A Canterbury fish and chip shop worker claims he was convicted of threatening to kill his ex-lover...because the jury was racist!

But Waled-Ben Salem’s found that his spiteful comments meant he had jumped out of the chip pan...and into the line of fire of a judge’s fury.

The 37 year old had broken into ex-lover Shirley Bluemink’s home in Edgar Road, Canterbury after getting drunk – and then subjecting her to a terror knife attack.

But the Tunisian-born French national later told a probation officer that the jury had only convicted him of making threats to kill – because of his race and religion.

Judge Simon James – in jailing him for three years – retorted: “I cannot let such an insult to the jury, who heard your trial, go without comment.

“You were not convicted because of the colour of your skin. You were not convicted because of your religion.

“You were convicted because of the plain and simple reason that there existed clear and compelling evidence against you.”

However, the judge said that the “groundless slurs against the jury ”would not increase Salem’s sentence because “I wish to give you every allowance that English is not your first language.”

But he said that the accusations revealed that the friar – who worked at the city’s Papa Johns restaurant – had provided “ a clear and cogent indication of a worrying lack of insight and remorse”.

As Salem, of Wincheap, was being led away to begin the sentence he began shouting: “This is unfair. It’s not fair. There is no justice in this country, no justice, no justice.”

But the jury at Canterbury Crown Court had heard how his victim and her child were asleep in their home in the early hours of the morning when the drunken Salem smashed his way in.

Although the two-year relationship had ended a year earlier, Salem continued to pester his former lover – despite receiving a solicitor’s letter to stay away.

Salem was “unwilling or unable” to come to terms with the break up, then smashed a window with a brick in the early hours of the morning in April this year.

The judge told him: “You then subjected your former partner, who you professed at the time to still have feelings for, to a truly terrifying ordeal.

“She later described her ordeal as being ‘terrorised in her own home’, “ the judge added.

Ms Bluemink was startled in bed to find Salem standing there – he then slapped her and knocked away a telephone as she called for help.

He then dragged his victim downstairs by her hair and into the kitchen as the petrified mum was screaming for him to stop.

“You were not convicted because of the colour of your skin. You were not convicted because of your religion. You were convicted because of the plain and simple reason that there existed clear and compelling evidence against you” - Judge Simon James

But Salem then armed himself with a kitchen knife and repeatedly threatened to kill her and “she honestly believed she was going to die”.

It was only when her three year old son pleaded with the thug to “leave my mummy alone” that the attack stopped and “he came to his senses, “ the judge added.

Salem, who has a police caution for harassing a previous lover, then walked away leaving Ms Bluemink “hysterical” with fear, the court was told.

Fortunately her screams were heard by neighbours who alerted police and officers came to her aid.

Salem pleaded guilty to assault and criminal damage but denied making the death threats but was convicted after a trial.

The judge said that because of Salem’s “obsessive personality “ he had agreed to issue an indefinite order for him to stay away from his ex-lover and her family.

Ms Bluemink had attended the hearing but left before Salem was sent to prison.

His barrister Niall Doherty said she had not wanted Salem to be jailed – but just wanted him out of her life.

Salem’s case would also be referred to the Home Office after his release from the sentence.