Epping protester who refused to uncover face argued people can ‘wear burkas’

An engineer who refused to remove his face covering while protesting outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in Epping told police he did not see the problem when “people could wear burkas”.

Joshua Meadows, 18, refused to remove the covering when asked to do so by police during a protest in the Essex town on July 24, Chelmsford Magistrates’ Court was told.

Prosecutor Celestia John-Baptiste said Meadows was “seen in a crowd with three other males all dressed in black with face coverings”.

“They were asked to remove the coverings and all did so except for the defendant,” she said.

He was wearing a “full face balaclava” and had his “hood up”, she added.

The prosecutor said Meadows was arrested and “said he had his face covered as he didn’t want it in the media”.

“He said he didn’t know why he as a white British person couldn’t wear a face covering when people could wear burkas,” she said.

She said a quantity of cannabis was also found on him when he was searched, having told officers he “had some weed in his pocket”.

Meadows admitted to failing to remove an item when asked by a constable, “namely a hood and a flag”.

He also pleaded guilty to possessing cannabis.

The defendant, who represented himself, said he “never had a full face balaclava” but “had my hood up as it was raining”.

He said he “couldn’t really hear” the police officers and “the next thing they put me in cuffs”.

Magistrate Shaun Rayner, sentencing Meadows, from Epping, fined him £276 and ordered that he pay costs of £85 and a £110 victim surcharge, with the cannabis confiscated and destroyed.

Multiple demonstrations were held outside The Bell hotel during the summer, after asylum seeker Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu sexually assaulted a woman and 14-year-old girl in the town.

The 38-year-old Ethiopian national, who arrived in the UK on a small boat days before the incidents in July, was jailed for 12 months at Chelmsford Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday.