On 23 February, Oluwole Ilesanmi, a Christian street preacher, was arrested then later de-arrested and abandoned at an isolated location miles away.
The arrest was for preaching outside Southgate tube station in London and allegedly ‘breaching the peace’.
The police said that they were called by a member of the public who had complained that the preacher was being ‘Islamophobic’ as he shared the gospel with passers-by.
Witness
The arrest was filmed* by Ambrosine Shitrit, a Jewish campaigner from Campaign4Truth and Eye On Antisemitism. She stopped her car and started filming when she saw a tall hooded Muslim man squaring up to the small elderly street preacher. ‘I thought he was about to be assaulted,’ Ambrosine said. ‘The preacher was fearless, but if I hadn’t started filming, he would have been attacked. The preacher was not breaching the peace and in no way had he been Islamophobic.’ Indeed, it is not lawful for a police officer to order someone to stop preaching unless their actions incite violence. Ambrosine encouraged the Muslim to debate with the preacher rather than threaten him. Both men then expressed their views to each other and robustly criticised each other’s religion. Ambrosine mediated and pointed out that Muslims evangelise across London without being threatened or silenced.
Two police officers then arrived claiming that the preacher had been ‘Islamophobic’. The Muslim left the immediate vicinity and the police began asking the preacher to leave the area for supposedly ‘breaching the peace.’
The police officer told Oluwole that he was ‘required to go away’ because he was ‘disturbing people’s days’. Oluwole replied: ‘I will not go away because I need to tell them the truth. Jesus is the only way, truth and life.’ One of the officers then put one of Oluwole’s hands behind his back as he started arresting him. The other attempted to take the Bible out of Oluwole’s other hand. Although Oluwole asked him not to take his Bible, the other officer ripped it forcefully from him. The officer can be heard on Ambrosine’s video footage saying: ‘You should have thought of that before being racist.’ Online commentators were quick to question whether a Muslim would have had the Qu’ran taken away from them in quite such a forceful fashion.
Oluwole says he was then put into a police car and his Bible was thrown into the back of the vehicle. Still cuffed and in pain, he was taken a short distance (145 metres) to Southgate Police Station. He was not brought into the station, but instead was taken out of the car and searched.
Disturbing act
Oluwole said he didn’t want to go home and, in a disturbing and strange act, instead of them just releasing him outside Southgate police station, the officers drove him to the unfamiliar location of Wrotham Park (the edge of their jurisdiction, some six miles from Southgate) and de-arrested him. Police denied this had happened, then claimed they’d left him elsewhere, but his bus ticket supports Oluwole’s account.
He was left there without enough money for the bus fare home. A member of the public kindly gave him the money he needed. Rather than going directly home, he went back to Southgate tube station and continued preaching the gospel without further problems or interference. The Metropolitan Police has ordered a review into the arrest but described the preacher’s activities as being ‘perceived as being a potential hate crime’.
Eye On Antisemitism helpfully posted the video online as they reached out for support for Oluwole. Concern was expressed for his wellbeing. For eight years Oluwole has preached in Southgate and elsewhere around Greater London. He has been arrested before, but said that the way he was treated this time was particularly painful for him.
Oluwole later said the only caution he got that day was from his wife after he arrived home and told her what had happened.
The video of the preacher’s arrest caused outrage, not just in the UK, but across the world with it being viewed several million times, including in the west African countries of Ghana and Nigeria. Online, it was shown alongside other interactions between white police officers and non-white preachers, most notably that of a Muslim preacher who was not arrested despite shouting in the face of an officer.
In 1997 Alison Redmond-Bate, the first street preacher to be arrested in Britain since the 19th century, was ordered to stop preaching by a police officer after a crowd of hecklers became abusive. When she refused, she was arrested. However, in the appeal court, Lord Justice Sedley ruled: ‘A police officer has no right to call upon a citizen to desist from lawful conduct.’ Police officers around the UK need to uphold the freedoms, enshrined in law, to preach in public.
