Rape threat passenger ‘should not have shorter sentence than Lucy Connolly'
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, urged Lord Hermer, the Attorney General, to review the jail term given to Salman Iftikhar earlier this month.
Iftikhar was convicted of racially motivated harassment and threats to kill, after he threatened cabin crew on his first-class flight from London Heathrow to Lahore in February 2023.
The recruitment boss, 37, told Angie Walsh, an air stewardess: 'You will be dragged by your hair from your room and gang raped and set on fire.' He threatened to blow up the cabin crew's floor in their hotel.
He was given 15 months in prison for the offence.
Mr Philp contrasted the sentence to that of Connolly, who received 31 months for inciting racial hatred in a post on X in the wake of the Southport killings.
Writing to Lord Hermer, the shadow home secretary pointed to Iftikhar's six previous convictions, including for common assault in 2004 and drink driving in 2008.
He wrote: 'Despite this, Iftikhar only received a 15-month sentence, less than half of Lucy Connolly's 31-month sentence (a prosecution which you authorised).
'Connolly made a wrong and distasteful social media post which she then deleted, but Iftikhar made over 100 sickening threats including of gang rape directly to Ms Walsh personally, face to face, and to other members of the cabin crew's faces and has multiple previous convictions'.
Mr Philp said that if Lord Hermer chose not to refer Iftikhar's sentence for reconsideration, it would be 'yet another example of two-tier justice under this Government'.
Prompted by a false rumour that an illegal immigrant had murdered three girls at a dance workshop, Connolly last summer called for 'mass deportation now' and wrote on X 'set fire to all the… hotels… for all I care'.
She added: 'If that makes me racist so be it.' She deleted the post three and a half hours later, but it had already been reposted 940 times.
The prosecutor in the case of Iftikhar told the court that he had told a member of cabin crew: 'The white, sheep-sh------ b---- will be dead. The floor of your hotel will be blown up and it will disappear.'
Connolly has received support from Reform UK MPs, with Richard Tice, the party's deputy leader, having visited her in prison.
He is campaigning for a change in the law that would allow the public to challenge what they deem to be excessively harsh sentences, in an attempt to prevent 'overzealous two-tier justice'.
The Attorney General's Office has been approached for comment.
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