LAST week two young men were sentenced to 13 years in prison for joining the battle to topple the Assad Government in Syria. A month earlier a woman was jailed for 28 months for financially supporting the same cause.

This escalating injustice, despite the fact that the Syrian rebel armies including that which the West has rebranded ‘ISIS’, have been funded by the UK and the US for most of the past three years and have been assisted by active Israeli intervention in the form of repeated air strikes – two more strikes were reported on Monday of this week.

The socially and emotionally detached elite that form our judiciary have used the Islamophobia of the BBC and parts of the media to help double the prison population over the past 20 years and make it the highest in Western Europe.

Strange, then, that they should exempt more than 100 UK citizens participating in the destruction of Palestine, or the thousands of UK citizens sending financial aid to the Israeli defence forces during the latest massacre in Gaza.

Roger Westmoreland, The Oval, Pocklington.