racial hatred throughout London’s pro-Palestine rallies.

One man was charged for refusing to take away his face protecting on the first rally. But the police have their fingers tied. There is not any express regulation that bans face coverings, although an officer who believes an individual is utilizing an merchandise to hide his identification can ask them to take away it, beneath the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. Refusal to take action permits the particular person to be charged.

So what of that younger man I noticed who had lined his head and face final Saturday? When I handed him in a taxi I known as out: ‘I hope you are not right here to trigger hassle.’

‘Oh, no, no, no . . .’ he assured me, in a northern accent. He and his fellow protesters — many sporting comparable headgear — definitely appeared prepared for battle with somebody or one thing.

Perhaps he actually wasn’t in search of hassle. Perhaps he had no intention of evading police consideration. Perhaps he was masked up merely to terrify these going about their day by day enterprise in London.

Whatever the case, his behaviour — and that of all those that cowl their faces and identities — is an affront to British values. And it’s an unwelcome gesture that goes hand in hand with criminality.