Taken from 'The Sun' newspaper.......................
A MUSLIM fanatic who torched a wreath of poppies on Armistice Day has been fined just £50 despite raking in hundreds of pounds in benefits.
Yob Emdadur Choudhury, 26, was handed the soft sentence at Belmarsh Magistrates' Court in South East London after being convicted of a public order offence.
The measly fine was today slammed as "shocking" and "disgusting" — as it was revealed Choudhury gets nearly £800-a-month in handouts.
The hate-filled extremist unfurled several large plastic poppies before burning them at the end of a two-minute silence on November 11 last year, in a display which one onlooker said made him feel "physically sick".
Today in a further insult to Britain's brave war dead boasting Choudhury described his punishment as a "badge on my shoulder".
In a vile rant he added: "It is ridiculous for them to find me guilty of this crime which is not really a crime.
"Is that really a crime - I don't think so. You can see by the punishment they have given me. It was a political issue."
Choudhury — who did not even bother to show up to the hearing — continued: "I did not want to waste my time on something which is really insignificant.
"This fine, I will wear it as a badge on my shoulder. I did it for Allah. I did it to raise awareness that these so-called soldiers are the criminals. They are the ones who should be tried for war crimes."
Choudhury was among a 40-strong mob of protesters from the group Muslims Against Crusades who held placards reading "British soldiers burn in hell" as they demonstrated near London's Royal Albert Hall.
The vice chairman of the National Gulf War Veterans and Families Association, Shaun Rusling, today branded Choudhury's paltry sentence "disgusting".
He blasted: "Anyone who had served in the armed forces was insulted by his actions and the British public would be disgusted with the lenient sentence.
"If we set fire to a Koran there would be uproar and they would go after us, but because this is Britain people just get upset. It is a futile sentence."
In court ... Emdadur Choudhury, right, and cleared Mohammad Haque
Mr Rusling said the soft touch would only encourage the group into even more radical and offensive forms of protests.
Former SAS soldier Patrick Mercer called the sentence an outrage. The Tory MP said: "It is a remarkably light penalty for someone who has dishonoured Britain's war dead including tens of thousands of Muslims who helped destroy Nazism. It is shocking."
Dozens of furious readers also left their angry reactions to the sentence on our website's messaging boards.
Soft ... District Judge Riddle
And whatthehell wrote: "The charge should have been treason", while Panzer-faust13 said: "Should have been jailed!"
Earlier District Judge Riddle — who could have fined Choudhury up to £1,000 — said: "I have no doubt that it was the intention of this protest to shock and offend.
"Shocking and offending people is sometimes a necessary part of effective protest. Here, an obvious consequence of this process was to show disrespect for dead soldiers, who should burn in hell.
"The two-minute chanting, when others were observing a silence, followed by a burning of the symbol of remembrance was a calculated and deliberate insult to the dead and those who mourn or remember them.
"If the memory of dead soldiers is publicly insulted at time and place where are likely to be gathered people who have expressly attended to honour those soldiers, then the threat to public order is obvious.
"Here it is hard to imagine that a public order disturbance was not intended."
Choudhury's fellow defendant Mohammad Haque, 30, was cleared of the same charge.
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