Unjust.

Transcript

1. Sajid Mahmood Khan was convicted of rape and sentenced to 3 years.
2. Russell Brand was looking at potential life.
3. That's what a post on X claimed.
4. Before the sentence, Elon Musk replied with one word.
5. Unjust.
6. Judges in England and Wales sentence rape on a grid.
7. Harm down the side, blame across the top.
8. Each box has a starting point and a range.
9. A jury convicted Brand of one rape and 3 sexual assaults, against 4 women.
10. The judge put the rape in the box that starts at 8 years.
11. He added 2, for removing a condom without consent and ejaculating,
12. which left her fearing HIV.
13. He took 1 off, for no significant previous convictions,
14. the years since, and his work on addiction.
15. 9 years for the rape.
16. The assaults added 18 months to the total.
17. Now Keighley, in West Yorkshire.
18. Police reported 8 men sentenced over the abuse of girls in Keighley in the 1990s,
19. for 3 to 14 years.
20. 4 were listed for rape alone.
21. For two, the court record shows a single rape,
22. in box 2B, the same box as Brand's rape.
23. Both raped the same girl, aged 14 or 15.
24. Zehroon Razaq got 6½ years.
25. Imtiaz Ahmed got 9.
26. The same as Brand got for his rape.
27. But Brand's victim was an adult.
28. Theirs was a child, groomed and particularly vulnerable.
29. The Solicitor General, a government law officer,
30. sent Ahmed's sentence to the Court of Appeal as too lenient.
31. The court left the box unchanged,
32. but said the starting point had to rise for her vulnerability and the harm.
33. His 9 became 11.
34. Razaq's was never referred.
35. And Khan's 3 years?
36. His box isn't in the available reports.
37. The rape guideline's range starts at 4 years, before reductions.
38. A guilty plea, or being under 18 at the time, can bring it lower.
39. Whether either applies, the reports don't say.
40. A local paper reported 4 sentences from his case
41. were reviewed as too lenient and left alone;
42. a fifth, too late.
43. It didn't say which was his.
44. So the comparison in that post can't show Brand was treated unjustly.
45. Brand's 10½ years cover 4 offences.
46. The two Keighley men on record for a single rape in that box ended at 6½, and 11.
47. Brand's 9 years for rape sit between Razaq's and Ahmed's.
48. Their victim was a child.
49. And Khan's 3 years is the sentence the available reports don't explain.
50. We reached out to Andrew Bridgen; to X,
51. about Musk's comment; and to the Attorney General's Office.
52. None had replied.
53. We don't dispute any allegations brought forward by the victims
54. or sentences handed down by the UK justice system.