Student sues two newspapers over riot ‘leader’ claim

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Student sues two newspapers over riot ‘leader’ claim

June 19th, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

By
Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED:

19:58 EST, 18 June 2012

|

UPDATED:

19:58 EST, 18 June 2012

A student sued two newspapers yesterday for being branded a ringleader of the riots following protests against education cuts in London.

Luke Cooper, 27, wants damages and an injunction to restore his reputation after allegations he helped orchestrate the disorder which wrecked the Conservative Party’s HQ at Millbank in 2010.

Mr Cooper, a PhD student in international relations at Sussex University claims a front-page story in the London Evening Standard meant he was a ringleader who planned with others to hijack a peaceful march and turn it into a riot.

Heated: Police officers clashed with student demonstrators marching towards Parliament in 2010 in London

His counsel, William McCormick QC told a
jury that accompanying the article was a picture taken a few years
earlier which showed Mr Cooper at a social event in a pub which gave the
impression he was ‘smiling joyously at the havoc wreaked.’

A further story in the Daily Mail used the same picture and portrayed Mr Cooper as one of the ‘hard-core’ people who organised the riot, it was alleged at the High Court in London.

Mr McCormick said Mr Cooper had not been responsible for planning any part of the 50,000-strong march in London in November 2010.

Giving evidence, Mr Cooper said he was a member of the socialist group Revolution who had gone to support a demonstration in which he ‘believed very strongly’.

He had ‘always been against property damage and violent protest’, pointing out that violence tended to ‘undermine the cause in the eyes of the great majority of people’.

On the day of the student demos he had done his utmost to stay out of trouble and ‘keep his head down’, he explained.

Mr Cooper told Adrienne Page QC, that although some members of Revolution were at the front of the demonstration he was at the back handing out the organisation’s fanzine and was not fully aware of what was going on.

He denied approaching a journalist to say he was a spokesman for the group.
Mr McCormick said: ‘Luke Cooper’s reputation has been effectively been as badly trashed as Millbank tower on November 10, 2010.’

Mr Cooper seeks damages from the publisher of the Mail, Associated Newspapers, and that of the Standard, London Standard Ltd. Both deny libel.

The libel hearing, due to last a week, continues.