STORY
A convicted murderer has been given an additional 11 year sentence after launching a violent antisemitic attack on a Jewish chaplain at HMP Whitemoor. Joseph Gynane, 41, attacked the chaplain from behind while he was visiting the Cambridgeshire prison to support prisoners on 14 September last year. Cambridgeshire Police said Gynane, who had converted to Islam in 2007 shouted “Allah Akbar” before punching the man to the back of the head with such force that he was knocked to the floor. He then continued punching him, even after a prison officer sprayed him with PAVA.
The victim was taken for medical treatment and later attended Peterborough City Hospital, where checks showed he had suffered a broken jaw and a broken thumb. The chaplain told officers he believed the assault was religiously motivated because he was Jewish and was wearing a black skull cap at the time.
Gynane, who had previously been convicted of murdering his friend and stabbing a sixteen year old boy in London in 2019, was moved to the prison’s segregation unit after the attack. Police said his cell was later found covered in graffiti including the phrases “free Palestine” and “Death to the IDF”. He admitted racially aggravated assault inflicting grievous bodily harm at an earlier hear