A man has been arrested after complaints about somebody appearing on social media wearing a Halloween costume depicting Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abedi.
Abedi killed 22 people as well as himself when he detonated a bomb at the end of an Ariana Grande concert at the arena in May 2017.
Pictures of a man wearing an Arabic-style headdress, with the slogan “I love Ariana Grande” on his T-shirt, and carrying a rucksack with “Boom” and “TNT” written on the front, caused fury when they were posted earlier this week.
That’s ridiculous. Was it in good taste? No. Should he be arrested for it? Also no what the fuck
From the article:
“The man was arrested on 1 November on suspicion of a number of offences including using a public communication network to send offensive messages.
Should this be a law? Probably because people are dicks.
Should this guy be arrested using this law? I suppose it’s different from charging them (and securing a conviction) and gives them time to investigate but this was a very traumatic incident (my uncle lives in Manchester and it had a big impact on him) so making a joke about it is offensive.
I get that it’s offensive, I truly do, but I don’t think people should be arrested just for being offensive. If he was threatening to do something similar or something like that, then that’s different.
It’s a difficult one for the police - sending offensive communications is an offence, and this counts as one, so they are duty-bound to investigate it. As unpleasant as it is, I hope it goes no further.
