O2 apologises after it sent Muslim family SIM cards addressed to ‘Mr Getout OfEngland’ and ‘Mr Isis Terroriste’ 

 

 

The British-Iraqi family, who live in Wembley, north London, received two separate letters addressed to them with a racist message last August.

But because the family, who wish to remain anonymous, hadn’t ordered new SIM cards they presumed the letters were junk mail and only noticed them recently.

Now the family have voiced their disgust at the ‘saddening’ incident and O2 has said it is ‘appalled’ by the hate mail and apologised to them.

The letters were revealed on Victoria Derbyshire’s BBC show on Tuesday.

The family said they were ‘shaken’ by the mail, and said in a statement: ‘We are really saddened to come across these letters, especially having a younger child in the house, who we don’t want to grow up witnessing such hateful language.

‘It’s even sadder to think that such hate speech has become normalised despite living in such an uniquely, multicultural and diverse city like London.’

Miss Sura Jawad, a friend of the family and a lawyer, appeared on the morning show and said: ‘I was completely horrified by it.

‘I was talking to the family who received it, and [a member of the family] kind of mentioned it to me in passing, like look what I got in the mail, can you believe this?’

‘He almost had a defeatist mentality, ”what can you do, these kind of things happen.”’

O2 said the SIM card postage is handled by a third party, which has an automated system.

The phone company said it will work with the partner company to review the entire process.

In a statement, an O2 spokesperson said: ‘We have a rigorous data cleansing process in place to prevent any of our free products being sent to addresses with obscenities or offensive names and so this is a rare occurrence.

‘We are shocked by the letters that have been received and apologise to the family involved.

‘If they decide to report this case, we will work closely with the police as part of their investigation.’  (Daily Mail)