A Bristol man has been jailed after he helped set a mobile police station on fire during protests in the city in March 2021.
Alexander Papadopoulos, 28, of Whitehall, was jailed for six months by Bristol Crown Court on Monday after he pleaded guilty to arson during the “kill the bill” protests.
Footage from the investigation showed Papadopoulos stoking the fire at the mobile police station, which included launching a chair through the door to fan the flames.
He was also seen wearing a police helmet, which he admitted to stealing, meaning he was given an additional seven days in prison, with the sentences running concurrently.
The judge said Papadopoulos’s actions helped the fire which destroyed the mobile police station, adding he had taken the helmet as “a trophy”.
Detective Superintendent James Riccio said: “The fire this defendant was involved in stoking and accelerating caused catastrophic damage to a community mobile police station and was one of the more significant criminal acts committed on that shameful night of violence.
“The weight of evidence, particularly visual evidence, gathered during this investigation has directly led to this admission of guilt and subsequent prison sentence, which we welcome.”
Since the protests in the city – in response to the government’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Law bill which increased police powers to deal with non-violent demonstrations – 27 people have been jailed, with a combined sentence of 85 years and seven months.
Britons have been warned of long delays on their Easter getaways with more than 14 million journeys expected on the roads, airports prepared for a record number of passengers, and engineering works on key rail services.
The RAC warned that journeys on popular routes could take twice as long as usual, as the bank holiday weekend leads into a two-week holiday for many schools.
Trains are also set to be stopped as Network Rail carries out engineering works on the West Coast Main Line – which stretches from the capital to Scotland – between London Euston and Milton Keynes.
And at least three major airports have said that the coming days will be their busiest ever Easter weekend.
Bristol, Newcastle and Edinburgh have told The Independent they predict a record number of passengers from Good Friday to Easter Monday, with routes to Geneva tipped to be extremely busy.
Around two million Britons are expected to fly away over the holiday weekend, with Bristol predicting 30,000 holiday-goers on Easter Sunday alone.
Airports will stay busy over the school holidays, with Luton expecting to see around 38 passengers a minute on 5 April.
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On Sunday 7 April, Gatwick and Southampton are set to see their busiest days.
No ‘good time’ for rail works
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The West Coast Main Line will be closed between Good Friday and Easter Monday, with disruption to rail services also expected in Glasgow and Huddersfield.
Laurence Bowman, Network Rail’s network strategy director, said earlier this week that there is “never a good time to do the work we need to do”, but explained that a lower number of commuters over the bank holiday weekend gives them “the opportunity to do major work we couldn’t do in a normal weekend”.
“We’ve got 493 different pieces of work taking place this Easter, most happening overnight,” he added, “including laying over 8,000 metres of new rail and putting down over 40,000 tonnes of new ballast to support the tracks.”
‘Carmageddon’
RAC spokesperson Alice Simpson warned it “could be carmageddon” over Easter and said heavy traffic and “lengthy queues can be expected along routes to the usual hotspots”.
Inrix transportation analyst Bob Pishue also said that “drivers should be prepared for longer journeys than normal throughout the entire weekend”.
A survey commissioned by the RAC and Inrix found that 2.6 million journeys are planned on Good Friday, with around 2.3 million trips expected for both Easter Saturday and Sunday.
Another two million trips are expected on Thursday and Easter Monday, and a further 3.3 million journeys are due with no clear starting date, making for a total of around 14.5 million journeys.
Inrix predicted that the worst of the traffic is expected between 2pm and 7pm on Thursday when holiday journeys mix with regular commutes.
It added that the busiest route is set to be the western section of the M25 between the M23 for Gatwick and the M1 for Hertfordshire where journeys from 4pm are tipped to take more than two hours, more than twice as long as usual.
The M5 southbound between Bristol and Taunton, and the M3 between the M25 and the south coast are also likely to be congested, according to Inrix, with estimated journey times more than double what they normally are.
The survey, from research company Find Out Now, polled 2,136 UK adults.
The Met Office said the alert applies from 7am until 6pm on Thursday and extends in a band from locations such as St Ives and Penzance in the South West across to Brighton.
Sky News weather producer Christopher England also said: “It’ll stay mostly unsettled into next week, with further heavy showers or longer spells of rain, and 70mph gusts near Channel coasts, thanks to the Spanish-named Storm Nelson.”
More delays in Dover
Meanwhile, Britons taking ferries should be able to embark without much issue, with the exception of the Port of Dover where French border staff check passports before leaving the UK.
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From 2023: ‘Severe’ delays for Easter travel
Around 20,000 cars are expected to travel through Dover’s port between Thursday and Easter. A Coach Processing Facility has been set up in the Western Docks for Thursday and Saturday in a bid to ease travel.
Coach passengers and motorists will be processed away from the main port, and then moved to the Eastern Port for a quick passport check, before embarking on their ferry journey.
There are fears innocent people could end up on police databases with controversial new hate crime laws in Scotland being weaponised to “settle scores”.
Legislation is being introduced on 1 April criminalising threatening or abusive behaviour which is intended to stir up hatred based on certain characteristics including age, disability, sexual orientation, and transgender identity.
The rules will apply in people’s private homes and online.
Women’s groups, which have been vocal in the transgender debate in Scotland, fear social media posts could be used to target opponents.
Susan Smith, director at the For Women Scotland campaign group, said: “It’s a mess.
“Much of this is very vague as stirring up offences seems to be based on someone’s perception that someone is being hateful towards them, and they can make a complaint and the police are saying they will investigate everything.”
“There will be a lot of malicious reports,” added Ms Smith.
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“We know that there are people out there who have lists of people they are looking to target. They are seeing this as an opportunity to settle scores and make political points.”
JK Rowling and Elon Musk have publicly criticised the change, suggesting it erodes free speech.
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Those who support the law insist it will make Scotland more tolerant.
Rebecca Crowther, chief executive of Equality Network in Scotland, told Sky News: “This legislation is not going to catch people online saying things that I might disagree with, that you might disagree with, things that might upset me, things that might upset others in the community.
“Freedom of expression is really important, and there’s a defence for that within the legislation.
“People are free to say what they like, even if it might cause offence or it might cause shock or disturb people, that’s just what we live with when we live with the freedom of speech.
“What it does legislate against is when that freedom of speech strays into something that is abusive, that could cause fear and alarm, and that also incites hatred or incites people to act on that hatred.”
Police Scotland, the second largest force in the UK, has committed to investigating every single hate complaint it receives.
It comes amid a backdrop of major changes to policing that mean some minor crimes will no longer be investigated due to budget cuts.
‘Disaster waiting to happen’
Lanarkshire shopkeeper Abdul Majid says he has lost thousands of pounds a year in petty shoplifting that the authorities have not fully investigated.
He reckons the cumulative impact on his business is £10,000 a year and is “frustrated” at the contrast in policing priorities as the new hate crime regime begins.
He describes taking matters in to his own hands: “Because of the lack of prosecution, we have made a rogues’ gallery in the shop.
“We have the date and time of the shoplift and a bit of background about what they’ve taken and what they look like.
“All crime in my opinion should be investigated, whether it be hate crime or retail crime.”
Those representing thousands of rank-and-file police officers say the two-hour online training course provided in preparation for enforcement is not good enough.
David Kennedy, general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, described it as a disaster waiting to happen.
He said: “I have real concerns that mistakes could be made. Officers are drained. We are not getting any extra resources to deal with this.
“Officers on night shift have a mandatory two-hour online training.”
Police Scotland refused to be questioned by Sky News on camera about the new law.
A statement from a spokesman said: “Our training package has been developed in close consultation with diversity staff associations to ensure all protected characteristics under the new Act are clearly represented and articulated, and that officers are best prepared when they respond to hate crimes and incidents.
“In addition to the training package, an extensive programme of workshops is taking place to allow officers to gain more understanding and ask any questions they may have.”
In a hostel in northern France, the atmosphere was tense.
A father and his family were waiting for a call, a sign sea conditions were right and it is finally time to go.
After fleeing from Kurdistan, they’ve paid around €8000 (£6,850) to cross the Channel on a dinghy provided by smugglers who value money over life.
“We don’t have any other option except this dinghy. The surveillance for the trucks [crossing the Channel] is very strong and that is why we have to take this journey. We will either die or succeed,” Mohammed said ahead of the journey.
To tell their story safely, all the family’s names have been changed.
The UK wasn’t their destination of choice; for years Germany was their home but then, after a failed asylum bid and threatened with deportation last month, they ran.
If they stayed, Mohammed says they would have been sent back home where he fears he could be killed.
But after years of making friends and plans, overnight his family’s lives changed.
His teenage daughter Sara says when she was told they were leaving at first she didn’t believe it.
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“I was like, no, this is going to be a bad joke,” she explains, “Then the day we left, I looked at my friends… they didn’t know that I was leaving and we will never see each other again.”
Last week the family was among them, cramming into a rickety vessel with around 60 others.
“It was a difficult and dangerous journey that no one was expecting to survive. We were all thinking that our lives would end in a matter of seconds,” Mohammed says.
The boat left a French beach near Dunkirk at 10pm.
After around an hour into the journey they ran out of fuel and then drifted for hours.
The conditions meant children were screaming and crying.
Many onboard were being sick and everyone was soaked with freezing water.
When the French coastguard arrived, 25 people asked to be rescued but the other 36 refused, determined to keep pushing ahead.
Desperate to reach UK waters, they paddled with their hands and then used the dregs of the fuel to give them one last boost until they were picked up by the UK coastguard.