Daily Mail, Wednesday, March 4, 2020^ Page 25
By Rebecca Camber
and Java Naraincar park in Hove, East Sussex, and
a group of men were threatening
to hit him if he did not pay.
When PC Breeds arrested the
tycoon’s son, his father intervened.
Prosecutor Melanie Wotton said:
‘His son is shouting and at that
point Mr von Hessen says “he’s a
poof ” to PC Breeds.
‘No other swear words were used
but in my submission no other
swear words have to be used. It is
a derogatory and abusive term.’
Police bodycam footage was
played to the court showing the
tycoon’s son taunting PC Breeds,
and calling him ‘Mad Max’. Mr van
Hoogstraten added: ‘Maybe he’s a
poofter as well.’ Yesterday thebusinessman ranted at court staff,
and said of the case: ‘It’s a com-
plete waste of public money...’
In an earlier hearing, the busi-
nessman threatened to ring Mr
Cox, ranting: ‘A personal friend of
mine is the Attorney General and
he will want to know what is going
on in these courts.’
He went on: ‘It was my son who
was sexually assaulted by this
officer, who happened to be a
poofter. I made a comment about
it, him being a poofter, and I’m the
one who’s arrested.’ Yesterday PC
Breeds told the court that the
remark was meant to intimidate
him, adding: ‘It’s undermining, it’s
aggressive, it’s something youshouldn’t have to hear.’ But magis-
trates decided that the remark did
not met the criminal threshold.
It is not the first time that Mr
van Hoogstraten has walked free
from court. The businessman
accrued vast wealth as a slum
landlord and his fortune was once
estimated at £500million.
But he became notorious for
court cases featuring allegations of
gangland attacks carried out on
his orders. At 22, he was convicted
of throwing a grenade into a rab-
bi’s home and was sentenced to
four years. At the trial the judge
called him a ‘sort of self-imagined
devil who thinks he’s an emissary
of Beelzebub’. In 2002 Mr vanHoogstraten was sentenced to ten
years in jail for hiring a hitman to
kill property developer Moham-
med Sabir Raja in 1999. The man-
slaughter conviction was over-
turned, but in 2005 a High Court
civil judge ruled that Mr van Hoog-
straten was responsible for recruit-
ing the hitman after Mr Raja’s fam-
ily sued him for £6million.
He refused to pay and moved to
Zimbabwe where he became a
close associate of its dictator pres-
ident Robert Mugabe.
Yesterday the tycoon said out-
side court: ‘I’m pleased to see that
there’s still a semblance of British
justice. It shouldn’t have got off
the ground in the first place.’In an extraordinary court hear-
ing, the defendant admitted mak-
ing the comment to PC James
Breeds. But magistrates deemed
that his use of the phrase was not
actually a crime and did not meet
the threshold for the offence of
behaviour causing harassment,
alarm or distress.
M r v a n H o o g s t r a t e n t o l d
Brighton magistrates he had used
a string of offensive terms for gay
people ‘back in the day’ but he
asked: ‘Since when is “poof ” or
“poofter” in any way offensive?’
Police were called on August 19
last year after a man complained
that his car had been illegally
clamped at Mr van Hoogstraten’sBRITAIN’S most notorious land-
lord, who was once described by
a judge as ‘an emissary of Bee-
lzebub’, was acquitted yesterday
of abusing a policeman by calling
him a ‘poofter’.
Nicholas van Hoogstraten, 75,
walked free from court after threat-
ening to call his ‘personal friend’ –
the former Attorney General Geof-
frey Cox – to complain about his
latest prosecution.
The property tycoon was represented
by Mr Cox at the Court of Appeal in 2003,
when he successfully argued that his con-
viction for killing a business associate
should be quashed. Yesterday Mr van‘A complete waste of
public money’Cleared of
abuse, tyrant
landlord in
gay slur at
policeman
Rant: Mr van
Hoogstraten
at court
yesterdayHoogstraten – who has changed his name
to Nicholas Adolf von Hessen – attacked
the criminal justice system after being
hauled to court for allegedly harassing a
policeman by calling him a ‘poofter’.