Victim hits out Cherie Blair for freeing Muslim thug
By Mail on Sunday Reporter
Updated: 17:00 EDT, 6 February 2010
Cherie Blair QC was sympathetic to Shamso Miah's religious outlook
The victim of a thug spared jail by Cherie Blair because he claimed to be a devout Muslim has described how the attack shattered his self-confidence and left him needing surgery for a broken jaw.
Muhammad Furqan said the judgment was flawed because a true Muslim would never strike another individual.
The student and part-time salesman was beaten by jobless Shamso Miah after an argument in a bank queue in East London.
The incident last August left Mr Furqan, 33, housebound for a month, out of work for six weeks, and so traumatised that he moved house in fear of meeting his attacker again.
He said: 'What that man did to me was not the behaviour of a good Muslim. He behaved like an animal. He is not human. Devout Muslims don't beat each other up.
'I am Muslim as well, and that's not the way I was taught to behave.
'For a month after the surgery, I could only eat soup and could not sleep on my right side. I've been in and out of hospital since.'
Despite the seriousness of the attack, Miah, 25, was given a six-month jail sentence, suspended for two years, by Mrs Blair, who was sitting as a part-time judge at Inner London Crown Court.
She told Miah she had decided not to send him to jail because 'you are a religious man and you know this is not acceptable behaviour'.
Miah will now serve just 200 hours of community service and pay £200 in legal costs.
Make Cherie a Baroness! Extraordinary row over plan to elevate Mrs Blair to Lords
Bizarre moment unmuzzled tiger on a lead walks about in Russia
Harlech street in north Wales wins title for world's steepest street