PA MediaA man jailed for posting abusive messages online about Northern Ireland’s first black mayor has lost his appeal against his sentence.
Kevin Barry McIntyre, 31, of Miller Street in Londonderry, was found guilty of two counts of abusing the communications network in May 2024 by writing online messages about Lilian Seenoi Barr, who is mayor of Derry and Strabane.
In February, a judge jailed McIntyre for five months
At Londonderry’s County Court on Friday, Judge Gerry McNamara rejected his appeal.
The offending, the judge told the court, had been made more serious by the fact it was aggravated by hostility based on race.
The judge quoted from McIntyre’s messages in which he wrote that the mayor “will be removed from the city dead or alive”.
He told the court McIntyre had also posted about the SDLP MP for Foyle, Colum Eastwood, as well as the mayor, saying “his and her death is near.”
The court was told that the posts “caused distress to the victim and her family and the post caused her to fear for her personal safety and that of her family”.
The judge said McIntyre claimed to be expressing his views as a comedian and did not intend to threaten anyone.
In a pre-sentence report prepared after McIntyre’s conviction, he accepted that the posts “would have impacted on the victim in a negative way”.
The judge said he had been told McIntyre had belatedly learned his lesson and that he underestimated the consequences.
Judge McNamara said both posts “fall into a bracket of a threat of physical violence”.
“In relation to both posts they both mention death,” the judge said.
“This is no accident. The second posts mentions the victim’s colour. That was no accident.”
‘Designed to intimidate’
The posts “were designed to intimidate and strike fear into the victim,” the judge said, adding they had “generated others to send further racist and threatening posts to the victim”.
He said the victim was “someone trying to do her civic duty for society”.
Judge McNamara said that after considering all matters he affirmed the five=month sentence and McIntyre was taken into custody.
