A former barrister who repeatedly published antisemitic material in blog posts has been sentenced.
Hampshire Police trawled through a year’s worth of posts from Ian Millard and found persistent comments about his hatred of Jewish people.
Millard, who was disbarred in 2016 for posting offensive tweets about various ethnic minorities, wrote statements such as ‘there is nothing wrong with being antisemitic’ and that the Holocaust was ‘fake history’. The 67-year-old also posted imagery which portrayed antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Prosecutors cited one month of posts alone which came to 450 pages and argued in court that Millard was not simply expressing his freedom of speech but had engaged in a campaign of hate which breached the Communications Act. The posts scrutinised went from May 2021 to April 2022.
Millard, from the New Forest, was found guilty of five charges of breaching the act and was today sentenced at Southampton Magistrates’ Court to a nine-month community order.
Sophie Stevens, deputy chief crown prosecutor with CPS Wessex, said: ‘This was a complex prosecution which required many hours scrutinising the masses of online content that Ian Millard deemed perfectly acceptable. In fact, what he posted were grossly offensive and criminal claims about Jewish people. It is particularly shocking that a former barrister, who is meant to engage the law in the pursuit of justice, would express such flagrant hatred.’
