Former Derry councillor and GP, Dr Anne McCloskey, has been jailed after refusing to pay a Covid fine of £255.
The Derry city GP, who is currently unable to practise after her licence was suspended, appeared at Derry Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday in connection with the unpaid fine, and was given an immediate warrant to pay the amount or go to prison for 14 days.
Dr McCloskey (67) – who is running as an independent in Foyle in the upcoming UK general election – was fined for breaching Covid-19 regulations while speaking at an anti-lockdown rally in Derry in September 2022.
BBC News NI reports that Dr McCloskey has been sent to Hydebank Wood Prison.
District Judge Barney McElholm told the defendant that he was willing to give her time to pay the fine, or if not, he would impose an immediate warrant with prison in lieu. However, she accused court officials of “fraud” by entering a plea of not guilty in reaction to the original offences. Entering a plea of not guilty in relation to her original offences, she told the court that she was protected by the Geneva Convention.
The court heard that Dr McCloskey had an outstanding amount of £255, and nothing had been paid.
Dr McCloskey claimed she had been arrested on the foot of a “fake entity, namely the Director of Public Prosecution, who she said did “not exist in law or statute.” However, while she was still speaking, her microphone was muted by the judge, saying she was talking “nonsense.”
Responding, the judge said that he had never met the DPP personally, but was quite sure he existed. He claimed that while he had given Dr McCloskey an opportunity, she had gone off on “a diatribe.”
Support has been voiced for the well-known doctor across social media, with one supporter writing on social media: “Why are we not jailing the so called people in power for breaking Covid rules?”
“She is being treated horrifically,” another said, adding: “People need to get behind Dr Anne.”
Hundreds of comments of support featured under an article shared by local paper Derry Daily, with many branding the development “a disgrace” and “shocking.”
“People are doing worse and they are walking the street. The system is rotten to the core. She has my vote any day,” another person said.
It comes just days after McCloskey ran in the local elections for the Letterkenny LEA last week, as a candidate for the Irish People Party, getting 150 first preference votes. She recently announced that she will contest the upcoming Westminster elections in Foyle as an Independent candidate.
Dr McCloskey, a former Aontú councillor who was elected as Deputy Leader of the party in 2019, left in 2020 over apparent differences with the party over her outspoken opposition to lockdown.
Dr McCloskey had previously seized a seat on Derry City and Strabane District Council in the 2019 elections, securing 2,032 votes. After serving as a councillor for 17 months, the GP said in a statement: “My views on Covid-19 are different from Aontú and as a result I am stepping down from this role.”
In January, she lost an appeal against her suspension as a GP, after a six-month suspension was imposed in October last year after a medical tribunal ruled she had used her position to “undermine the public health message.”
Controversy stemmed from a social media video, posted by the doctor, during which she expressed reservations about young people taking Covid vaccines. The GP argued that young people had been coerced, bullied, bribed and cajoled into receiving the vaccine.
In a video posted to social media, the well-known GP was critical of Covid-19 vaccines, and said that she was alarmed at how many patients she was seeing with side-effects after getting the jab. She also questioned the approval of the vaccine and the drive to vaccinate young people, claiming there was not enough evidence that it was safe for use in that cohort.
Since then, “extremely rare” reports of myocarditis (inflammation of the heart) have been reported in young people following vaccination with mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. In the UK, the MHRA Yellow Card reporting rate for suspected myocarditis in persons aged under 18 year olds was 11 per million doses (data as of 1 December 2021).
The NHS now acknowledges: “There have been rare cases of inflammation of the heart (myocarditis) reported after COVID-19 vaccination,” with the cases “seen mostly in younger men within a few days after vaccination.”
Dr McCloskey had come out of retirement, returning to work during the Covid crisis, previously writing that she was “proud and glad” to serve in whatever way she could.
Almost 6,000 people previously signed a petition calling for the doctor to be reinstated after her suspension.
Many of those signing also took issue with what they believed to be an attack on freedom of speech – including some who had received the vaccine.
“I’m signing this petition to reinstate the Doctor as I believe that there are always two sides to every debate but so far only Big Pharma’s has been put forward time and time again with no opposition,” said one supporter.
It also comes after a ruling handed down by the Belfast High Court last month, which found that the Police Service of Northern Ireland did not have the power to enter private dwellings for alleged breaches of Covid regulations.
The landmark ruling related to a judicial review, taken by seven people, including Klara Kozubikova, who brought the legal challenge against police for entering her home in Downshire Park Central, Belfast in December 2020. Kozubikova said that officers had taken details of all adults present in her home, and issued £200 fixed penalty notices (FPN) against them under the Health Protection (Coronovaris Restrictions) Regulations NI 2020.