An Afghan refugee who made a bizarre ‘chicken’ threat while speaking to his probation officer was said to be suffering from PTSD as a result of his experiences in his war-torn homeland.
Esmat Hotak, 24, was on a community order when last October he told his probation officer in conversation that he was going to cut a woman’s head off and ‘cut her into chicken’.
He was originally charged with making a threat to kill. However, on the day his trial was due to begin at Oxford Crown Court on Wednesday (March 15), he pleaded to a lesser charge of using threatening or abusive words.
Prosecutor Gary Venturi told Judge Maria Lamb that Hotak, of Becket Street, Oxford, had five previous convictions – and was subject to a community order when he made the threat on October 5 last year.
The court heard a little of the defendant’s traumatic childhood and adolescence.
Born in Afghanistan, he arrived in the UK in 2016 as an unaccompanied child refugee and was in the care of social services in Kent.
He had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, which defence barrister Dana Bilan said was linked to his experiences as a child.
Although now living in England, his parents remained in Afghanistan and neither he nor his brother had heard from them for more than a year.
In an oral pre-sentence report, a probation officer told Judge Lamb that Hotak was apprenticed to his brother and wanted to be a plumber. He had a fiancée in his home country and he had hopes of being reunited with her.
Ms Bilan said her client had been asked during his police interview why he used the words he did.
“He described the stress he was under and the difficulties he was going through,” she said.
“He has suffered significant trauma in his childhood; he finds it very difficult to speak about his time in Afghanistan when he was younger.”
Judge Lamb sentenced Hotak to a 12 month community order with up to 15 rehabilitation activity requirement days and ordered he pay £155 in costs to the Crown Prosecution Service.
Addressing the defendant’s background, she said: “It provides an explanation in part why you behaved as you did on October 5 last year but I’m afraid it is not an excuse.
“Probation officers are not there to be used as some sort of sounding board for your frustrations. It must have been frightening and disturbing for that lady.”
Source : Oxford Mail
