{"id":12269,"date":"2013-12-10T07:09:30","date_gmt":"2013-12-10T07:09:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=12269"},"modified":"2013-12-10T07:10:58","modified_gmt":"2013-12-10T07:10:58","slug":"brit-locked-up-for-telling-nelson-mandela-joke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=12269","title":{"rendered":"Brit locked up for telling Nelson Mandela joke"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_12270\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-12270\" style=\"width: 275px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/mandelajoke.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12270\" alt=\"Neil Phillips, right\" src=\"http:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/mandelajoke.jpg\" width=\"275\" height=\"183\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-12270\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Neil Phillips, right<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Neil Phillips was taken to a police station after posting jokes about Nelson Mandela&#8217;s death.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cThere was no hatred. What happened to freedom of speech?\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Neil Phillips said he was fingerprinted, DNA-swabbed and had his computers seized.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The 44-year-old was held after posting: \u201cMy PC takes so long to shut down I\u2019ve decided to call it Nelson Mandela.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Another read: \u201cFree Mandela \u2013 switch the power off.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">But police swooped after a councillor complained over the gags about the former South African leader, who passed away on Thursday, aged 95.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Mr Phillips who insisted he meant no harm, said: \u201cIt was an awful experience. I was fingerprinted, they took DNA and my computer.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cIt was a couple of jokes, Bernard Manning type,\u201d he added. &#8220;There was no hatred. What happened to freedom of speech? I think they over-reacted massively.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Mr Phillips, who runs Crumbs sandwich shop in Rugeley, Staffordshire, was arrested after complaints by Cllr Tim Jones about the one-liners, aired when the anti-apartheid hero was critically ill.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">A spokesman for Staffordshire Police confirmed the arrest and added: \u201cWhen he answered bail on September 30, he was informed that there would be no further action based on CPS decision of there being insufficient evidence to support a prosecution.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Yesterday, millions flocked to churches, parks and hills to pay their respects to Mr Mandela, including ex-wife Winnie. &#8211; dailystar.co.uk<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Neil Phillips was taken to a police station after posting jokes about Nelson Mandela&#8217;s death. \u201cThere was no hatred. What happened to freedom of speech?\u201d Neil Phillips said he was fingerprinted, DNA-swabbed and had his computers seized. The 44-year-old was held after posting: \u201cMy PC takes so long to shut down I\u2019ve decided to call &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=12269\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Brit locked up for telling Nelson Mandela joke&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12270,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,3],"tags":[186,7770,544,7769,7771,7567],"class_list":["post-12269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","category-news","tag-britain","tag-free-mandela","tag-freedom-of-speech","tag-jokes-about-mandela","tag-rugeley","tag-staffordshire"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/mandelajoke.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12269"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12272,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12269\/revisions\/12272"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}