A prominent Black Lives Matter (BLM) activist, who played a key role in the notorious protest that led to the toppling and subsequent submersion of Sir Edward Colston's statue in Bristol Harbour, has been sentenced to prison for fraud.
She was found guilty of misappropriating funds intended for a children's charity.
Xahra Saleem, originally named Yvonne Maina, is a founding member of the All Black Lives Bristol activist group, an offshoot of BLM. She has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison after being convicted of stealing 32,344 in charitable donations. The funds were earmarked for a local children's group, Changing Your Mindset, which intended to use the money to finance a trip to Africa for underprivileged children in the region.
According to the Times of London, Saleem was discovered to have diverted the money for personal gain, purchasing an iPhone, a computer, takeaway food, and beauty products. She also spent 5,800 of the donations on Uber taxi rides over an 11-month period leading up to June 2021.
Saleem, who appeared in court wearing a Hijab, was told during her sentencing hearing that she had violated the trust of the charity and had inflicted "serious detriment to the victims."
The court was informed that Saleem had offered the charity various reasons for her refusal to hand over the GoFundMe donations. One such excuse was that "some of the people the charity had worked with had made homophobic comments."
The BLM activist later alleged that she had been hospitalised for psychosis and that the money was no longer available. She told the group: "I am so sorry, I am trying to understand my actions as well. I take full responsibility as my actions have consequences I dont want to pardon myself from them."
Saleem promised the charity that she would voluntarily surrender to the police. However, when she failed to do so, she was apprehended by Avon and Somerset Police officers in July 2021.
A month prior to her arrest, she sent a message to a friend confessing: "I have done something horrendous, you cant tell anyone until I have sorted it out. I get really bad psychosis which I have mentioned to psychiatrists. This charity asked me to hold money for them, God knows why. Lets just say my brain spent it. I cant tell you what, where or why. I dont know what I spent it on.
In the aftermath of the sentencing, Deniesha Royal, a member of the defrauded charity which was forced to close after the theft expressed her disappointment: It doesnt feel that justice has been fully served as we are unlikely to get back the money from her selfish actions."
Royal added, "It feels like we are being punished. It saddens me that a member of our community could do this to us because they knew and understood the goal we set out to achieve in order to positively change our community.
The group disclosed that a young person they were supporting was fatally stabbed after the charity's closure. They suggested that the death of the young man, who was a cousin of Saleems, might have been averted if the fraud had not led to the charity's dissolution.
Following the death of George Floyd in the United States, Saleem was instrumental in organising a protest in Bristol. This led to the statue of 17th-century merchant and parliamentarian Sir Edward Colston being toppled, vandalised, and dumped into the local harbour in June 2020 due to his involvement in the Transatlantic slave trade.
Four left-wing activists were charged with the destruction of the Colston statue. Despite admitting their involvement, they were acquitted last year after their lawyers successfully persuaded a jury that they were on the "right side of history."
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