11:56am Monday 12th May 2008
By Emma Streatfield
MEMBERS of the community in which a number of the young men involved in the hammer attack on Henry Webster lived, have reacted with condemnation and confusion to the punishments handed out.
Henry was attacked by a group of youths on the Ridgeway School tennis courts in January last year and left with brain damage after being repeatedly hit on the head by a claw hammer.
On Friday, a crown court judge passed sentence on all the young men involved in all aspects of the attack.
Wasif Khan, 19, of Caversham Close, Walcot, was sentenced to serve eight years in a young offenders' institution by Judge Carol Hagen, who held him entirely responsible for striking Henry with the hammer.
Nine others were given custodial sentences.
Several of the young men lived in the Broadgreen area.
One man in Manchester Road, who did not want to be named, said: "What happened is wrong. I don't agree with what they did.
"If you go to school you should come home - my kids go to school and I expect them to come home in one piece.
"Wasif Khan deserved the sentence but the way I look at it, the rest of them didn't deserve it."
The man said he was frustrated by the amount of press coverage the case had received.
He said: "The way I look at it it's not true, most of it. I think they have been treated unfairly. They have given it too much publicity.
"People that do a murder don't get that kind of sentence - that's prejudice."
He said he was sceptical about the number of witnesses that had come forward.
He believed there was an element of racial prejudice and that the situation would have been very different had it been an attack on an Asian boy.
Mr Singh, a shop worker in the Broadgreen area, knows many of the defendants' families.
He thought that most of those convicted got what they deserved, but some he did not feel were so closely involved had been dealt with very harshly.
"They're saying Wasif should have had more because he's the main man," he said.
"It's wrong what they've done, but still some of them they just went with it - and those that didn't do anything got more than everyone.
"I know what they are like, I know all of them - they need harsh lessons."
He felt one defendant in particular had been treated harshly when he had told the truth.
"I feel sorry for him, he's a good lad," he said.
"I think it was going to be a group fight. But they're making out they all went to attack one kid, but that was not the case.
"If there was no hammer I think it would have been a group fight.
"It should have been a mixed jury - that would have been a lot better."
Jassi Singh, 18, who knows most of the defendants, said when it happened it was the talk of the playground.
He said: "They're upset, all their friends are. They didn't really want their friends to go inside obviously - everyone is shocked "It's taken a year. Everyone knew about it - they knew what really happened."
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