A machete-wielder who smirked for the camera as he came out of a Banbury barbershop walked from court with a community order.
Adil Taseem, 22, had spent around two months in prison on remand by the time he was sprung from custody by a judge at Oxford Crown Court on Thursday.
The Banbury man was filmed emerging from Trinder’s Barbershop in Church Lane on Saturday, May 27, with a machete in his hand.
He told the cameraman ‘continue recording, mate’ before stuffing the red-handled weapon down the front of his trousers. Footage of the interaction went viral on social media over the weekend of the incident.
On Thursday (July 27), Recorder Alexander McGregor imposed an 18 month community order. As part of the order, Taseem must wear a GPS monitoring tag around his ankle for six months, complete 150 hours of unpaid work and do up to 46 sessions with the probation service.
The defendant, of Manor Road, Banbury, had no previous convictions and pleaded guilty to possession of a bladed article and threatening behaviour at the first opportunity.
Previously, the courts have heard that Taseem had been threatened in an earlier incident. In a ‘moment of foolishness’ he had got the knife and gone into the barbershop, as he believed those who had been chasing him were in the premises.
Dealing with the case in the magistrates’ court, prosecutor Kathleen O’Callaghan alleged that police believed the defendant was ‘quite high up’ in a County Lines-type drugs operation. The machete incident was a form of ‘retribution’, it was suggested.
That claim was ‘very much denied’, Taseem’s advocate told the district judge in May.
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