Muslim mini cab driver was told to ‘blow up the World Trade Centre’

A City trader racially abused a mini cab driver and told him to ‘Blow up the World Trade Centre,’ a court heard.

Commodities dealer Greg Durrant, 40, drunkenly blew on Abdeltif Samadi’s neck when he took a taxi home on November 5 last year.

Mr Samadi told him to stop and put on a mask on.

When he Durrant refused he pulled over and told him and his friend to get out.

Durrant became abusive and called Mr Samadi a ‘f*cking Muslim c*nt’ and asked: ‘Why don’t you go and blow up the World Trade Centre.’

Durrant’s solicitor, Gordon Crowe, said that he deeply regrets his behavior, but said ‘it was a moment of drunken madness.’

Crowe said that Durrant had lost his job and is now living at his parents’ home in Norwich.

District judge Briony Clarke told Durrant: ‘You are understandably disgusted with yourself,’ but added: ‘Mr Samadi] shouldn’t be exposed to that kind of behavior.

‘He said that incidents like this make him feel unwelcome in this country.’

Durrant was served with a 12-month community order and 80 hours of unpaid work.

He will have to pay Samadi £150 compensation.

Durrant, of 172A Wandsworth Bridge Road, Fulham, admitted racially/religiously aggravated intentional harassment, and was convicted on 28 April.