A man facing jail for a “grossly offensive” Halloween costume has had his conviction successfully overturned on appeal after an intervention by the Free Speech Union (FSU).
In October 2023, David Wootton posted to Facebook pictures of himself dressed as Salman Abedi, a costume he wore to a Halloween party. Abedi, the Manchester Arena bomber, murdered 22 people and injured over 1,000 at an Ariana Grande concert in 2017. Wootton wore an Arabic-style headdress, a T-shirt reading “I love Ariana Grande” and a rucksack marked with the words “Boom” and “TNT”. One photo was captioned: “Bet I get kicked out of the party.”
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