London Man Jailed Over Iraq Beheading Clip

A London hotel guest who showed an "abhorrent and shocking" video of an Iraqi hostage beheading to an appalled worker has been jailed for 60 days. Subhaan Younis, 23, showed Charlotte McClay the footage on his mobile phone while chatting to her in the shop where she worked at the Moat House Hotel in Glasgow. Younis, of Baliol Street in the city, who downloaded the clip from the internet, had been staying in the hotel at the time of the offence on September 27 last year. Defence solicitor Dominic Sellar told Glasgow District Court his client, who was found guilty of breach of the peace last month, accepted the images were "abhorrent and shocking in the extreme". Younis had shown Ms Clay the footage during a conversation about the Iraq war after offering to let her see something that would "cause her a sleepless night", said Mr Sellar. The shop worker replied: "Aye, right," the court heard. The solicitor said his client thought Ms Clay realised she was about to see a video of a hostage beheading. Stipendiary magistrate Euan Edment said the complainer had been left "shocked, upset and frightened" by the horrific clip and could be affected "perhaps for the rest of her life". Passing sentence, the magistrate told Younis: "You chose to let her view the images on your telephone and told her that she might have nightmares. "In my view, the woman had no idea about what she was about to view. No reasonable person might have anticipated viewing such dreadful and distressing images in such circumstances. I struggle to understand why any decent individual would have images showing the degradation and death of another human being regardless of their race, political or religious persuasion." Mr Sellar told the court that his client, who has previous convictions, mainly for road traffic offences, realised he had made a "colossal mistake" and had behaved "naively, foolishly and stupidly".