Man convicted of rioting tried to blow up a mosque

A man who pleaded guilty to taking part in disorder over the summer previously tried to blow up a mosque, it has emerged.

Simon Beech, 36, of Chell Heath, appeared at Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court on Monday after being involved in riots in Hanley on 3 August.

He is due to be sentenced on 25 November.

In December 2011 he and another man, Garreth Foster, were sentenced to 10 years in prison for deliberately setting fire to Hanley’s Regent Road mosque.

Amjid Wazir, the chairman of City Central Mosque, said Beech did not seem to have learned any lessons after his previous crime.

In 2011, Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court heard Beech and Foster ran a pipe into the mosque from a nearby gas meter in a bid to spark an explosion.

The building suffered damage put at £50,000 as a result of the fire.

Beech told the court during the 2011 trial that he had been a member of the English Defence League and the British National Party, but said he was not racist and did not believe his views to be extreme.

Disorder spread across the UK during the summer partly due to false claims online about the alleged perpetrator involved in the murder of three girls in Southport in July.

Mr Wazir praised the actions by police and the legal system to bring those responsible to justice.

"When the riots were happening in Stoke, and elsewhere in the country, people were so scared of going out," he said.

"They were worried, they were nervous."

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