Violent Muslim rioter Mahmoud Eid behind bars
PETER BODKIN
The Daily Telegraph
May 09, 2013 1:54PM
A RIOTER who was in the middle of every aggressive confrontation with police during last year's violent Muslim protests in the Sydney CBD has been sent to prison for more than four years.
And a magistrate said she would have sent father-of-one Mahmoud Eid, 26, to jail for even longer if she was allowed.
Eid handed himself in two days after being exposed in the media as one of the protestors who turned on police during the September uprising.
He kicked Chuck, who early last year helped catch fugitive Malcolm Naden, with a "full-force’’ blow in the ribs and later pushed a female constable into a flower bed as two officers tried to arrest him.
When police sifted through footage taken during the protest, they tracked him as an "active participant" in all the violent clashes with police.
The riots began as a protest against the posting of a YouTube clip mocking Islam overseas.
Eid pleaded guilty in March to the three charges and today his lawyer Elie Rahme said his client was a man who clearly struggled to "control his emotions" and "express his feeling passively".
"He joined a mob which, it appeared, had similar people in it who were poor in expressing their emotions and poor at expressing their feelings," he said.
"Instead of speaking about their feelings, they chose to lash out with violence."
Eid previously served 15 months of a two-year jail term for a reprisal attack following the 2005 Cronulla riots and he also has prior convictions for assaulting police and affray.
Mr Rahme said the community would best be served if Eid was spared another jail term so he had a chance to "rehabilitate" and deal with his "anger-management" and "impulse-control" problems.
But Deputy Chief Magistrate Jane Culver said the 26-year-old must have known the protest could turn violent - given his history at Cronulla - yet he had spent hours following the clashes around the city.
"There is no noble cause which can justify a riot where violence is used against police," she said.
"Freedom of speech cannot be a vehicle by which violence can be perpetrated."
Ms Culver sentenced Eid to a minimum of 33 months in jail with a 16-month parole period, adding she would have given him four years for the rioting alone if she wasn't restricted to a two-year term in the local court.
Eid smiled and hugged his supporters before he was taken into custody.
