Rioter will get heaviest sentence but as he’s jailed for 9 years
A far-right thug who stole a police baton and helped set fire to a hotel filled with vunlnerable asylum seekers in Rotherham has been given the longest prison sentence yet.
Thomas Birley, 27, pleaded guilty to arson with intent to endanger life after he stoked a fire in a bin by an entranceway to the Holiday Inn Express near Rotherham on August 4.
Prosecutor Alisha Kaye said Birley added wood to an already-flaming industrial bin, which had been placed in front of a fire door of the hotel while staff and guests sheltered inside.
Birley, who had also pleaded guilty to violent disorder and possessing an offensive weapon, was sentenced to nine years in prison at Sheffield Crown Court by Judge Jeremy Richardson, who said Birley’s actions were ‘suffused with racism from beginning to end’.
Thomas Birley (pictured), 27, pleaded guilty to arson with intent to endanger life after he stoked a fire in a bin by an entranceway to the Holiday Inn Express near Rotherham on August 4
Police faced hours of disruption after far-right yobs attacked the hotel and threw missiles at officers
Judge Richardson said his case was ‘unquestionably’ one of the most serious of the dozens he has dealt with in the last month in relation to the rioting outside the Holiday Inn.
Sheffield Crown Court heard how Birley, of Rowms Lane, Swinton, Rotherham, was involved in many of the worst incidents on that Sunday afternoon, including adding wood to the fire in the large industrial bin which had been pushed against an exit and helping place a further bin on top of the one ablaze.
Birley was also filmed throwing missiles at the police, squaring up to officers while brandishing a police baton and throwing a large bin which crashed into a line of police with riot shields.
The defendant became the first person to be sentenced for arson with intent to endanger life following the 12 hours of violence in Manvers which left 64 police officers, three horses and a dog injured.
Judge Richardson heard how 22 staff in the hotel barricaded themselves into the hotel’s panic room with freezers and ‘thought they were going to burn to death’.
He said he needed to pass an extended sentence due to Birley’s ongoing dangerousness, which included an extended five-year licence period.
The hotel was targeted by around 400 people during days of rioting involving violence, arson and looting as well as racist attacks, which followed the killings of three young girls in the northern English town of Southport on July 29.
The attack was initially blamed on an Islamist migrant, false claims based on online misinformation. An 18-year-old, Axel Rudakubana who was born in Cardiff, has been charged.
A protest in Southport the day after the killings turned violent and riots spread across the country in unrest not seen in Britain since 2011, when the fatal shooting of a Black man by police triggered several days of street violence.
Police and prosecutors have responded rapidly, with roughly 1,300 people having been arrested and around 200 people jailed – one for as long as six years’ imprisonment for violent disorder.
Others have been charged for inciting racial or religious hatred online.
