'She thinks COVID vaccines come from the devil': Son of anti-vaxxer calls for own mother to be prosecuted
The son of notorious anti-vaxxer Kate Shemirani has called for his own mother to be prosecuted after she compared NHS staff to Nazi war criminals.
At a Trafalgar Square rally on Saturday, former nurse Shemirani also called for supporters to send her the details of doctors and nurses who have worked to save lives during the coronavirus pandemic.
With the Met Police investigating if any crimes have been committed, her son Sebastian Shemirani called for her to be prosecuted on Monday.
In an extraordinary interview on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Stephen Nolan programme on Sunday evening, Sebastian also detailed his mother’s journey into “medical madness”.
He said Shemirani was diagnosed with cancer in the mid-2010s, at which point she began investigating alternative therapies.
Sebastian said she eventually began thinking there were “global conspiracies afoot to make people less healthy”.
He said this has now reached its “apex” with her beliefs about vaccines: “She no longer believes it’s a shadowy group of billionaires that is orchestrating this, but she believes it’s actually the devil himself.
"And I’m not joking.
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“She genuinely believes that this stuff is via the devil himself.”
Sebastian, who has been speaking out against his mother since last year, accused of her of being “narcissistic” with “a bit of a god complex”, and said she “genuinely believes her destiny is to fight this battle”.
The 22-year-old said he left home aged 17 and last saw her two months ago. “When I look into her eyes... she’s not the same person,” he said.
Shemirani – who was struck off the nursing register last month, following a suspension, for spreading COVID-19 misinformation – has built up a large following during the pandemic, though she has been suspended from social media sites.
Sebastian said she has been “surrounded for a year and a half by people who only agree with her and worship her”.
“There’s no hope,” he added.
“I want her removed from the public sphere in whatever way is going to protect people.”
Asked what should happen to her on BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Monday, he said: "Be prosecuted under existing laws.
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"Or if there aren’t existing laws in place that say that what she is doing is illegal, then we should be having a national conversation about what laws we should be bringing in, and drafting up legislation for that."
At Saturday’s rally, Shemirani had said: “At the Nuremberg Trials, the doctors and nurses stood trial and they hung.”
Her comments have been widely condemned, including by Downing Street and Sadiq Khan.
The Met said in a statement: “We are aware of video circulating online showing a speech that occurred during a rally in Trafalgar Square on Saturday, 24 July. Officers are carrying out inquiries to establish whether any offences have been committed. No arrests have been made.”
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