Failed Ukip candidate who fled to Pakistan is jailed
A failed UKIP candidate who fled to Pakistan after she was convicted of calling a Tesco worker a 'f***ing foreigner' has been jailed for three months in her absence.
Blackfriars Crown Court heard Sam Naz, 34, launched a foul-mouthed racist tirade at trolley collector Mohammed Watfa at a Tesco in Leyton, east London.
Naz - who finished fifth in her bid to oust Zac Goldsmith as MP for Richmond Park and North Kensington - turned on Mr Watfa, 49, when he tried to intervene as she was attacked by another shopper.
In his scathing sentencing remarks, the judge labelled the mother-of-two 'bigoted and cruel' as he said there was 'not one iota of humility in her'.
Sam Naz (pictured with Nigel Farage) launched a foul-mouthed racist tirade at trolley collector Mohammed Watfa
Naz finished fifth in her bid to oust Zac Goldsmith as MP for Richmond Park and North Kensington
The court heard how Naz claimed she had been throttled by a male customer, who was never traced, and shoved into a parked car on March 22, 2015.
She then lost her temper and turned on Mr Watfa after the man sped off, calling him a 'f***ing b***ard', a 'f***ing foreigner' and taunting: 'What kind of f***ing foreigner are you?'
Naz insisted throughout three trials that Mr Watfa was the aggressor who sparked the row by helping her assailant flee before telling her 'you f***ing deserved it'.
The first jury at Snaresbrook Crown Court failed to reach verdicts before she was convicted and fined £1,500 at the same court following a retrial last September.
But she appealed and the conviction was quashed in February this year.
She stood trial for a third time last month and was found guilty for a second time of racially aggravated intentional harassment.
Blackfriars Crown Court heard she has since flown to Pakistan for one of her daughters to receive medical treatment.
'She is not happy with the treatment in the UK,' said her barrister, Rupert Russell.
The judge, Mr Recorder Dafydd Enoch QC branded the stunt a 'delaying tactic'.
'So, it has got nothing to do with the fact that she is facing a jail sentence today?' he asked.
Naz berated the officer in the case for 'believing a bunch of terrorists over me', the court heard
Naz, a former Ukip party member, has since flown to Pakistan for one of her daughters to receive medical treatment
When Mr Russell suggested Naz would not be staying abroad and was 'not a flight risk', the judge added: 'That is exactly what she has done.'
'I take the view that this is a blatant attempt to avoid the inevitable,' he said.
The judge labelled Naz 'bigoted and cruel'
After making it clear her sentence would not be increased by her 'deliberate absence', the judge jailed her for three months for her 'sustained, deliberate and cruel racist tirade'.
Jurors heard Mr Watfa approached Naz to see if she was ok after spotting a man with his fist clenched and ready to punch the mother-of-two.
He described separating the pair and directing the stranger back to his own car, which Naz was dragged behind as she clung on in an attempt to stop him leaving.
After berating his failure to help, the supermarket worker claimed Naz's verbal abuse quickly escalated into a foul-mouth barrage ending with the charity worker hissing at him: 'What kind of f***ing foreigner are you?'
Mr Watfa claimed he heard the same slurs of 'you f***ing immigrant' and 'he's a racist, he's a bastard, he's a c**t, he's a f***ing foreigner' were repeated as many as 50 times.
Jurors heard Naz initially told officers the allegations were part of 'a Muslim IS conspiracy' from within Walthamstow's Asian community.
She also berated the officer in the case for 'believing a bunch of terrorists over me', the court heard.
Naz, from Richmond in southwest London, was sentenced to three months imprisonment in her absence
Addressing Naz as if she were present, the judge said: 'You set yourself up and promoted yourself as someone who wanted to and deserved to represent the people of this country in Parliament.
'By so doing, you had a public responsibility to behave decently and appropriately, particularly in public.
'The people who you abused on this day in public were the very people whose votes you were courting.
'The idea that you could represent such people in Parliament is difficult to swallow and I would have thought that no self-respecting political party would wish to have its interests represented by you in the future given the evidence we have heard in this trial and the resultant conviction.
'You have, in my judgement, displayed publicly a persona which is bigoted and cruel.
'There is not one iota of humility in you.'
Naz, from Richmond in southwest London, denied a single count of racially aggravated intentional harassment but was convicted by the jury.
She was sentenced to three months imprisonment in her absence.