This is the shocking moment a man releases rats outside a mosque in Sheffield as part of a series of racially motivated hate crimes.
CCTV footage shows Edmund Fowler, 66, taking cages containing rats from his car boot and dumping them outside Sheffield Grand Mosque on Grimesthorpe Road, with the vermin appearing to run in through the fence.
The 66-year-old repeated this on three other occasions between May and June.
Fowler, of Skelwith Drive, Sheffield, pleaded guilty to four counts of racially aggravated harassment at Sheffield Magistrates’ Court.
On Thursday (16 July), he was sentenced to 18 weeks in prison, suspended for 18 months, and banned from going near a mosque for 18 months.