Army uniform dummy "threatening"

by Nick Webster. Published Wed 08 Jul 2009 18:54

Dummy wears a combat jacket like this...

A shopkeeper was stunned after town hall chiefs warned him that a tailor's dummy wearing a British Army uniform was menacing to passers-by.

Hamid Shahabi receive a letter from officials at Bolton Bity Council informing him that he could face an enforcement order and a fine unless unless he removes the life-sized figure dressed in fatigues.

Military surplus dealer Mr Shahabi says he is displaying the camouflage-clad mannquin outside his "Arms and Outdoors" store as a tribute to British soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But staff at branch of Lloyds TSB bank complained that the dummy is causomg "flashbacks" to a day when three masked raiders burst and carried out a robbery last February.

A Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council official wrote to Mr Shahabi insisting the sigure was causing "ill feeling" in light of a number of armed robberies suffered in the area.

Mr Shahabi, 53, sells guns, ammunition along with fishing, hunting and camping equipment at the store in Halliwell Road, Halliwell.

He said: "I could understand it if this figure was dressed to look like an Al-Quaeda terrorist or he in a Nazi uniform you could understand it.

"But he is not. He's wearing British Army uniform and is carring not weapons.

"There is nothing threatening about it and I have had no complaints and I have no intention of removing it."

A Bolton City Council spokesman said: "The officer has tried to respond sympathetically to a number of complaints received about the mannequin from a business and residents, following a recent armed raid on a local business.

"At no point within the letter was the officer suggesting that the mannequin would provoke people to carry out armed raids, nor was he in any way undermining the work of our British troops.

"The issue is that the mannequin is causing people to remember an upsetting incident they would rather forget."

Lloyds TSB declined to comment.