A convicted terrorist is suing a pub because, he claims, its sign incites violence and scares him.
Khalid Baqa is taking the Saracen’s Head Inn in Amersham, Buckinghamshire to court for the sum of £1,850.
The 60-year-old – who has served time in jail for preparing jihadi propaganda – hopes to sue 30 more establishments with the same name if successful.
He says the sign, which depicts a bearded man wearing a turban, ‘scares and worries him’, adding that it’s xenophobic, racist and incites violence.
But the pub landlord Robbie Hayes described Baqa’s claims as a ‘joke’.
He told The Sun: ‘He’s just chancing his hand. Of course it worries me — you never know with people like this.’
He said the pub – currently owned by brewery Greene King – had been called The Saracen’s Head for 500 years and added: ‘No one at this pub is racist, we don’t believe the sign is racist and the name is simply historic.’
Mr Hayes said the pub wouldn’t change hundreds of years of history just because some ‘loudmouth’ wants to cause trouble.
Baqa has filed a ‘claim of money’ form to the county court for money he says he’s owed.
In his submission he said he had been walking through the area and was ‘shocked and deeply offended’ by the sign.
Seeing the sign ‘instilled worry and fear in me since it was clearly xenophobic, racist and inciting violence to certain people,’ he said.
He added that he immediately complained to the pub and asked that the sign be removed.
Baqa has claimed he has contacted the pub four times and visited in person, but staff said they have no record of this.
He told The Sun he has always been offended by pub names such as The Saracen’s Head Inn, but only recently discovered how to challenge them online.
Baqa was jailed in 2018 for four years and eight months after pleading guilty to five counts of dissemination of terrorist publications.
He told the newspaper he had stopped ‘all the terrorist stuff for now’.
The term Saracen was used to refer to Arabs in Greek and Latin writings between the 5th century and 15th centuries.
From the 7th century onwards it was linked to Islam, and was used to refer to Muslims for a period of time until becoming obsolete around 1400s.
The Metro has contacted The Saracen’s Head Inn for comment.
Last month, thousands of people signed a petition to keep the name of a pub called The Midget after complaints from others it was offensive.
The Midget, a Greene King pub in Abingdon, was named after the MG Midget EX 127 car once manufactured in the town.
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