Men Convicted for Mob Violence at Asylum Protest

0:00On April 10, two men just got convicted for jumping into a violent mob during a protest outside an asylum hotel in Epping. 43-year-old Lee Gower, from Epping and 53-year-old Philip Kerson, from Upminster and East London, were found guilty of violent disorder. At Cownsburg Crown Court, this went down on July 17 last year at the Bell Hotel, where things started calm but exploded into chaos with attacks on police and their vehicles. The whole thing kicked off because of protests over the summer after an Ethiopian asylum seeker named Hadoosh Kabatou was charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl. He just arrived in the UK by small boat days earlier. He got convicted on five counts, including the assault and was jailed, but then wrongly released from prison in October before being detained and deported back to Ethiopia that same month. The showdown, around 400-500 people by 4pm, and a quickly turned ugly with bottles, milk

1:00and flour flying at officers. Sheels got used in fights, windscreen smashed, wing mirrors ripped off. Tensions boiled between protesters and counter-protesters with police trying to hold a line. Six others already pled guilty to the same charge from that day. In the trial, Gower got cleared of actually assaulting a cop, and both sides claimed self-defense in the heat of it all, pushing back against police, moves. Prosecutors painted them as part of an aggressive crowd, punching, kicking, and shoving at officers and cars. Sinencing's coming up soon, but this case highlights how fast protests can spin out of control over big issues like immigration and crime. Stay tuned as more details drop.